The timing of the open war that Israel has just launched to defang the Iranian jihadi regime may have been a surprise to many, but the conflagration has been a long time coming. The Jewish people learned a terrible lesson in the Holocaust: When someone tells you they want to kill you, believe them.
It’s a lesson I’ve had to take to heart, thanks to the jihadi regime in Iran, the cancer that has poisoned the Middle East and cast a dark shadow over my native Iraq. In 2017, I had the honor to represent my country as Miss Iraq Universe. When I met my fellow contestant from Israel, Adar Gandelsman, the two of us took a selfie together in the name of peace.
Immediately, the Miss Iraq organization demanded that I remove the post, and I began to receive death threats that forced me and my family to flee Iraq. A few years later, pro-Iranian forces in Iraq changed the law to make any of its citizens who contact an Israeli, even for peace, liable for the death penalty.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Iranian regime has been saying it wants to destroy the Jewish state and the United States, and its deeds match its rhetoric. May this Israeli operation pave the way for the destruction of the ayatollahs’ tyranny itself.
In 2001, former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani favorably contemplated nuclear warfare with Israel, saying Israel’s small geographic size meant that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.”
In 2005, Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a conference called the “World Without Zionism,” in which he openly called for Israel’s obliteration, saying: “As the imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said, Israel must be wiped off the map.”
In 2018, Iranian Army Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi said Iranian forces were working to “annihilate” Israel and predicted they would succeed within 25 years.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Iran’s horrific threats were executed as a monstrous reality. Over the last 600 days of conflict, Israel has dealt powerful blows against Hamas and Hezbollah, taking out the senior leadership of both terrorist groups — a key factor in the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran’s closest ally, in a historic reversal for Tehran.
By this month, Israel could wait no longer. Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, with which, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, the ayatollahs would have armed their allied terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, an existential threat also to the U.S.
The Iranian theocracy has always referred to the U.S. as “the Great Satan,” with Israel as “the Little Satan,” and ritualistically organized chants of “Death to America” as well as “Death to Israel.”
Israel’s air campaign, code-named “Operation Rising Lion,” which has both biblical and classical Persian allusions, eliminated at least 20 senior commanders in one blow, alongside multiple nuclear scientists. With air defense nodes also crippled, the ayatollahs’ ability to defend their regime and project power is now in tatters.
Those of us from the region sense that Iran’s weakness now leaves an opening for real change. As an Iraqi woman, I cannot overstate how Iran’s crushing of the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement through arbitrary arrest, rape, torture, and execution of women has infuriated citizens across the area of Iranian influence. Iranian exiles and opposition figures are now seizing on the moment to call for regime collapse.
Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed shah, urged Iran’s military and security forces to “detach yourselves from this corrupt and incompetent leadership” and “join the people” in overthrowing the ayatollahs, framing Israeli action as a catalyst for street protests and mass strikes. Netanyahu echoed this sentiment, declaring that the operation could usher in “regime change” in Tehran.
Israel’s campaign has been laser-focused on the thugs who brutalize their own people: the regime and military elements. Iran’s asymmetric response has been to target Israeli civilians with ballistic missiles. Since Friday, Iran has launched some 350 ballistic missiles at Israel, and 24 people have been killed in the strikes. Laboratories and other buildings of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the work of which saves lives and advances human knowledge, were set aflame.
This violence is more cruelty than strategy. Iran will not be able to maintain this volume of rocket fire for long, especially as Israel has targeted Iran’s rocket launch sites. Meanwhile, Israel has taken out many of Iran’s top commanders and shown the regime itself to be a paper tiger.
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Now is the opportunity, after 46 years of oppression, for the Iranian people to shake off their chains. The jihadi regime’s longtime persecution of women and minority groups has always shamed and horrified the majority of Iran’s people. Now, Iran’s not-so-silent majority is taking note of the ayatollahs’ weakness and wondering if their time has come.
The Iranian people have begun to name the once unthinkable: a free Iran. Supporting the end of the regime that has its people chant “Death to America” while seeking nuclear weapons should be America’s policy, too.
Sarah Idan is a secular Muslim who represented Iraq in the 2017 Miss Universe pageant. She lives in Los Angeles, California.