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Why Is the Iranian Regime Not Looking After the People of Iran?
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
This past week has been nothing short of historic. On June 12–13, Israel launched its first strikes deep inside Iran, targeting the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and multiple other sites tied to the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
In addition, Israel conducted precision strikes against leading Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists, effectively decapitating Iran’s senior military command and scientific elite, seriously hampering Iranian efforts to respond.
Prime Minister Netanyahu called it a preemptive move against an existential threat. Iran responded with missile attacks of its own, breaching Israel’s much-vaunted air defenses and hitting residential areas, including a hospital in Beersheba.
And now — just days after this all began — President Trump has signaled his possible readiness to involve America directly in a war that, until recently, most believed was still more fantasy than reality. As I write these words, the situation remains highly fluid. By the time you read this, American B-2 bombers could have already dropped 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Fordow, Iran’s most deeply buried nuclear facility.
But while military pundits and geopolitical analysts have been working overtime, parsing missiles and political statements, I’ve been thinking about something almost no one is addressing: What explains Iran’s religious stubbornness in the face of overwhelming hatred for its regime — both at home and abroad? Where is the reality check? Where is the ability to set aside ideological absolutism and protect the people of Iran?
Here is a country whose economy is in ruins, whose streets are teeming with young people who openly despise the ruling clerics, and whose neighbors — Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE — have shifted from cold neutrality to quiet coordination with Israel, united by a shared fear of Iran’s reckless ambitions.
The Islamic Republic is isolated, reviled, and increasingly cornered. And yet, its leaders plow ahead with terrifying conviction — as if righteousness alone will shield them from the consequences of their actions.
The answer is this, and it’s chilling: they genuinely believe they’re doing God’s will. And once someone believes that — with absolute certainty — they become very, very dangerous.
To understand this intransigence, you must go back to 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile — inexplicably enabled by France and US President Jimmy Carter — and ignited the Islamic Revolution.
Unlike Gamal Abdel Nasser, the secular nationalist leader of Egypt, who envisioned a pan-Arab future bound by language and culture, Khomeini offered something far more radical and dangerous: a transnational theocracy. In Khomeini’s worldview, there was no such thing as a “Persian” identity. There was only Islam — and only those committed to his uncompromising Shi’a vision of it.
“We do not worship Iran,” he declared. “We worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism.” In other words, faith erased nationhood. Resistance to the regime’s theology wasn’t merely political dissent — it was apostasy. And apostasy, in a system like Khomeini’s, is punishable by death.
Khomeini didn’t want to be the president of Iran, he wanted to be the guardian of a global Islamic revolution – a return to the early days of Islam when the Prophet Muhammad’s successors swept across the Middle East and beyond, to conquer with the sword and forced conversions.
The Iranian revolution was never meant to stop at Iran’s borders. In fact, borders were an annoying inconvenience. From the very beginning, the goal was to export this fundamentalist ideology — first to the Shi’a populations of Lebanon, Iraq, and Bahrain, and then to the wider Muslim world.
In that sense, Iran under Khomeini was less a state than a divine mission. The IRGC wasn’t merely a national military force — it was the revolutionary guard of a new Islamic order. And while his opponents talked about democracy and reform, Khomeini was focused on martyrdom, submission, and a mystical messianic destiny. He believed — as does his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — that if the regime stood firm in its theology, God would ensure its success, even against impossible odds.
This is the belief that animates Iran today. The leaders of the Islamic Republic are Khomeini’s ideological heirs, and they continue to behave as though religious certainty can substitute for military capability, economic solvency, or diplomatic credibility.
They believe they are right — and everyone else, including the entire global order, is wrong. And so, no matter what you throw at them, they persevere, they grandstand, they deny reality, and they wrap themselves in a cloak of religious righteousness, as if that alone will save them.
This delusional fusion of faith and fantasy is not new. In fact, according to several biblical commentators, it appears in Parshat Shlach, which tells the story of the twelve spies – meraglim – sent by Moses to scout the land of Canaan.
Ten of them return with a bleak, terrifying report: the land is unconquerable, and rather than embark on the conquest of the Promised Land, they insist the nation must remain in the wilderness. The people panic, and God responds by condemning that entire generation to die in the desert.
The commentaries debate the spies’ motives, with some suggesting that the meraglim were actually driven by religious conviction. According to the Sfas Emes, the meraglim were not defying God, rather they believed they were defending Him.
The meraglim were convinced that Torah could only be lived in the rarefied, otherworldly atmosphere of the desert — free from the political and material distractions that statehood would inevitably bring. They were not denying God’s plan — they were trying to improve on it. They were, in effect, trying to out-God Him.
Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin takes it one step further. In his Pri Tzaddik commentary, he explains that the meraglim actually saw the future — they foresaw a decline in religious observance, followed by exile, suffering, and destruction — and they wanted to delay it.
