Vice President JD Vance is leading efforts to persuade the president to appease Tehran rather than confront it. America has been down that disastrous road before.
At the moment, it’s far from clear whether the growing anti-government protests inside Iran will succeed in toppling the Islamist tyrants that have ruled since 1979. But the toll of dead protesters continues to climb, and there’s no sign of the unrest stopping. That makes it even harder for the rest of the world to continue to ignore the Iranian people’s suffering as they have done for most of the last 47 years of theocratic misrule there.
Understanding the part that the international community, in particular, the United States, has played in bolstering the Islamist regime in the past is key to understanding what is happening now. What Washington does or doesn’t do in this crisis is crucial to how this drama will end. If the government led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei survives this latest effort to effect change and goes on oppressing the Iranian people, it will be in no small measure because the West helps it. If instead, President Donald Trump pushes for change there by both military and diplomatic measures, it could make all the difference in helping ensure that the head theocrat winds up fleeing for his life to exile in Russia.
Ignoring the experts
