It’s time to get tough on Iran – and help the people overthrow their despotic leaders

The threat of widespread war in the Middle East was greatly intensified by Iran’s decision to launch a massive barrage of missiles into Israel, exceeding the scale of its prior attack in April, which was the first of its kind. The attack has predictably drawn threats of strong retaliation from Tel Aviv.

The UK, the US, the European Union and its member states should have made a more concerted effort to stop the ayatollahs’ belligerence. Their relative inaction is contributing to the crisis that the world is facing today – one that should have been anticipated by anyone with a modicum of experience in dealing with the Iranian regime. For 45 years, its actions have demonstrated that in the absence of serious consequences on the international stage, its default reaction to regional and domestic challenges is to escalate further.

This latest escalation was especially predictable. That is why the governments of the UK and its allies need to adopt entirely new policies toward Iran – policies that include designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation, cutting off the ayatollahs’ financial lifeline by expanding sanctions on the regime and recognising the Iranian people’s rights to pursue regime change.

While Israel continues to eliminate the leadership and degrade the capabilities of Iran-backed terrorist groups that comprise the so-called Axis of Resistance, the Iranian regime is still struggling to keep a lid on popular unrest which reached a crescendo in late 2022, following the killing of Mahsa Amini by morality police.

The anti-government sentiment that was unleashed by that uprising has hardly diminished in the ensuing two years, despite the killing of 750 protesters, the arrest of 30,000 others – and an intensifying climate of repression across the Islamic Republic. It has been widely reported that the country is still in the midst of a surge of executions connected to this repression, with nearly 500 recorded so far this year. Yet, far from intimidating the public into silence, this has only sparked a recurring trend of protests against the death penalty as a whole, accompanied by weekly hunger strikes by Iranian prisoners, especially political prisoners.

Fortunately, these protests have attracted meaningful expressions of solidarity throughout the world, with nine former recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize recently signing an open letter in support of the campaign. That same campaign has been bolstered by the primary coalition working towards the overthrow of the Iranian regime, namely the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which previously played a major role in the 2022 uprising and a half dozen other large-scale protests dating back to the end of 2017.

Last week, the NCRI’s president-elect Maryam Rajavi appeared in a hearing at the Council of Europe to repeat her organisation’s advocacy, underscore the ongoing impact of the latest uprising and highlight the connections between these issues and the prospective international response to Iran’s role in regional conflicts. Criticising Western policy as too soft in its dealings with the Iranian regime, Rajavi emphasised that the role of the Iranian people and the organised resistance has been a missing factor in discussions of these policies, practically since the regime’s inception.

The NCRI has long maintained that where Islamic terrorism and Middle Eastern conflict are concerned, Tehran will remain the head of the snake for as long as the clerical regime keeps hold of power. Rajavi, meanwhile, has presented the international community with a vision for an alternative to that regime, in the form of a 10-point plan that outlines a transition to democratic governance backed up by separation of religion from the state and safeguards on the rights of women and minorities.

Iranians’ collective aspiration for regime change has been chronically overlooked by Western policymakers who are prone to the false assumptions that the mullahs’ hold on power is secure and that no other entity is prepared to step into the role that would be left vacant by their ouster. The 2022 uprising went a long way toward dismantling this myth, and the regime’s current conduct in the region illustrates the depth of its insecurity and desperation. More than that, Tuesday’s missile attack reveals the urgency of adopting policies which promote the severance of the snake’s head.

Western powers need not intervene directly to advance that goal. In fact, their own military involvement will only become inevitable if Tehran’s latest actions remain unchallenged, or if the mullahs’ regime retains its hold on power long enough to continue escalating tensions while pursuing its own stated goal of “eradicating” Israel.

When Tehran is no longer able to effectively suppress the democratic spirit of its people, they and their organised resistance will take their rightful place as the West’s most important strategic ally. And, with consistent moral and political support from the West in their fight against a newly weakened regime, those people will quickly succeed in establishing a new Iranian republic that is committed to peaceful relations with its neighbours and the West.

Bob Blackman is chair of the 1922 Committee and MP for Harrow East