In mid-September last year, a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested by Iran's morality police for wearing her hijab improperly. She was reportedly severely beaten and died after being in police custody for three days. Word of this travesty spread, triggering a nationwide uprising that may represent the most significant challenge to Iran's Islamist regime in its history.
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The ongoing uprising in Iran represents the chance of a lifetime. The chance to rid the world of one of the biggest supporters of terrorism, the chance to rid the Middle East of a tyrannical regime bent on wreaking havoc in the region, and a chance to free the Iranian people from tyranny. The world cannot afford to let this opportunity slip by.
Just stop and imagine, for a moment, a world without the Islamic Republic of Iran. For starters, the fall of the Islamist regime in Iran would be a death blow to many terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran's Islamist regime sponsors well-known terrorist groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. Without financial and military support from Iran, these groups would likely not be able to survive.
The end of the Islamic Republic of Iran would also likely mean an end to Iran's military build-up, and most importantly, its pursuit of nuclear weapons. No more the Islamic Republic bent on wiping Israel off the face of the earth; no more Islamist Iran to threaten the petroleum resources of the Middle East that feed the world's economy; we can at least expect to pay less at the pump if the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran falls.
But the biggest beneficiaries of the collapse of the Islamic Republic will be the Iranian people. No longer will they need to bend to the will of the mullahs. No longer will they have to worry about being punished for what they think, say, or write. No longer will Iranian women be the victims of blatant discrimination at the hands of religious fanatics. For the first time in more than forty years, the Iranian people will have the chance to remake their country into a prosperous democracy.
The end of the Islamic Republic of Iran may also give ethnic and religious minorities in the country a better tomorrow. Mahsa Amini was an ethnic Kurd. Her people, along with other minority groups such as the Azeris, Baluchis, and Khuzestan Arabs have long suffered from the oppressive, discriminatory policies of Iran's Islamist regime. They all deserve the chance to exercise their right to self-determination.
Still, the strength of the current uprising in Iran by no means guarantees the fall of the country's Islamist regime. In fact, if the world does not do more to support the brave people of Iran, their revolution will fail. For starters, the West must end all efforts to resurrect the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. The return of this deal would put billions of dollars in the form of sanctions relief in the hands of Iran's dictators – money they could use to stay afloat, continue their nuclear program, accelerate their arms buildup and subsidize their terrorist friends.
The world needs to completely isolate Iran. But this isolation must go beyond expelling or recalling diplomats. The world needs to stop doing business with the Islamic Republic. This includes buying oil from Islamist tyrants. Yes, this will most definitely lead to a significant rise in oil prices, which of course will mean paying more at the pump. It will most definitely cause economic pain for billions of people already chaffing under global inflation, but it will all be worth it if depriving Iran's mullahs of their oil revenue leads to their regime's downfall. A few months' worth of high oil prices is a small price to pay for what could be years of much lower oil prices if the Islamist regime falls. In other words, it's short-term pain for long-term gain.
Besides, the world will suffer a great deal more if Iran's Islamist regime crushes the people's uprising. Indeed, if Iran's mullahs survive the current uprising, they will just become more emboldened to continue what they've been doing up until this point: Pursuing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism, threatening their neighbors, and spreading their fascist Islamist ideology worldwide.
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