What Good Comes Of Allowing The Iranian 'Mullahocracy' To Survive?
For 47 years, the theocratic regime of the Iranian mullahs has brought nothing but misery, oppression, bloodshed, instability, and murder to its own people, the broader region, and the world at large. Allowing this group of Islamist zealots, along with their fanatical IRGC enforcers and the thuggish Basiji militia, to remain in power serves no legitimate purpose. It is a grotesque indulgence of tyranny that perpetrates deception, funds violence, and gifts the world with death.
The real question is not what good their survival brings—because it brings none—but why the world continues to entertain the delusion that these deceitful despots deserve any recognition among civilized nations.
The mullahs have established themselves as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, channeling billions into proxies that create death and chaos. Through the IRGC’s Quds Force, they have armed, trained, and financed groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias throughout Iraq and Syria.
Hezbollah alone receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually, enabling it to carry out attacks on Israeli civilians and the U.S. and Israeli forces, among other regional victims. The Houthis, bolstered by Iranian missiles and drones, have threatened international shipping in the Red Sea. The atrocities committed by Hamas, including the massacre on October 7, 2023, bear the fingerprints of Tehran.
This is not “resistance”—it is calculated barbarism, with Iranian blood money staining battlefields from Beirut to Sanaa. The IRGC, serving as ideological enforcers, executes this strategy with ruthless efficiency, spreading the regime’s toxic influence while the mullahs preach from their safe haven mosques in pseudo-piety.
Domestically, the mullahs and their berserker henchmen have brutally oppressed the proud Persian people since seizing power in 1979. The regime is characterized by savage oppression, including public executions, systematic torture, and the crushing of dissent with genocidal glee. The 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, sparked by the morality police’s killing of Mahsa Amini, revealed their brutality as security forces killed hundreds and arrested thousands. Executions have surged—nearly 1,000 in 2024 and over 1,000 in 2025—with dissidents, minorities, and protesters being hanged on fabricated charges such as “enmity against God.” Women are flogged for “improper” hijab, while ethnic and religious minorities face discrimination and death sentences. Basiji thugs violently beat protesters into submission. Prisons like Evin serve as torture chambers. And those who dare to protest for freedom are slaughtered in the streets by the tens of thousands.
This is not governance; it is a reign of non-indigenous medieval terror against a population that despises the theocracy. The Persian people yearn for freedom, not the suffocating weight of Islamist oppression.
And frankly, the mullahs’ word is worthless. Iran has a long history of failing to honor peace agreements and treaties. Take the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, for example—it was violated within a few years through illegal uranium enrichment, the unlawful limiting of inspections at nuclear facilities, and covert weapons development. United Nations resolutions demanding the cessation of enrichment and arms transfers have always been ignored, as Iran continues to supply weapons to groups like the Houthis and Hezbollah in violation of embargoes. Agreements with Gulf neighbors and Western powers have also been broken without consequence. This pattern of deceit is evident in their signing of documents in bad faith while pursuing nuclear capabilities and regional dominance. The IRGC’s shadow economy and the Quds Force thrive on this duplicity.
Currently, these tormenters are intensifying their tyranny through acts of piracy. They threaten and extort vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial international waterway, demanding “tolls” or outright seizing tankers. This is a clear example of maritime terrorism, disrupting global energy flows. And the revenues they extract do not support hospitals or schools for the suffering Iranian population. Instead, they fund nuclear ambitions, ballistic missile development, and proxy terror networks. The mullahs and their sandal-licking hardline supporters enrich themselves and their enforcers while ordinary Persians face poverty, inflation, and blackouts. And the IRGC’s naval enforcers and Basiji ideologues carry out this extortion with enthusiasm.
What possible benefit accrues to anyone from tolerating this? To the Persian Iranian people: none. They have protested repeatedly—2009 Green Movement, 2017-2019 economic revolts, 2022-2023 uprisings, and beyond—demanding regime change. They are not the problem; they are its primary victims. To the region: zero. Sunni Gulf states live under constant threat from Iranian proxies. To the world: catastrophic. Decades of terrorism, nuclear proliferation risks, and disrupted trade. No rational actor benefits. There is no rational or reasonable benefit to the mullahs’ survival.
The only entities craving the theocracy’s survival are the mullahs themselves, their disingenuous, sycophantic clerics, the IRGC’s corrupt elite, and the Basiji fanatics who derive power, wealth, and purpose from it. Not the Iranian people. Not their Arab neighbors. Not the West or the global community scarred by their proxies’ atrocities. Entertaining negotiations with these frauds is a suicidal farce. The era of false equivalence—treating Islamist tyrants as equals in diplomacy—must end. And as I made clear in a recent article, that end must come at the hands of the other Gulf Islamic states.
It is time for either unconditional surrender or the eradication of this regime from the face of the Earth, along with its terrorist apparatus. Half-measures empower their evil. The mullahs’ theocracy has overstayed its welcome by 47 blood-soaked years. The Persian people deserve liberation. The region deserves peace. The world deserves an end to this bloodthirsty menace.
Anything less is complicity in ongoing evil.