In a sense, they were trying to protect the Jewish people from pain by rejecting history itself. But in doing so, they substituted their own vision for God’s will. It wasn’t prophecy — it was hubris dressed up as holiness.
Which brings us back to Iran. Just like the meraglim, Iran’s leaders genuinely believe they are carrying out a divine mandate: to preserve religious purity, to confront falsehood, and to build an Islamic world order. But in doing so, they defy not only international norms, but Divine moral norms as well.
For spirituality and faith to thrive, there must be space for human freedom — the freedom to err, to choose, to engage. True divine service requires grappling with the world, not fleeing from it. Iran’s extremism doesn’t align with God — it usurps Him. And just like the meraglim, that hubris is destined to fail. Because God’s plan for the world includes the messiness of engaging with those who don’t meet your standards, and with the divine image that resides in every human being.
In the mid-1990s, while studying at UCL in London, I wrote my Jewish history dissertation on the Dead Sea sectarians — Jewish religious absolutists who withdrew to Qumran to escape what they saw as the contaminating halachic flexibility of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. They viewed compromise as heresy and nuance as betrayal. Their community thrived briefly, but ultimately vanished without a trace — destroyed by its own inability to adapt, doomed by the very purity it so zealously protected.
The same fate now threatens the Islamic leadership of Iran. Blinded by ideological certainty, impervious to reality, they cling to a vision that can only end in ruin. Let us pray they don’t take their entire country down with them.
The author is a writer in Beverly Hills, California.
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Argentina’s Milei Brands Iran an ‘Enemy,’ Reaffirms Unwavering Support for Israel Amid Escalating Conflict
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Argentine President Javier Milei has branded Iran “an enemy” of his country, reaffirming Argentina’s support for Israel amid its ongoing conflict with the Islamist regime in Tehran.
On Thursday, Milei — who has broken with decades of Argentine foreign policy to firmly align with Israel and the United States — condemned Iran’s attacks on the Jewish state.
“Iran is an enemy of Argentina,” the South American leader said during a new interview on the La Nación+ news channel.
| Milei recordó los atentados a la AMIA y a la Embajada de Israel y afirmó que Irán es un enemigo de la Argentina: “114 muertos. Es un enemigo de Argentina. Cristina va a tener que dar explicaciones a la Justicia por el Memorándum con Irán, y no sé si constituye traición a… pic.twitter.com/MKUgMmyr9p
— La Derecha Diario (@laderechadiario) June 20, 2025
According to local media, Milei spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to express his “support and solidarity” as the war continues to escalate.
In a statement issued last week, the Argentine leader denounced “the vile attack perpetrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran against the State of Israel, through the mass launch of missiles and drones directed at civilian populations.”
He also said that Israel is “saving Western civilization” and accused Iran of trying to destroy the country.
During his interview on Thursday, Milei held Tehran responsible for two terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center.
The latter was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, in which 85 people were killed and more than 300 wounded.
Earlier this year, the lead prosecutor in the 1994 AMIA bombing case petitioned Argentina’s federal court to issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over his alleged involvement in the deadly terrorist attack. Milei has also activated Interpol red notices in connection with the case.
In the same interview, Milei suggested that former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — may have committed treason by signing the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iranian authorities, which was presented as a cooperation agreement to investigate the AMIA bombing.
“Cristina is going to have to give explanations to the courts about the memorandum with Iran. I don’t know if it constitutes treason, but they planted two bombs in Argentina. That’s key,” the Argentine leader said.
In 2006, former prosecutor Alberto Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the 1994 terrorist attack and Iran’s chief proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused Kirchner of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in exchange for Iranian oil, with the alleged cover-up reportedly formalized through their MoU.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
During his latest interview, Milei also noted that his administration has officially designated Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations — making Argentina the first Latin American country to do so, with Paraguay joining the effort in April.
Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels.
This month, during his 10-day international tour, Milei was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize in Jerusalem in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel and commitment to Jewish values.
During his three-day visit to the Jewish state, Milei announced that Argentina will move its embassy to Jerusalem next year, joining the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea in doing so and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.
The Argentine leader also signed a “Memorandum of Understanding for Democracy and Freedom” with Netanyahu to strengthen cooperation against terrorism and antisemitism.
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Israel Warns Hezbollah After Terror Group Defies Lebanon’s Calls to Stay Out of Iran War
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday warned the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah against joining Iran’s war on the Jewish state, after the Iranian proxy threatened to take action in support of Tehran’s campaign — defying the Lebanese government’s demands to keep the country out of the conflict.
“The Hezbollah Secretary-General [Sheikh Naim Qassem] has not learned the lessons of his predecessors and is threatening to act against Israel at the direction of the Iranian dictator,” Katz wrote in a post on X, referring to former leaders of the terrorist group who were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during last year’s war.
