Iranians need our support

The protests in Iran are taking on the characteristics of a revolution, or at least so must we all hope. The spark was the death of a 22-year old woman, Mahsa Amini, who was accused of breaching the country’s hijab rules. Amini was detained by the so-called “morality police”. Three days later, she was dead.

Since then, Iranians have confronted officials, sprayed graffiti, mounted strikes, refused to wear the hijab and, every night in Tehran, taken to their windows to yell, “Death to the dictator!” There have been protests before, but not, or so it would seem, on this scale. This rebellion is cross-class and aimed at the entire regime, calling time on a dictatorship that, like the USSR before it, has grown more ugly and corrupt as its failings have become inescapable. Iranians may feel they have nothing to lose. It is calculated that the country has the highest rate of opium addiction in the world.

This is the moment for the West to apply maximum pressure. For too long Westerners have sought to bribe the theocracy into good behaviour – offering it vital cash in exchange for a halt to its nuclear weapons programme, even though it was pushing ahead with the missile component. The developed world bought into the Mullahs’ claim that their regime was permanent and legitimate, to be negotiated with. This was a betrayal of Iran’s citizens, who were hardly going to benefit from the end to sanctions given that the Revolutionary Guard manages and robs their economy like a Mafia cartel, and oppresses women, religious minorities and anybody who simply wishes to enjoy freedom.

It is time to correct the West’s mistakes. Iranians are taking enormous risks – at least 250 are thought to have been murdered already – and we owe them our full moral support. As in Hong Kong or Ukraine, universal principles of human rights and democracy are at stake, and if we do not stand up for them now, at this moment of maximum opportunity, we will pay a heavy price further down the road.