friend in Europe complained about gas prices.
He had just filled his car.
“Did the Israelis really have to go after Iran?” he asked.
Welcome—briefly—to the reality people in our region have lived with for decades.
For years, the Iranian people pleaded with the world to confront the threat posed by the Islamic Republic. The world hesitated. Debated. Issued statements. Organized conferences.
In the end, only one country consistently took the threat seriously: Israel.
But “Israel” is an abstraction. Behind that word are men and women flying missions through hostile skies tonight while most of the world sleeps.
While we run to shelters when a missile slips through defense systems, pilots and intelligence officers stay awake through the night. The region is a war zone, and some of us have been preparing for this moment for years.
They are not only defending their country.
They are confronting one of the most aggressive regimes on earth—on behalf of a world that preferred not to see the danger.
So if your fuel prices rise a little, endure it quietly. The price you are paying is not remotely comparable to what people in this region have endured for decades.
And if anyone still wonders why the Islamic Republic should have been confronted long ago, the record speaks for itself.
The regime was born in deception. In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised freedom and pluralism. Instead, he created a theocratic dictatorship that stripped Iranians of political rights and dignity.
Women were among the first targets. Compulsory hijab was imposed shortly after the revolution. Today women are still arrested and imprisoned for refusing it.
Minorities have suffered systematic persecution. Baháʼís, Kurds, Baluchis, and Ahwazi Arabs face discrimination, arrests, and disproportionate executions.
Iran also exported its revolution across the region.
Through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran built proxy militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—eroding state institutions and turning countries into battlegrounds.
In Syria alone, Iran and its proxy Hezbollah helped keep Bashar al-Assad in power during a war that has killed over 500,000 people and displaced more than 13 million, according to UN estimates.
The same network also financed itself through organized crime.
Together with the Assad regime, Iranian-backed networks built a massive Captagon drug industry in Syria, flooding the Middle East and Europe with billions of dollars worth of narcotics. Authorities in the Gulf and Europe have repeatedly intercepted shipments.
Inside Iran itself, repression remains relentless. Amnesty International recorded more than 850 executions in 2023, among the highest numbers in the world.
Tehran armed and funded militant groups across the region, including Hamas, whose October 7 massacre triggered one of the most devastating wars the Middle East has seen in decades.
Every life lost—Israeli and Palestinian alike—flows from the ideology nurtured by the Iranian regime.
For years, Iranian state institutions displayed a countdown clock predicting Israel’s destruction, while pursuing nuclear capabilities.
Given Jewish history—and the regime’s rhetoric—Israelis tend to take such threats seriously.
For decades, much of the world urged restraint. Diplomacy. Patience.
Meanwhile the regime grew stronger, the region grew bloodier, and the Iranian people themselves paid the price.
This conflict did not begin last week.
It began in 1979, when a revolutionary regime declared war not only on its own people but on the regional order.
If Democracy Now!, CodePink, or Al Jazeera want to scream about it, their hypocritical outrage will fall on deaf ears.
The reckoning that should have happened decades ago is finally underway.
To those who oppose it from a safe distance:
Cry me a river.
#iranisraelconflict #Israel #IranWar
