Think about how bad things would have to be for ordinary Iranians to plead for Donald Trump to carry out military intervention against their own country (though in reality, against their hostage takers, the Islamic Republic).

Iranian women, children, men, flora and fauna are dying at the hands of the Iranian regime. Killing is what they do

Iran, the world’s oldest country, has been ruled by a theocratic authoritarian terrorist regime for the past 47 years. Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the ayatollahs took over, a mafia of clerical families took the Iranian people hostage. In the ensuing half decade, the country with the fourth largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves has seen its currency plummet from 70:1 against the US Dollar to 1,630,000:1, with virtually no economic growth, high unemployment and a rate of inflation currently at 40 per cent.

The corruption and economic mismanagement is not even the most salient issue. It is the degradation and deprivation of all civil, human and women’s rights by the Islamic Republic against their “own” people. Under the Shah, before the Islamic Revolution, Iran was prospering both socially, particularly for women, and economically, with economic growth averaging over 10 per cent between 1960 and 1979. One of the first moves of the Islamic Republic when it took power was to force the hijab upon women and deprive them of equal rights, such as to divorce, child custody and inheritance.

One of the central pillars upon which the Islamic Republic is built is the violent repression of the Iranian people primarily through its military and militia security forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij. These are the forces, alongside fighters from the imported Islamist terrorist proxies from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon, that used military-grade weaponry to murder a reported 40,000 people – though the real figure is likely to be significantly higher – in the space of 48 hours in last month’s bloody massacre of innocent Iranian protestors. Protesters are still dying today as hangings, disappearances (particularly of women), sexual torture, organ harvesting and hysterectomies of rape victims are still ongoing.

The Islamic Republic does not only deliver death through murder but also through its incompetence and indifference. In 2024, 59,000 Iranians died as a result of air pollution, equivalent to seven people every hour. Iran consistently has one of the highest road fatality rates globally. During the pandemic after Khamenei, the despotic supreme leader of the country, banned the import of Covid-19 vaccines from the US and UK, causing 146,000 preventable deaths. Thousands of people in Iran die every year because of the systemic corruption that causes shortage of essential medicine. Decades of aggressive dam construction, river diversion projects and groundwater over-extraction has reduced to dry basins once-thriving ecosystems and lakes, devastating local communities and agriculture, leading to droughts, failed crops, starvation and poverty. Iran’s rich biodiversity is facing an acute extinction crisis driven by mismanagement and corruption.

Iranian women, children, men, flora and fauna are dying at the hands of the Iranian regime. Killing is what they do. Killing is what they justify, and what they believe is their divine duty to carry out. There is no Western power that would be responsible for the deaths of more Iranians than their own government and its proxies.

Iranians do not want high streets or residential areas bombed. They are asking for targeted strikes

Iranians know the risks of military intervention. This is a country with the second largest population of STEM graduates per capita, and the majority of whom – in contrast to the West – are women. This is an enlightened, educated, logical and liberal people. Unlike almost everyone in Europe, every adult Iranian has lived through war directly themselves or indirectly through their parents following the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988, the longest war of the 20th century. Iranians understand the implications.

Iranians do not want regular high streets or residential areas bombed. They are asking for targeted strikes against the central commanders of the regime and the IRGC using precision-guided munitions, such as the US Army’s Excalibur, that can hit targets to the nearest four metres.

Those less versed in Middle Eastern history and with little or no direct relations to Iranians could be forgiven for fearing this would be another Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan, but I assure you Iran is a different case.

Every young person I speak to who lives in Iran – including my girlfriend, an engineer, who personally witnessed bullets being fired during last month’s protests – is leaving or wants to leave Iran, if they haven’t left already. Those in Iran who have the educational background and financial means to leave live “comfortable” lives, chilling during the day, and partying at night, but consciously choose to escape that comfort in order to restore dignity into their lives and live freely. Why would someone leave their family and their country, in this case, a cornucopia with some of the best weather in the world for the loneliness, the cold and the financial insecurity that awaits them in Northern Europe and Canada, two of the most common destinations for Iranians?

The Islamic Republic is a mafia, an enormous racketeering business, fuelled by envy and hate. The Islamic Republic has a deep hatred, resentment and jealousy towards the beauty of Persian history and culture, and has tried to erase Persian history and culture, including by trying to demolish ancient Persian Unesco sites like Persepolis. The Islamic Republic is both un-Iranian and anti-Iranian at its very core.

Iranians inside Iran are hoping and waiting. They are asking when the US will strike – in the same way one might imagine a young child would ask one parent when their other, recently deceased parent, would return home. Right now, in homes across Iran, there are children who last month lost a parent to the regime and its imported Arab terrorist militia, and others who lost a brother or sister, as the victims include infants, toddlers and school-age children whose siblings will never return home.

Military action in Iran would not be war, it would be a rescue mission.