I’m debating the alleged comedian Dave Smith tonight on the question “Should the U.S. support Israel in taking out Iran’s leadership?” ZeroHedge is cosponsoring the debate, with Matt Gaetz moderating it on his OAN show, and so I’ve just learned over there that I’m an “Iran hawk” who “supports Israel’s efforts to assassinate Khamenei,” and who has “written well over 20 books bashing Islam.”
Well, actually, ZeroHedge, I’ve never written a single book “bashing” Islam, but I have written 31 books, including many that tell the truth about the religion’s beliefs and practices, and that elucidate why the world has such a persistent and growing problem with Islamic jihad terrorism. But as I’m being painted as something I’m not in so many ways in connection with this debate, it’s important to set the record straight. (ZeroHedge commenters are also assuming I am Jewish — after all, who else would argue that regime change in Iran could be positive? In reality, I am not.)
Dave Smith, in his endless discussion with Douglas Murray on Joe Rogan’s podcast and elsewhere, has insisted that for the U.S. to try to neutralize Iran’s nuclear threat today, and above all to try to topple the Islamic regime that has been in power there since 1979, would be repeating the same mistakes that George W. Bush made when he went into Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein. As the world discovered soon enough, Saddam Hussein was, for all his brutality and tyranny, a stabilizing force in Iraq and the entire region; the removal of his regime created an opportunity for the jihadists in the region and led straight to the formation of the Islamic State, one of the most blood-drunk jihad groups on the contemporary scene.
And so the argument goes that if the Islamic regime falls now, it will lead to similar chaos, as well as the likely emergence of forces that will make Khamenei and his henchmen look as fearsome as the local slow-pitch softball team.
As a consistent opponent of our misguided misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan from the beginning, I’m here to tell you that Iran in 2025 is not Iraq in 2003. Back in March 2003, I argued in an article in the late, lamented Insight magazine that President Bush did not have a realistic plan for bringing democracy to the Middle East, and that insisting that the nations of the Middle East choose between Western-style democracy or the terror state would do more harm than good.”
In that article, I wrote that “certainly he will find proponents of democracy in Iraq and elsewhere. But the primary opponents of these democrats will not be terrorists, but those who hold that no government has any legitimacy unless it obeys the Shariah. Even if they lose in the short run, they will not disappear as long as there are people who take the Koran and Islamic tradition seriously. And that spells trouble for any genuine democracy.” I hate to say “I told you so,” but I don’t hate it all that much.
And now, the idea that the Islamic regime in Iran could well be in its last days is giving a lot of people who style themselves “America First” the vapors. But Iran in 2025 is pretty much the polar opposite of Iraq in 2003. Saddam’s Iraq did not enforce Sharia; it was a secular state, which rankled many Muslim hardliners within the country. They were itching for a chance to impose Sharia and govern the country, or as much of it as they could wrench under their control, as a proper Islamic state, and when that chance came courtesy of the Americans, they grabbed it. The Islamic State, which in its heyday controlled a territory in Iraq and Syria larger than Britain, applied Islamic law with scrupulous exactitude and remorseless efficiency. The end result, as everyone knows, was far worse than what had been seen under Saddam.
Related: Iran Has Been at War With the U.S. Since 1979
In Iran today, on the other hand, people have been suffering under the rule of Islamic law for 46 years now. They’re so sick of it that a recent survey revealed the shocking fact that fewer than 40 percent of Iranians now identify as Muslim at all. The country was Western-oriented and secular before 1979, and many people still fondly recall those days, and have told their children about them. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed shah, has declared his willingness to lead a caretaker government until Iranians choose the government they want.
None of these conditions were present in Iraq or Afghanistan twenty years ago. They make easy analogies and doomsday predictions risky at best. No one knows how all this is going to work out, but it is clear that if the Islamic regime in Iran is toppled, the first people who will be celebrating will be the Iranian people themselves. It is not being a “war hawk” or a “neocon” to hope that those long-suffering people will indeed soon have a reason to celebrate.
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