IRANIAN TYRANTS ON A CLIFF EDGE

The tyrants who have repressed the people of Iran for almost five decades are teetering on the edge of a cliff. The Iranian currency, the rial, is in freefall, reaching 570,000 to the US dollar; an 8% drop in less than a week. Iranians will soon need a wheelbarrow full of currency to buy a loaf of bread. Inflation at 34.5% is spiralling. Unemployment is out of control, with youth unemployment particularly severe in a nation where around 40% of the 91 million population is aged under 35. Despite its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran is also facing an energy crisis, causing even greater rising discontent. Widespread power cuts, gas shortages and city shutdowns have disrupted daily life, crippled industry and fuelled public anger. Government offices are operating at reduced hours, schools and colleges are operating online, highways and shopping malls have been plunged into darkness, and industrial plants have seen their electricity supplies disrupted, bringing production and economic activity to a standstill. Iran’s energy infrastructure is outdated and inefficient, with significant transmission losses and a heavy reliance on gas-fired power plants that cannot meet rising demand. Unauthorised cryptocurrency mining, seen as a way to circumvent sanctions, has consumed massive amounts of electricity, further straining the national grid.

But the energy crisis is simply the tip of the iceberg. The mullahs have always prioritized regime survival over the common public good. There is no likelihood of any improvements under the current theocratic dictatorship. The overthrow of the mullahs and their replacement with a democratic, secular government would see dramatic progress in infrastructure modernisation, sustainable energy policies and equitable resource distribution. Such a government would also tackle the systemic problems caused by the degradation of workers’ rights and gender inequality.

The mullahs, as always, blame the economic collapse on external factors such as the ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions campaign imposed by President Trump in 2018, when he unilaterally withdrew America from Barack Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal. They also blame the sporadic missile and drone attacks that have rained down on Iran since their massive ballistic missile barrage attack on Israel in October. What the mullahs never admit to is decades of economic incompetence, venal corruption and mammoth expenditure on regional warmongering, international terrorism and their clandestine nuclear program.

Questions are now being asked about the $50 billion and thousands of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel squandered in Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow following the rapid fall of his brutal regime. The Assad dictatorship fell so quickly that Tehran had to scramble to evacuate its officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) extra-territorial Quds Force. Questions are also being asked about the billions wasted on funding Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both heavily defeated by Israel. A day of reckoning beckons for the theocratic regime. There is a bubbling cauldron of resentment and frustration at the decades of wastage and ineptitude, reinforced by a populace fed up with oppression, misogyny, barbarism and tyranny. Protests have erupted in cities such as Tehran and Isfahan, with merchants protesting the power cuts affecting their businesses and residents chanting slogans demanding regime change. The next nationwide uprising will be terminal for the mullahs, and they are squirming in trepidation at looming regime change, cracking down viciously on every sign of dissent and deploying a frenzy of executions in a bid to terrify the population into submission.

The regime is at its weakest point since the 1979 revolution that brought them to power. Their Shi’ite axis of resistance in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon has crumbled. Even Vladimir Putin was unable to save their mutual friend and ally – Bashar al-Assad – from overthrow. Now they face the daunting prospect of another four years with Donald Trump in charge in America. He will hold the mullahs to account. He has appointed Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, former Commander of Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) and former National Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, as his envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Addressing a conference in Paris on 11 January organized by the main Iranian democratic opposition movement – the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), General Kellogg said: “For the United States, a policy of maximum pressure must be reinstated, and it must be reinstated with the help of the rest of the globe, and that includes standing with the Iranian people and their aspirations for democracy.”

Turmoil within the ruling factions of the regime is now pervasive. The fall of the Assad dictatorship has caused an earthquake in Iran, with competing cliques blaming each other. State-run newspapers have even voiced rumours of potential prosecutions against former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom they blame for Assad’s downfall. In its December 14^th   issue, the Ebtakar newspaper noted parallels between the Iranian regime’s situation and Bashar al-Assad’s, warning of a repetition of his fate: “Assad’s fall resulted from internal collapse. Corrupt structures, incompetence, and mismanagement among officials could lead to similar outcomes.”

The state-run Setareh Sobh newspaper acknowledged that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was “decayed and corrupt.” But then, controversially, it pointed out that the Iranian regime and its three branches of power have, for years, sustained “decay and corruption” at the cost of the Iranian people’s lives and environment. The article stated: “The decayed and corrupt Syrian regime collapsed with just a gust of wind or a storm. Iran was an ally of Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad.” The newspaper then highlighted the consequences of sustaining “decay and corruption” within Iran: “Today, Iran’s routes to Lebanon are blocked. The regional situation has turned against Iran.”

The internal turbulence caused by the fall of Assad and the collapsing Iranian economy are the final nails in the mullahs’ coffin. But the Iranian people have lost their fear of the tyrannical regime. Resistance Units are burgeoning across Iran, often led by courageous women chanting “Women, resistance, freedom”. For forty-five years the Iranian regime has sponsored violent abduction, hostage taking, kidnapping, blackmail, piracy, assassination, warmongering and oppression. As a gangster regime, the theocratic dictatorship has no equal. Western powers must realise that the time for appeasement has ended. The EU must follow America and Canada’s example and blacklist the IRGC. We must close Iran’s embassies, which they use as terrorist hubs and send their diplomats back to Tehran. It is time for the civilized world to back the Iranian people and their right to overthrow this despotic and repressive regime.