As the late, great Paul Harvey used to say, it's not one world.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Middle East, specifically, Iran. This nation isn't content to export terror, even though it is the world's foremost exporter of Islamic terrorism. They aren't content to sell weapons and provide training to any group of Islamic goblins who want to commit mass murder. Now, Iran has turned to practicing the tactics of terror on their own people, who have in recent weeks risen up against the regime.
Terror is their business, and they are practiced. A lengthy account in the Sunday Times has given us a horrible look into Iran, right now, since the regime shut down the internet and all went dark to the outside world.
Here's an example of the utter heartlessness of the regime's operatives:
‘You have ten minutes to cry,” came the officer’s curt command to the couple as he revealed the corpse of their twentysomething daughter, gunned down in the historic streets of Isfahan.
After searching morgues and hospitals for days when she didn’t come home from the demonstrations, they paid 700 million tomans (£3,700) in so-called “bullet money” demanded by the security forces and were driven five hours to another town where her body had been thrown into an old grave.
Yet in one respect they were fortunate. A complete communications and internet shutdown for the past ten days has left tens of thousands of Iranians with no idea if their loved ones are alive or dead as the regime has tried to stifle protests with what one doctor has called “genocide under cover of digital darkness”.
It's not enough that this girl, protesting against one of the most brutal regimes on the planet, was killed. She was young, unarmed, and protesting for freedom - at least, for more freedom than the Islamic regime affords young women. It's not enough that her body was thrown in an old grave. It's not enough that her parents had the awful task of identifying her remains. But the regime's henchmen made them pay for the privilege, euphemistically dubbing the fee "bullet money."
That's inhuman.
Since the internet, even Elon Musk's Starlink, has been mostly disabled, the regime has reportedly been free to do what it does best - terrorize and murder. They are dealing with the protestors by escalation, and the bad thing is that it may just work, fueling another decade, or two, or three, of brutal Islamic fundamentalist rule in a country that should be free and prosperous.
The Ayatollah is emboldened enough that he's openly acknowledging the deaths.
Yesterday, for the first time, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, admitted that “several thousands” have been killed since the protests began three weeks ago.
In a broadcast to the nation on state TV, he blamed protesters themselves, describing them as “foot-soldiers of the United States” and claiming that “rioters were armed with live ammunition that was imported from abroad”.
But The Sunday Times has obtained a new report from doctors on the ground, which says at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured, most of them in two days of utter slaughter in the most brutal crackdown by the clerical regime in its 47-year existence.
We had high hope that this revolution, this uprising, this revolt against a brutal theocracy, would work - this time. But it seems that the regime is out-brutalizing the revolutionaries.
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Iranian physicians who have treated some of the victims are managing to get word out.
“This is a whole new level of brutality,” said Professor Amir Parasta, an Iranian-German eye surgeon and medical director of Munich MED, which treated many of those injured during the Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 and helped create a network of doctors across Iran that produced the report. “[In 2022] they were using rubber bullets and pellet guns taking out eyes. This time they are using military-grade weapons and what we are seeing are gunshot and shrapnel wounds in the head, neck and chest.
“I’ve spoken to dozens of doctors on the ground and they are really shocked and crying,” he added. “These are surgeons who have seen war.”
That's what this is. War. War waged on the unarmed, who have only their voices and hand-lettered signs with which to resist. These aren't spoiled American trust-fund kids or paid protestors, shouting various slogans that all amount to "Orange Man Bad!" Those useful idiots know that, unless they do something truly stupid, they will go home safe at night. These young Iranians are protesting against the unspeakable, and giving their lives to try to bring down this old, Bronze-Age order.
Here, in the Western world, there's little we can do other than a massive military strike, an attempt to decapitate the regime. And that wouldn't be the easiest of missions; at this juncture it's a safe bet that the Ayatollah and his advisors and cadre aren't sleeping in the same location on any two nights in a row. They won't be easy to find. We can destroy a lot of military infrastructure, but it's also a safe bet that the people they have putting down the protestors are sleeping with their rifles - and against a bunch of unarmed youths, rifles are all they need.
Iran is at a crossroads. Unless something dramatic happens - and President Trump has sent an aircraft carrier task group to the area - then it's beginning to look like the Islamic Republic will have survived another attempt at rebellions.
