Will the U.S. soon launch a devastating strike to take out Iran’s shaken fundamentalist Muslim regime? Or just wait for enraged Iranians to topple the teetering mullahs? Either way, Iran’s regime looks finished. So what should we do? As a start, roll back President Jimmy Carter’s tragic Iran mistakes of nearly 50 years ago that still win Democratic support today.

The radical regime in Tehran must go. Iranians have tired of inflation, corruption, and oppression by their own government. The mullahs recognize no rights, and routinely imprison, torture, and kill their own citizens, as extensively documented.

It’s a rogue government, one that also supplies money, weapons, training, and personnel to Islamic terrorist groups and renegade governments. Since seizing power in 1979, it’s been responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.

And yet, it’s important to understand how we ended up with such a lethal enemy, and to remember one thing clearly: Iran and Israel were the U.S.’s two most important strategic allies in the Mideast in 1976.

“When Jimmy Carter left the presidency merely four years later, Iran was no longer our ally,” author Paul Kengor wrote. “It had become our worst enemy in the Middle East. The country that in January 1977 had viewed America as its best friend and benefactor now burned U.S. flags in the streets and denounced us as ‘the Great Satan.’ “

It’s since become the Democrats’ largest, and longest-running, foreign-policy disaster, after the Vietnam War.

Carter gullibly believed Ayatollah Khomeini and his diplomats, who said Iran wanted to have good relations with the U.S. But relations soured after Tehran allowed a fanatical mob to capture 52 American diplomats and support staff and to hold them hostage for 444 days, an epic humiliation for the U.S.

Things got worse after “Operation Eagle Claw,” Carter’s 1980 attempt to rescue the hostages. It failed when three of eight helicopters sent in to ferry the hostages out broke down in the desert. The operation was aborted. That failure, along with soaring interest rates and double-digit inflation, cost Carter the 1980 election.

The U.S. has paid the price ever since for Democrat Carter’s appeasement, which led to more appeasement by President Bill Clinton, who let Iran slide for its role in the 1996 attack on the U.S. barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and President Barack Obama, who largely ignored massive protests during Iran’s 2009 “Green Movement,” which brought average Iranians into the street to protest a corrupt presidential election.

And it was seen again during the Joe Biden presidency in a 2022 uprising during which, according to The Free Press, “government forces arrested and imprisoned some 20,000 protesters, killed nearly 600, and hanged several others.” Nary a peep.

Yet, today, there are clear signs Iran’s government knows its time is up.

After an eruption of mass demonstrations around the country began Dec. 28, the ruling mullahs became spooked. This time, unlike the past, the U.S. actively backs the rebellion.

Iran now knows this U.S. president will act decisively, unlike Carter and the others.

Donald Trump acquired this credibility on June 25, with the bombing of Iran’s nuclear weapons sites in “Operation Midnight Hammer.” That attack took out Iran’s main nuclear research facility and dealt a deadly blow to its quest for a nuclear weapon to terrorize the Mideast and Europe.

Trump showed Iran’s tyrants were vulnerable and that his threats weren’t hollow. Now they are making assassination threats against Trump, including this one on Iranian TV showing file footage from the Butler, Pa., assassination attempt: “This time the bullet won’t miss.”

No one knows what Trump has planned. Possibilities include everything from another devastating military strike, to simply letting the Iranians themselves settle their score on the ground with the Islamo-fascist regime.

But either way, it’s clear Iran’s corrupt, illegitimate leaders are on the run.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Iranian leaders are sending literally billions of dollars of their looted wealth out of the country, apparently readying to flee to whatever government will have them. They know their end is near.

Meanwhile, President Trump has loudly urged the revolution on, telling “Iranian patriots” that help “is on its way,” and urging them to “keep protesting” and “take over your institutions” because the regime’s murderers will soon pay a “big price.”

We certainly hope so. But assuming the revolt succeeds, what next?

First, Iranians must choose their own destiny. Not us. Not the United Nations. Not Russia. Not the EU. Not Arab nations. Iranians.

Second, people need to recognize that fewer than half of all Iranians are Islamic. According to a landmark 2020 survey, “only 32% of Iranians identified as Shia Muslims, 5% as Sunni Muslims, and 3% as Sufi Muslims. In contrast, around 47% identified as ‘nones,’ atheists, agnostics, or secular individuals. Another 8% identified as spiritual but not religious, while small minorities followed Christianity, Zoroastrianism, or other faiths.”

So Islam has no claim to rule, if it ever did. The mullahs are done. No more tolerating murder, terrorism, wars, corruption, and destabilization of neighbors in the name of “diplomacy.” Nor should we respect Iran’s current government, which claims ludicrously that 99% of its people are Muslim. Iran’s Persian culture is thousands of years older than Islam, and deserves respect.

Third, the U.S. can’t choose Iran’s future. When asked recently about Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s deposed former Shah, possibly serving as a leader, Trump only said: “He seems very nice, but I don’t know … whether or not his ‌country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me.”

Yes. We can’t force choices on 90 million Iranians.

One thing we can do: End the disastrous mistakes that Carter, Obama and Biden made in appeasing, supporting, and even rewarding Iran’s terrorist regime with billions of dollars in support. Hopefully, within days, we’ll see the Democrats’ 50-year reign of error and incompetence in Iran finally come to an end.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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