The people of Iran do not deserve this bombing or this regime
I don’t know if Iran was on the point of producing a nuclear weapon. I don’t know if the American and Israeli bombing raids have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme. I don’t know if regime change is likely or what the alternative would look like.
What I do know is that, in the 6,000-year history of Persia/Iran, the one serious attempt at liberalism – the revolution of 1905-1911 with its short-lived experiment with a form of democracy – failed because of internal conflict, while America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh which sabotaged a genuine attempt at creating a democratic nation.
What I do know is that, time and time again, in the last two decades, it has been alleged – usually by Israel – that Iran was on the verge of obtaining an atomic bomb presenting an existential threat to the Jewish nation. Over the last two decades, I’ve blogged many times about Iran and, as long ago as 2007, I wrote a piece about the possibility of an imminent raid on Iran by Israel. The nuclear assessment was wrong time and time again; is it really correct now?
What I do know is that most people in Iran do not support the present Islamic regime and that they are welcoming of foreigners and keen to establish better relations with the West. To experience their hospitality, their food, their poetry, their architecture is to appreciate that the Iranians deserve so much better. I know because I travelled around Iran in 2009.