Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Image: Getty)
“Won’t be long before the mullahs are swinging from Tehran’s lamp-posts” suggested one slightly uncharitable comment below a recent Iran article. But in truth it does feel that with every Israeli attack wave the fall of Iran’s hated theocracy, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gets a step closer. Weakened, humiliated and in disarray, the end of the repressive, fascistic, murderous regime, has shifted from unthinkable to achievable reality.
Which is life-changing news for the Iranian people – an achievement of the seemingly impossible. But surely we have learned by now that dropping the bombs is the easy bit. It is what happens next that is vital to the stability of both the Middle East and the wider world. The West has spectacularly failed the Iranian people for 40 years – it must not fail them now.
US-led coalitions have a depressing litany of broken countries behind them – broken primarily because after the shock-and-awe military intervention there was no semblance of an end-game, no credible exit strategy, which would leave said nations stable, governed and peaceful.
Think Libya, think Iraq, think Afghanistan, think Syria even. In Iraq the US and UK toppled Saddam Hussein and his fabled Republican Guard with ease – then left Baghdad to the anarchy of the AK-47-toting marauding gangs.
In Libya the US, UK and France launched extremely effective airstrikes and removed the monster that was “Colonel” Gaddafi (a monster the Blair government was happy to shake the hand of by the way – but we’ll leave that for another day). But again, with absolutely no plan for “the day after” Tripoli quickly became terrifyingly lawless with ethnic warlords battling for supremacy – a failed state.
And in Afghanistan, well, we all know what happened in Afghanistan.
(All these pieces of adventurism by the way were a massive boost for Islamic terrorism, specifically ISIS.)
Despite our (or rather Blair’s) new appetite for so-called humanitarian interventionism we left all those places in a worse state than we found them.
As Shakespeare says in Julius Caesar: “It is better to have a tyrant than no ruler at all.”
And uncomfortable a claim as that might be, it is still probably a universal truth.
But the West must be smart.
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Already Reza Pahlavi, exiled son of the deposed Shah, who has proclaimed himself “Reza Shah II” is on manoeuvres and jockeying to return in triumph.
This must not be allowed to happen.
US talk shows are idiotically presenting the self-styled “Crown Prince” as a viable alternative. This is a man who wants a monarchy restored and wants to work with the Islamic Republican Guard or IRGC. The IRGC is the arm of the Iranian state repression mechanism which has shot, arrested, tortured, raped and brutalised opponents of the regime at home and abroad for four decades.
The repeated people’s uprisings from the Iranian streets – shamefully unsupported by the West – are routinely accompanied by the chant: “No to the Shah! No to the mullahs!”
The people of Iran are crying out for democracy – they are in no mood for another self-appointed king.
Fortunately a well-organised body dedicated to a free, democratic and secular Iran already exists and the UK, US and Europe should engage with it immediately – offering unqualified support.
It is called the National Council for the Resistance (NCRI) in Iran and almost certainly offers the best hope for Iran’s absolutely vital lightning-speed political and cultural transition.
Leaders like Keir Starmer, currently pee-ing in the wind at the laughably pointless G7 (actually G6 summit) should be recalled immediately precisely to focus on this issue.
(Even Trump got it – and walked out of the G7 without a second thought, to turn his attention to Tehran.)
I was at an NCRI conference in Paris a few weeks ago with Sharron Davies and Theresa Villiers.
Their leader (and would-be interim leader of Iran for six months, pending full and free democratic elections) is Maryam Rajavi.
Yes, a woman.
If you dig back far enough you will, of course, find murkiness (this is Iran we are talking about for goodness sakes – and indeed the US claimed it was a foreign terrorist organisation until 2012) but in the last 15 years the NCRI has not only repeatedly uncovered Iran’s nuclear research facilities to the wider world but emerged as probably the country’s best shot at democracy.
It curates a network of “resistance units” dedicated to peaceful protest at street level – despite the real risk of imprisonment and torture.
International support is now widespread. The US House of Representatives backed the NCRI’s proposal for a democratic, secular and non-nuclear Republic of Iran and our own Lord Alton has said: “Madam Rajavi would end Tehran’s funding of Hamas, Hezbollah and other militant groups and is committed to peaceful coexistence, relations with all countries and respect for the United Nations charter.”
Indeed Rajavi’s 11-point plan for Iran reads glowingly like a new, Middle Eastern, Declaration of Independence.
Here it is in full so you can make up your own mind:
- Rejection of velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule). Affirmation of the people’s sovereignty in a republic founded on universal suffrage and pluralism;
- Freedom of speech, freedom of political parties, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press and the internet;
- Dissolution and disbanding of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the terrorist Qods Force, plainclothes groups, the unpopular Bassij, the Ministry of Intelligence, Council of the Cultural Revolution, and all suppressive patrols and institutions in cities, villages, schools, universities, offices, and factories;
- Commitment to individual and social freedoms and rights in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Humans Rights. Disbanding all agencies in charge of censorship and inquisition. Seeking justice for massacred political prisoners, prohibition of torture, and the abolishment of the death penalty;
- Separation of religion and state, and freedom of religions and faiths;
- Complete gender equality in the realms of political, social, cultural, and economic rights and equal participation of women in political leadership. Abolishment of any form of discrimination; the right to choose one’s own clothing freely; the right to freely marry and divorce; and to obtain education and employment. Prohibition of all forms of exploitation against women under any pretext;
- An independent judiciary and legal system consistent with international standards based on the presumption of innocence, the right to defense counsel, the right of appeal, and the right to be tried in a public court. Full independence of judges. Abolishment of the mullahs’ Sharia law and dissolution of Islamic Revolutionary Courts;
- Autonomy for and removal of double injustices against Iranian nationalities and ethnicities consistent with the NCRI’s plan for the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan;
- Justice and equal opportunities in the realms of employment and entrepreneurship for all of the people of Iran in a free market economy. Restoration of the rights of blue-collar workers, farmers, nurses, white-collar workers, teachers, and retirees;
- Protection and rehabilitation of the environment, which has been massacred under the rule of the mullahs; and
- A non-nuclear Iran that is also devoid of weapons of mass destruction. Peace, co-existence, and international and regional cooperation.
I usually have a Spidey sense which starts tingling when I am being fed BS. I have to tell you, it isn’t tingling right now.