Forty-seven years of chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel” have consequences. Mass executions of innocent Iranians who simply wish for basic freedoms have consequences. Funding major terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, which undermines the Lebanese government, and supporting the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza have consequences. Pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into building hundreds of kilometers of tunnels in Gaza and backing October 7th has consequences. Providing ballistic missiles to a devastated country like Yemen, while Yemenis are experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century, has consequences. By now, the point should be clear.

It is time for action. We should ask ourselves whether it is acceptable to dig tunnels beneath a dense civilian population and kidnap both the living and the dead. And why should their sponsors be allowed to get away with enriching uranium while openly threatening to destroy Israel and kill every last breathing Jew?

As a side note, supporting Assad’s regime left Ayatollah with at least 500,000 deaths on his hands. That is on top of the tens of thousands of Iranians executed during brutal crackdowns over the past 47 years. So how exactly is confronting such a regime illegitimate? And who else would do it?

Pouring billions of dollars into Western media and academia has resulted in tremendous confusion about the forces involved. The media’s coverage of the conflict since October 7th makes one wonder what public opinion might have looked like if we had been living in the 1940s and the media had focused primarily on wounded Germans and bombed German cities. Would people have opposed regime change in Germany? If it had been the former Soviet Union in the 1950s, I wonder whether protesters might have marched through the streets of New York and London waving flags with Stalin’s face on them, as some do today with the Ayatollah. And in the late 1980s, would they have opposed regime change in Eastern Europe as well?

Those who oppose military action against such regimes today are often influenced by a deeply subjective perception shaped by personal grievances and by media narratives that blur the moral reality. Many protests appear driven more by moral signaling and a profound volume of rage than by a genuine search for peace. This sheds light on why many of these movements fall silent when ceasefires actually take place, such as the pro-Palestine movement, which barely reacted after the previous ceasefire. Peace just doesn’t serve their agenda.

It is therefore not surprising that the Iranian regime often targets Western audiences by staging press conferences at schools while shutting down the internet. This tactic simultaneously delegitimizes Israel while concealing the regime’s own atrocities. It is quite absurd because in Iran, children cannot speak freely and girls are punished for showing their hair. Iran also backs the Houthis, who have legalized child marriage and slavery. Yet Western audiences are often presented with the image of a regime supposedly concerned about schools.

This strategy closely resembles Hamas and Hezbollah’s tactics of using public infrastructure to shield military bases, creating legitimate military targets while also generating powerful images of victimhood that shape Western discourse. The reality, however, is far more complex than the simplistic “victim–victimizer” narrative.

The misunderstanding of terrorism deepened even further when international organizations began giving such actors platforms to manipulate liberal rhetoric. “National days serve as important moments for reflection on a country’s journey and its contribution to the international community,” wrote the UN Secretary-General in a congratulatory message to the Islamic Republic of Iran shortly after the regime had violently suppressed mass protests and killed thousands of its own citizens. What exactly is their contribution?

It is increasingly clear that the broader objective is not peace but ideological expansion and the creation of a Palestinian state—not through negotiation or a two-state solution, but through weapons and financial backing to pursue their jihad. This, under the umbrella of “death to America and death to Israel,” has devastated their own societies as well as others in the region and enriched Hamas leaders (which the media dismisses), making it even harder to see them as victims.

Why would anyone expect the Islamist theocracy of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps to suddenly prioritize soft diplomatic talks? Is it jawbreaking that those willing to send suicide bombers around the world and kidnap babies, as well as Holocaust survivors show little concern for the well-being of their own people? Ideology comes first here, and it comes above all. A radical theocracy that willingly sacrifices its own people while openly calling for the destruction of others may simply operate according to fundamentally different values. Such regimes do not respond to polite and soft diplomatic warnings like those of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Kiers Starmer and the likes. Europeans and Western leaders must begin taking seriously those who openly praise terrorist attacks. Henceforth, combining their brutality with Western naivety, forgiveness, and an overly accommodating posture over the years has brought us to a crossroad where someone inevitably feels compelled to act. And if not now, then when?

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)