“I advise the Lebanese proxy to be cautious and understand that Israel has lost patience with terrorists who threaten it. If there is terrorism — there will be no Hezbollah,” the Israeli defense chief wrote in a Hebrew post.
מזכ”ל החיזבאללה לא לומד לקח מקודמיו ומאיים לפעול נגד ישראל בהתאם להוראת הדיקטטור האיראני.
אני מציע לפרוקסי הלבנוני להיזהר ולהבין שישראל איבדה את הסבלנות כלפי טרוריסטים שמאיימים עליה.
אם יהיה טרור – לא יהיה חיזבאללה.
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) June 20, 2025
Last fall, Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, which ended with a ceasefire that concluded a year of fighting between the Jewish state and the Iran-backed terror group.
On Thursday, Qassem reaffirmed Hezbollah’s support for the Islamist regime in Iran in its war against Israel, following a week in which Iran suffered heavy losses from Israeli strikes. He also renewed accusations that the United States is complicit in facilitating the Israeli offensive.
Hezbollah is “not neutral, and therefore we express our position alongside Iran, its leadership and its people, and we will act as we see fit in confronting this brutal Israeli-American aggression,” the terror group’s leader said in a statement on Telegram.
“Tyrannical America and criminal Israel will not be able to subjugate the Iranian people and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Qassem continued. Hezbollah has a duty “to stand by Iran and provide it with all forms of support that contribute to putting an end to this tyranny and oppression.”
Qassem’s latest remarks came just a week after the Iran-backed terror group announced it would refrain from launching retaliatory strikes against Israel in support of Tehran, following a warning from the Lebanese government not to drag the country into a broader conflict.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Arabiya, Lebanese authorities informed the Iranian terrorist proxy that it would not tolerate its involvement in Tehran’s response against Israel, warning it would bear responsibility for dragging the country into war.
“The time when the organization bypassed the state in deciding to go to war is over,” the terrorist group was told, according to the report. “The decision of war and peace is exclusively in the hands of the Lebanese state.”
Last week, Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran — dubbed Operation Rising Lion — targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat.
The ongoing Israeli strikes killed several of Iran’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists and dealt a major blow to the country’s retaliatory capabilities, destroying not only much of its ballistic missile stockpiles but also crippling its launch platforms.
Meanwhile, US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, who is currently visiting Beirut, met with Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a close Hezbollah ally, and cautioned him against involving Lebanon in the escalating Israeli-Iranian conflict.
“I can say on behalf of President Trump … that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” Barrack said.
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Iranian Missile Strikes Haifa Mosque, Injures Muslim Clerics While ‘Firing Indiscriminately at Civilians’
A man walks near broken windows at a mosque that was damaged following Iran’s missile strike on Israel, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Haifa, Israel, June 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush
A mosque in the Israeli city of Haifa was hit by a ballistic missile launched by Iran on Friday morning and Muslim clerics were among those injured in the attack.
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Sa’ar said Iran’s barrage of missiles targeting Haifa struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood and clerics inside the mosque sustained injuries. Haifa is a port city in the north that has a mixed Arab and Israeli population.
“The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian sites. These are war crimes,” said Sa’ar in a post on X. He also shared a video of the mosque that was hit in the missile attack.
The Iranian regime launched a missile attack on Haifa and struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. The missile attack injured Muslim clerics who were in the mosque.
The Iranian regime is targeting Muslim, Christian, and Jewish civilians, as well as civilian… pic.twitter.com/aG9JRfyLP7— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) June 20, 2025
Sa’ar later arrived at the scene of the strike and gave a statement to the press.
Photos shared on social media show the mosque’s broken windows and other damage to the religious site, all as a result of the Iranian strike.
Haifa mosque was indeed hit in the last ballistic missile attack. pic.twitter.com/m0AUN8IPrY
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 20, 2025
“The Iranian regime is firing indiscriminately at civilians — with zero regard for who they hit,” read a post on Israel’s official X account about the missile attack in Haifa.
Iran launched around 20 to 25 ballistic missiles at Israel on Friday and at least 19 people were wounded from the strikes in Haifa, local authorities said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s national emergency response service, Magen David Adom (MDA), said its teams treated and evacuated injuries civilians that include a roughly 40-year-old man in serious condition, a 16-year-old boy in serious condition with shrapnel in his upper body, and a 54-year-old man in moderate condition with shrapnel in his lower limbs.
Friday marks one week since the start of the Israel-Iran war, which began with the Jewish state launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets in a campaign known as Operation Rising Lion. MDA said that since the war began on June 13, its paramedics and EMTs have treated at least 1,007 people, including 23 who have died.
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