Wait, wrong way...

In the current conflict that will likely determine the fate of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is more vital than ever to be transparent and speak plainly, without complacency or evasion: many senior political officials, experts, academics and journalists are misreading the true stakes of this existential crisis shaking the entire region and reverberating, in turn, on the international market.

The gravest mistake now would be to fight the wrong battle. The adversary to be confronted today is by no means President Donald Trump, regardless of any grievances one might hold against him regarding his behavior, arrogant attitude, verbal outbursts or relations with leaders who are supposed to be his allies. Is it necessary to remind ourselves, to illustrate this point, that these same shortcomings were criticized in Winston Churchill during World War II, yet General de Gaulle, locked in full conflict with the Nazi regime, did not focus his entire struggle on his quarrels and disagreements with the former British Prime Minister?

If many political officials and experts are today misreading the Iranian conflict, it is essentially because they refuse to accept that the true stakes of this conflict are not limited solely to freedom of maritime passage through the Strait of Hormuz and safeguarding the global economy. The issue is not about halting escalation and military operations to favor 'the diplomatic path' and pursuit of a 'negotiated solution acceptable to both sides'.

Such objectives would have been conceivable and understandable if we were dealing with factions, even rival ones, following a course of conduct in line with customary rational norms. This is far from being the case with the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, more precisely its backbone, the Revolutionary Guards. Advocates of the 'diplomatic path' and critics of the muscular approach implemented by President Trump obscure, through self-centered calculation or misplaced naivety, what should be the true stake of this conflict: the eradication of the Iranian regime, or at least its hardline belligerent wing, represented by the Pasdaran.

This is by no means a mere matter of power or the imposition of some balance of force, but a fundamentally existential stake whose ideological dimension would be dangerous to neglectdivine…It is high time to acknowledge an undeniable reality, confirmed by tangible facts: the United States, the European Union, the Western world in general, the Gulf states, the countries of the Levant have faced for decades the scourge and aggression of a theocratic, dictatorial and bloodthirsty Iranian power, which believes itself invested with a messianic mission and has set for itself a course of conduct based on an obscurantist and retrograde vision of the world, of society, of life and death, of the place of Man and Woman in their environment.

This Khomeynist project for society (for it must be called by its name) is built on practices, customs, a way of life, social rules from another age. It has been carried forward with great effort by the radical wing of the Tehran regime since Khomeini came to power in 1979. From the outset, the Pasdaran adopted the slogan of exporting the Islamic Revolution and put it into practice by implanting vassal militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Gaza, and by pursuing an expansionist and destabilizing policy in numerous areas of the region, particularly in several Gulf countries.

To preserve their power and the Khomeinist regime as a whole, the 'guardians of the temple' – the Pasdaran – stop at nothing and are in no way bound by any humanitarian considerations. The latest example: mass executions of teenagers, young people in their prime, university students, senior officials, accused of participating in peaceful demonstrations (600 executions since the beginning of the year and over 2,100 in 2025, without the 'intellectuals' and 'right-thinking' people showing much concern).

Can we forget that during the latest mass demonstrations in most Iranian regions, the regime's repressive apparatus massacred over 40,000 civilians in just two days, January 8-9, 2026! Need we recall the 2009 uprising (the 'Green Movement') triggered by Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election and savagely suppressed by the Pasdaran, or the 'Bloody November' of 2019 which left no fewer than 300 dead, and especially the broad 'Woman, Life, Freedom' protest in 2022, sparked by the death in custody of the young Kurdish-origin girl Mahsa Amini and which was suppressed with live fire, thousands of arrests, and countless cases of torture… But the pinnacle of atrocity was reached during the war against Iraq, when the regime sent hundreds of children to be killed in minefields to clear the way for regular forces!

Despite this grim past, which one could dwell on at length by detailing the repressions and crimes of the regime, many Western countries and Arab states continue to advocate for 'dialogue' and a 'diplomatic' solution to end the current armed conflict and find a way out of the Iranian nuclear program and uranium enrichment issue. These countries pretend in this regard to forget that it has been more than… twenty years (!),since the early 2000s, that these nuclear and uranium enrichment matters have been discussed, negotiated, debated, examined, scrutinized, renegotiated multiple times over the years, extensively and repeatedly. More than twenty years of fruitless discussions that allowed the mullah regime to buy time to continually develop its nuclear program and accelerate uranium enrichment, reaching a threshold of 60 percent and beyond.

President Trump recently put his finger on the wound by rightly pointing out what other leaders stubbornly refuse to acknowledge: 'For 47 years (since 1979), the Iranian regime has been stringing us along; it makes us wait, kills our men with roadside bombs, brutally suppresses popular uprisings and just recently massacred 42,000 innocent, defenseless protesters' (…).

Faced with this grim reality and this repugnant situation, what is there left to negotiate with such a murderous regime, driven by a cult of martyrdom, by a retrograde divine ideology that has no consideration for human beings, for the individual as an absolute value? Would it have been conceivable, by comparison, to advocate for 'dialogue' with Hitler in 1944-1945 to achieve a 'diplomatic solution' with the Nazi regime?