That Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic of Iran are on the wrong side of history should be obvious. While Khamenei claims popular legitimacy, the Iranian people increasingly treat the theocratic regime with disdain. Women flout his dress code. Iranians rally to the cause of athletes, artists, and entrepreneurs whom the Islamic Republic imprisons or executes. Khamenei points to voter participation as a sign of popular buy-in, but many Iranians coerced to cast ballots under threat of harm or job loss instead spoil their ballots as an act of silent protest.
Dissent and diversity are deadly in the Islamic Republic. The regime regularly hangs gays and targets the religious and sectarian minorities who flee the country in droves. Religious police wage war on women. Students face decades in prison or worse if they criticize Khamenei or question fundamentals of the regime.
Far from the frequent claims by regime apologists that Iran has not launched a war in more than two centuries, Iranian aggression has been both frequent and deadly, costing hundreds of thousands of lives in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon.
The free world should speak with moral clarity: 45 years of Iranian terrorism and destruction is enough. Western silence and even obsequiousness, however, encourages him to believe the West is weak and a soft target for Iran to expand its revolution.
It is in this context that Khamenei views U.S. college campuses as fertile ground for hate and extremism.
Iran is not alone among protest instigators, but the Iranian regime is a major component of what now appears to be one of the largest influence operations to promote terror and attack religious liberty in American history. The Middle East Forum has been investigating the funding and operational planning and it is a rogues gallery with Students for Justice in Palestine making common cause with myriad groups on the revolutionary left.
Iran has played a major role to create the crisis that has transformed the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary prerogative into a domestic insurgency in the heart of America’s academy. Their money, weapons and training have lit the Middle East on fire, but their malign influence extends to universities, civil society, and even our government.
It is time to recognize that security at home requires freedom and liberty in Iran. This is not a call for direct intervention against the Islamic Republic, but it is a call to support the right of the Iranian people to form a government that respects their rights and no longer uses terrorism to destabilize the Middle East and the world.
Hearing these words from world leaders would infuse Iranians with hope and energy. Natan Sharansky, a Cold War dissident who was a prisoner in the Soviet Gulag told how the words of President Ronald Reagan helped hasten its end:
“It was the great brilliant moment when we learned that Ronald Reagan had proclaimed the Soviet Union an Evil Empire before the entire world...It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it. For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us.”
Instead of sending them planeloads of cash loaded on unmarked aircraft in the dead of night. It is time for the White House to stand in broad daylight and proclaim, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has reached its expiration date and we wish its people well in their efforts to build a government that will be better for themselves and the rest of the world.”
