We’re on the brink of World War III – and only one country can stop it

Israel must be allowed to attack Iran’s evil regime, and the West must support it. The regime is the original Islamist extremist state; it is the fount of almost all trouble in the Middle East, the foremost exporter of terrorism, an ally of Russia, a friend of China, a cancer eating away at humanity’s common destiny.

The regime has oppressed its wonderful, peace-loving people for 45 years, often in the most savage ways, pitilessly persecuting women and minorities. The West, wracked by self-doubt, ignorance, selfishness and cowardice, has been willfully blind to their pleas for deliverance. We have instead attempted to appease the Mullahs, to relativise or normalise their genocidal machinations, to sign deals with them, to protect the oil market, to endlessly buy time.

It hasn’t worked, and Judgement Day beckons. It is time for Israel to save the West from itself, to conduct the dirty, dangerous work that far larger, richer and more powerful countries are too debilitated to pursue themselves.

This wouldn’t be the first time: Israel did the world a historic favour when it bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and destroyed the Al-Kibar planned nuclear plant in Syria in 2007; a similar move targeting Iran’s many such facilities is no longer beyond the realm of the possible.

If Israel doesn’t have the equipment to do so itself, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris must send in their own bunker-busting bombs. I’m not calling for any kind of land invasion, or even for the UK to get directly involved. But we need to be honest: regime change in Iran should be a top foreign policy priority for every democracy in the world. Why has Britain still not proscribed the IRGC?

Tuesday’s strike was a disastrous gamble by Iran. It failed to kill any Israelis or to meaningfully damage civilian or military infrastructure. Iran has already used up a tenth of its 3,000 ballistic missile stockpile (as estimated by a US general last year) for nothing: it has exposed its fundamental military and technological inadequacy, it didn’t establish deterrence, it forced a drastic hardening of America’s position, it stopped Europe’s useful idiots from calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon and, for the first time, created a critical opening for Israel to deliver an overwhelming military blow.

Had Iran done nothing, it would have been publicly humiliated as a result of the assassination of so many of its allies, but avoided placing itself directly in the line of fire. By acting so impetuously, so egregiously and yet so uselessly, it has fatally weakened its own position. It has exposed itself as a nasty, fanatical bully, albeit one fragile enough to be taken down. It, for once, misread America. It misjudged Israel’s appetite for risk and pain. No government in Jerusalem can tolerate repeated, escalatory missile attacks from a millenarian state explicitly dedicated to its destruction; and even the most delusional of State Department apparatchiks can now see that a nuclear Iran would lead us into World War III.

All the Western sucking up to Iran, starting with the nuclear deal of 2015, backed by David Cameron, has backfired appallingly. Joe Biden gifted the Mullahs some $6 billion last year to release five American hostages, allowing them to access previously frozen funds. He signed another 120-day sanctions waiver in July that allows Iran to sell electricity to Iraq. The US has also permitted Iran to greatly increase its output of crude oil, with its August production the highest in six years, and to sell much of it to China. The sanctions imposed by Donald Trump are now a largely meaningless joke.

The obsessive military appeasement has been equally perverse. Biden told Israel to “take the win” in April, when Iran unleashed 170 drones, some 30 cruise missiles, and over 120 ballistic missiles in its first direct attack against the Jewish state. There were no casualties or meaningful injuries, and many missiles and drones were shot down by an international coalition, which is what Biden referred to as a win. Israel’s counter-offensive was largely symbolic, hitting a radar system at an Iranian nuclear plant.

The Americans were wrong: the regime, which only understands brute strength, drew the wrong lesson. It was emboldened, assuming that the old red lines no longer existed, that the US would always restrain the Israelis, and that the regime could now engage in blatant acts of war with quasi-impunity, paving the way for this week’s larger, more sophisticated attack.

But the Mullahs grievously miscalculated this time, partly because the empire they spent so long constructing is disintegrating and they are no longer thinking rationally.

Yes, they have scored a massive propaganda victory against Israel since the atrocities of October 7, falsely portraying terrorists as victims, lying relentlessly, rehashing Soviet era blood libels, spreading conspiracy theories on social media and helping to foment anti-Jewish hate in Britain, Europe and America. But when it comes to the reality on the ground, as opposed to that in the mind of the Western chattering classes, Iran’s axis of evil has suffered a series of calamitous reversals.

Hamas is a shadow of its former self, almost unable to launch rockets into Israel, and reeling from the death of 17-18,000 of its terrorist fighters. Hezbollah has lost Hassan Nasrallah, its psychopathic leader, its entire management structure and myriad second and third tier commanders; a large chunk of its 150,000-strong missile stash has been destroyed.

It is still able to inflict losses on the heroic Israeli troops now in Lebanon, but it can no longer serve as Iran’s all-powerful shield. The danger is that Tehran’s increasingly panicked regime will compound its errors by seeking to rush to full nuclear status. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Israel, whose very purpose is to ensure its own survival, and that of the Jewish people, has not just the right but a duty to strike back in devastating fashion against the Iranian regime. It deserves the West’s full, unstinting support.