For more than four decades the world has been told to treat the rulers of Iran as a normal government. They are not.

The regime that occupies Iran is not simply authoritarian. It is a theocratic kleptocracy built on terror, ideological expansion, and systematic crimes against humanity. Yet even now — when the regime stands at one of the weakest points in its history — global institutions and political elites are still trying to rehabilitate it.

The world should understand the danger of that mistake.

For years I warned that the Islamic Republic does not behave like a conventional state. It behaves like a revolutionary project with a global mission. Its own leaders have said so repeatedly. From the earliest days after the 1979 Islamic occupation of Iran, the regime’s founders openly declared their intention to export the revolution across borders.

That doctrine has never changed.

From Lebanon to Iraq, from Syria to Yemen, the regime built proxy armies, ideological militias, and intelligence networks designed to destabilize sovereign states. These networks were not accidental side projects. They were part of a deliberate strategy: create parallel military structures loyal not to the countries in which they operate, but to Tehran.

The model is simple and ruthless: “Army, People, Resistance.”

First infiltrate society through religious and cultural institutions. Then create militia forces modeled on the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards. Finally embed these militias inside the state structure until the country itself becomes an extension of Tehran’s power.

This blueprint has been replicated across the Middle East and beyond.

But the regime’s ambitions never stopped at the region.

For years Iranian diplomats and intelligence operatives used embassies and cultural programs as platforms for influence operations abroad. In Canada, we saw clear evidence of this strategy. Statements from officials connected to the Iranian embassy openly encouraged loyalists to occupy key positions in Western institutions while resisting integration into their host societies.

Such infiltration was not theoretical. It was documented by intelligence experts and prosecutors investigating Iranian terror networks across the globe.

This is precisely why Canada’s decision in 2012 to close the embassy of the Islamic Republic in Ottawa was correct. The embassy did not represent the Iranian people. It represented a regime engaged in subversion, espionage, and ideological warfare.

Today the regime is not only destabilizing the Middle East. It has also become a direct partner in one of the most dangerous wars in Europe since the Second World War.

The Islamic Republic has been actively assisting Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, providing drones, military technology, and operational cooperation that has been used to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. Iranian-made drones have become a key weapon in Russia’s campaign against Ukraine.

This alliance between Tehran and Moscow should surprise no one.

Both regimes see themselves as challengers to the democratic world order.

But the hypocrisy becomes even more disturbing when we look at the role of China.

Beijing has strengthened its cooperation with the Islamic Republic while expanding surveillance technologies that help authoritarian regimes track dissidents. Iranian activists have long warned that Chinese digital infrastructure and monitoring systems have assisted the regime in identifying, tracking, and suppressing opponents inside Iran and abroad.

And yet, while this authoritarian axis grows stronger, Western governments continue to send mixed signals.

In Canada, the government speaks publicly about defending democracy while simultaneously pursuing security and cooperation arrangements with Beijing.

What a staggering contradiction.

A government that claims to stand for human rights should not be deepening security ties with a power that helps authoritarian regimes monitor and silence their opponents.

This hypocrisy weakens the credibility of the democratic world and emboldens dictatorships.

Yet the brutality of the regime is not limited to foreign operations. Its most savage violence has always been directed at the Iranian people themselves.

Over the past years, tens of thousands of Iranian protesters — many estimates place the number above 40,000 — have been shot and brutally killed in the streets across Iran’s cities. The majority of those killed were young. Many were under thirty. They were students, workers, young women, and ordinary citizens who dared to demand freedom from the theocratic dictatorship that has suffocated their country since 1979.

Thousands more simply disappeared.

Families still search for sons and daughters who never came home. Many were taken into detention centers run by the regime’s security apparatus, where torture and secret executions are routine. The Iran regime did not even attempt to hide its brutality. Senior officials appeared on state television urging security forces, militias, and Basij thugs to shoot anyone who opposes the regime.

This was not a breakdown of order. It was policy.

And yet while young Iranians were being gunned down in their own streets, something extraordinary — and shameful — was happening abroad.

Certain Western NGOs, activist networks, and ideological organizations rushed not to defend the Iranian people, but to soften the image of the regime itself.

They called for “engagement.”

They warned against “destabilizing Iran.”

Some even framed the regime as a “victim” of geopolitical pressure.

Where were these mourners when more than 40,000 innocent Iranians were slaughtered in the streets in just two days of nationwide protests?

Where were the candlelight vigils in Western cities then?

Where were the sermons of grief in the same mosques that now mourn the regime’s ruler?

When young Iranians — many barely in their twenties — were shot for demanding freedom, the world heard mostly silence. Families buried their children quietly under the watch of regime agents who warned them not to speak. Mothers searched prisons and morgues for sons and daughters who had vanished.

Yet today some of the same voices shed tears for Ali Khamenei, the regime’s long-time Supreme Leader (Garbage).

Think about that for a moment.

An inhumane who presided over decades of repression, executions, and mass killings of his own citizens is mourned in parts of the democratic world.

In some Western cities, mosques and ideological networks aligned with the regime openly lament his death.

For many Iranians, this spectacle is not only painful. It is humiliating.

It shows how deeply the regime’s propaganda networks and ideological allies have penetrated Western discourse.

At the same time, another dangerous development is unfolding.

Millions of Iranians have made their voices heard in recent years. Inside Iran and across the diaspora they have shown clearly that they want the end of the Islamic Republic. Many have openly expressed support for Israel’s confrontation with the regime and have called on President Trump and Western leaders to hear the voices of the Iranian people.

They have also rallied around the idea of a national unity under the leadership of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to guide Iran through a transitional period after the fall of the Islamic Republic.

But some actors are trying to exploit this historic moment.

The Shiite Islamist MEK–NCRI (Mojahedin Khalgh) cult network, long rejected by most Iranians, is attempting to insert itself into the future of Iran. At the same time, certain Kurdish, Arab Ahvazi, and other separatist factions are being encouraged by outside powers to push ethnic fragmentation.

Regional actors are also playing their own games.

Elements linked to the Talabani network in Iraq, as well as interests aligned with the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments, see an opportunity to weaken Iran’s territorial integrity.

The result is a dangerous scenario: a fragmented Iran descending into civil war, not through the will of its people but through manipulation by outside powers and opportunistic factions.

Some circles in Europe appear willing to entertain these schemes under the banner of “pluralism” or “minority rights.” In reality, they risk opening the door to chaos.

The Iranian people are fighting to free their country from a tyrannical regime. They are not fighting to see their country dismantled.

Those who attempt to engineer civil conflict in Iran — whether ideological cults, separatist militias, or foreign governments — are not helping the Iranian people. They are gambling with the future of an ancient nation.

Today, even as the regime faces unprecedented internal pressure, the same pattern continues.

Instead of confronting its crimes, powerful global institutions and policy circles continue to normalize the Islamic Republic as if it were a legitimate actor in the international system.

Propping up a collapsing ideological dictatorship in Iran will not produce stability. It will prolong suffering and deepen the eventual crisis.

The Iranian people deserve freedom from the theocratic kleptocracy that has occupied their country since 1979.

The world must stop pretending that the Islamic Republic represents Iran.

It never did.

And it never will.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)