James Morrow opinion: Trump is right, the West should push for an Iranian surrender, here’s why

The entire reason for being of the present Iranian regime has been to terrorise the West and eliminate Israel, writes James Morrow.

The only thing surprising about Donald Trump’s call for an “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” by the hardline Islamist regime that governs Iran is that it took so long for someone to say it.

And the biggest danger is that, because the call came from Trump, this perfectly reasonable demand will be dismissed by those who say, well, that’s just extreme, it’s all too hard, let’s try to de-escalate the conflict and give the mullahs a chance to mullah another day.

This would be a terrible mistake.

Let’s not forget the entire purpose and reason for being of the present Iranian regime, which emerged from a violent revolution in 1979, has been to terrorise the West and aim for the elimination of Israel.

In the course of that revolution, Islamist Iranian students supporting the revolution stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 66 Americans hostage for 444 days – itself an act of war if there ever was one. Many of those students would go on to take leadership positions in the new regime.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s addressing the crowd during his annual Nowruz speech, in Tehran.Picture: AFP

While there are some doe-eyed romantics on the left who will see this as a feature and not a bug, for the rest of us who share a common plane of reality, the facts are somewhat different.

During that time the captives were abused in all sorts of ways, while the weak, feckless and ineffectual then-president Jimmy Carter was left looking powerless (leading to the election of Ronald Reagan and the release of the hostages).

In the 45 or so years since, the Iranian regime became what the State Department called the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism” with a long butcher’s bill of assassinations, hijackings, and support for terrorist militias to its name.

The regime essentially created the Hezbollah militia, which before it became involved in the conflict with Israel was a key player in the Lebanese civil war, making that awful conflict incalculably worse.

One of 60 US hostages blindfolded and with his hands bound, being displayed to the crowd outside the US Embassy in Tehran by Iranian hostage takers outside of the US Embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1979

And of course once relatively liberal Tehran, where women went around in Western dress, became a place where women could be arrested, beaten, and even killed for not wearing their headscarf correctly.

This regime – loathed by large segments of the Iranian people – is not the good guy.

And this would be the case even if they were not actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

Regime change, quite naturally, has a bad name after the disasters that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq whose dictator may have been a brutal thug but who also had nothing to do with 9/11.

President Donald Trump talks to reporters on board Air Force One after leaving early from the G7 Leaders' Summit. Picture: AFP

But at the same time if those who are worried about threats to the post-war liberal democratic order really mean what they say, and aren’t just using such phrases as a high-falutin’ way to slam Trump, they should want to see change in Tehran.

Iran is, after all, part of the hardened anti-Western block that includes Russia, China, and North Korea that emerged during the Biden administration.

What comes next remains a huge question: Would the exiled royals of Iran come back?

Either way, the end of the Islamist regime would mark the end of a truly awful time in the history of a proud and ancient country that deserves better than being used as a platform for violent Islamists.

Originally published as James Morrow opinion: Trump is right, the West should push for an Iranian surrender, here’s why