“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!” Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, BBC Broadcast  September 27, 1938

 ” You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”

— Attributed to Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, 5 October 1938 

“Policymakers have been searching for the elusive “moderates” in the Iranian regime for decades. They’re like unicorns: much discussed but never discovered. We need to be clear-eyed about what this regime is all about: the destruction of everything we, as Americans, hold dear.” Mike Pompeo, Former Director of CIA & Secretary of State, on X, April 17, 2026. 

As the conflict in Iran drags on, perhaps longer than some of its supporters had initially expected, it appears that understanding of what the founding rationale for its conduct has become increasingly diffuse. Therefore, it is imperative to underscore what the stakes in this conflict are, and why nothing less than the total capitulation of the theocrats in Tehran will suffice as an acceptable outcome.

A daunting historical comparison

Arguably, the most persuasive approach to driving this home is to document the chilling parallels between the scourge of despotism in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and that in Iran in recent decades, since the 1977 Islamist Revolution.

Comparisons between the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930-40s and the........

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