The mullahs are learning – again – that one can beat a crowd, but not indefinitely beat a people. A state founded on permanent emergency eventually discovers that emergency is its only language, and coercion cannot persuade forever. The protests convulsing Iran, met with familiar brutality, are not just street politics. They are a referendum on clerical rule, the terror apparatus sustaining it, and the international indulgence keeping it alive.

Britain’s complacency in the face of Tehran’s terror isn’t naïve; it’s strategic self-harm

Britain’s response to foreign despotism is tepid: ‘urge restraint,’ ‘call for calm,’ ‘monitor closely.’ As Tehran accelerates punishments and enforcers hunt the defiant, Westminster persists in therapeutic tones, treating the Islamic Republic like an unruly participant in mediation rather than a theocratic security state. This poverty of language presumes the regime can be coaxed into decency, as if the Basij and Revolutionary Guard await a strongly-worded letter before shooting.

The Islamic Republic is not a misunderstanding; it is a project. When such ideocracies are threatened at home, they export their crisis. This is what our political class files under ‘complications,’ avoiding acknowledgment of Tehran’s ideological reproduction. It builds networks,........

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