For the theocratic regime in Iran, the dominoes are tumbling. The historic re-election of Donald Trump as America’s 47th president will have sent shivers down the spine of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ailing Supreme Leader. During his previous term in office Trump cracked down hard on the theocratic regime. He unilaterally withdrew America from President Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal with the Iranians. He ramped up sanctions with his ‘Maximum Pressure’ campaign, and he ordered the elimination of Iran’s warmongering mastermind, Major General Qassem Soleimani, one of the most powerful terrorist figures in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Trump made it clear that he would not follow the UN and EU appeasement policy when it came to dealing with Iran. News that the FBI had arrested three people charged with plotting to assassinate Donald Trump during his election campaign, under direct instructions from the Iranian regime’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), will have further enraged the president-elect.
The sudden and unexpected collapse of the sadistic dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has marked the fall of a significant domino for the Iranian regime.The mullahs’ ‘axis of resistance’ is crumbling before our eyes. The Iranian regime’s foreign minister Araghchi was in Damascus only days before the Syrian rebels took control of the city and the entire country, clearly oblivious to the looming threat to his closest friend and ally. He and his so-called ‘moderate’ president Masoud Pezeshkian are absurdly saying that the people of Syria should now have the right to determine their own future free from foreign interference. The hypocrisy and shameless duplicity of this claim is breathtaking.
The mullahs have provided in excess of $50 billion to Assad in the past decade, to prop up his brutal autocracy. Money that the impoverished Iranian population badly needed. They sent more than 70,000 troops from the IRGC, together with other proxy militias, to murder Syrian citizens. Indeed, at least 40 IRGC Brigadier Generals died in their Syrian campaign. The Iranian regime persuaded Vladimir Putin to use the Russian Air Force to bomb Syrian cities into dust, killing tens of thousands. The mullahs commanded their Hezbollah proxies from Lebanon to rally to Assad’s murderous aid, saying that if it ever lost Syria, it would lose Tehran. The mullahs wanted Syria to become their 35th province. This is the same regime that says Syria should be free of foreign interference!
The Assad regime was more important to the mullahs than even Hamas or Hezbollah, their other Middle East proxies. In addition to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, every Iranian president, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Ahmadinejad, Rouhani, Raisi, and every foreign minister met Assad. Pezeshkian would certainly have intended to meet him, but Assad's departure has denied him that dubious pleasure. Assad’s fall means the regime has lost a key pillar of its strategic depth. The decapitation of Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah left Bashar al-Assad with no one to turn to for help. His other major ally, Vladimir Putin, was bogged down in his illegal and costly war in Ukraine. The Syrian rebels saw their chance and struck. The Syrian domino may prove to be the first of many, which hopefully may topple the theocratic fascist regime in Tehran.
For years, the common factor in each of the ongoing wars across the Middle East has been the fundamentalist religious tyranny ruling Iran. The head of the snake of international terrorism and warmongering lies in Tehran. Indeed, few regimes in the world have exemplified the malignancy of the Iranian theocracy, which today stands as a formidable adversary to peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond. The escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas was not merely the latest tragic byproduct of long standing grievances, it was a direct consequence of Iran’s unwavering support for terrorism and its insidious role as the head of the snake of war in the region.
The enduring failure of the West’s policy of appeasement toward Iran necessitates a profound and strategic reappraisal. The West, particularly Europe, has for far too long pursued a course of engagement with Tehran, rooted in the misguided belief that dialogue and concessions could moderate the mullahs’ menacing behavior. This approach has not only failed to achieve its objectives, it has also emboldened the regime. Structurally resistant to genuine reform, Tehran has exploited this leniency to entrench its power, expand its influence across the Middle East, accelerate its nuclear weapons program, and suppress its own people with impunity. Typically, the fall of Assad has sparked a renewed flurry of appeasement from Western leaders. There is an emerging narrative that the destruction of Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad’s departure has so weakened the Iranian regime that the West must now negotiate with Pezeshkian to abandon his country’s nuclear ambitions and restore peace and harmony to the Middle East. How utterly foolish.
The Iranian regime's intransigence is not a passing obstinacy but a fundamental trait. The only path to meaningful and lasting change lies in the complete overthrow of their decrepit theocracy, an outcome that can only be achieved by the Iranian people themselves, not by military conflict. The international community must stand united in addressing these challenges, backing the Iranian people and ensuring that peace, stability, and human rights prevail.
As the dominoes tumble, the fascist dictatorship in Tehran is certainly at its weakest point. But this is not a time to negotiate with tyrants. This is the time to dispatch them to the dustbin of history. One by one its proxy allies have been effectively destroyed. Even Vladimir Putin can no longer provide Russian assistance. The Iranian economy is in freefall and 85 million Iranians are starving and in a rebellious mood. They have seen how quickly a neighboring monster can be removed by rebellion. The burgeoning Resistance Units of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran/Mujahedin-e Kalq (PMOI/MEK), the main democratic opposition movement, are ready to strike. They look to the West for moral support.