Iran’s Rising Challenge: The Historical Echoes of Totalitarianism
The fight against totalitarian regimes of the past offers insights into today’s struggle with Iran’s expanding influence and nuclear aspirations
According to an aphorism frequently attributed to the American writer Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” In the 20th century, the world survived the twin evils of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Can we survive the latest incarnation of evil—the Islamic Republic of Iran?
As a student of history in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I viewed the world very differently from how it is viewed today. My generation emerged from the remnants of World War II. We were the children of those who had fought in or survived the war.
We were also raised under the cloud of the Cold War. Growing up in a Western society, my binary view of the world was that democracies supported freedom and the rights of individuals, and those who lived under communist, fascist, dictatorial, or authoritarian regimes were oppressed.
Fascism and communism had much in common. Both usurped and retained power by ruthlessly crushing all opposition, eliminating freedom of speech, suppressing individual rights, and employing state terrorism.
Nazi Germany was underpinned by the ability to indoctrinate its people with the belief in Aryan supremacy and the pursuit of the thousand-year Reich.
The formation of the Soviet Union in 1922, following the 1917 Russian Revolution, saw Vladimir Lenin similarly embark on a campaign to eliminate opposition to his Bolshevik party as he cemented one-party rule. Freedom of speech and individual rights were denied. The Soviet Union, particularly under the leadership of Joseph Stalin until his demise in 1953, relied on the ongoing repression of its citizens. Stalin’s rule resulted in the death of millions through his purges and policies.
The common theme: These were totalitarian regimes that controlled every facet of life and instilled a climate of fear among their people. Germany had its concentration camps; the Soviet Union had its Gulags.
They also threatened world order. Germany conquered most of Europe and then invaded the Soviet Union. After World War II, the Soviet Union brought its Iron Curtain down around Eastern Europe and sought to export its revolution to every corner of the planet.
The defeat of Nazi Germany and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were rightly seen as epochal events in which the dark forces of oppression were defeated.
But just as the ideology underpinning Nazism posed a global threat to civilization, so does its successor. The Islamic Republic of Iran, established in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution, immediately embarked on a path to establish a totalitarian theocracy where all dissent and freedoms were suppressed. Evian Prison is the Dachau and Lubyanka of Iran. Once the ayatollahs consolidated their power, they sought to expand their revolution across the Middle East.
Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons coupled with its spread of terror through the arming of proxies has seriously destabilized the Middle East. The declared desire to eradicate Israel is no mere idle threat. Virtually every ongoing conflict in the Middle East can be traced back to Iran. The Abraham Accords and the potential for an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia are primarily due to the realization of the Iranian threat to the region.
While Hamas would never accept the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland, it would never have been able to threaten Israel without Iran’s support. That Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are no longer functioning states is primarily due to the malignant interference of Iran in their affairs.
The Soviet Union is no longer, but those who were given the role to undermine, infiltrate, and usurp Western societies through subversive activities involving disinformation and propaganda and exporting Marxist ideology would be laughing in their graves. They invested heavily in infiltrating the unions, academia, and left-wing peace movements.
Their success can be measured by how the liberal progressives and hard left view the world today. Rather than looking through the lens of good vs. evil, freedom vs. oppression, they have adopted a worldview based on self-loathing, viewing Western states as dominated and defined by white colonialist oppressors, thereby giving license to all who oppose them.
That the streets of many cities throughout the world are full of protesters marching in support of Hamas and its genocidal ambitions against the only democracy in the Middle East is a classic example of how propaganda and disinformation have succeeded. The myth that Israel was colonized by the Jews who drove out the indigenous Palestinians and the accusation that Zionism is racism emanated from the Soviet Union.
The West’s failure to exercise moral clarity, coupled with the lack of fortitude to engage Iran and support Israel against Hamas, could potentially have devastating consequences for civilization.
