IN THE MEDIA
After the ceasefire, we should not forget that Iran’s regime is a threat to everyone
July 3, 2025 | Alana Schetzer
Australian Jewish News – 3 July 2025
Less than three year ago, virtually everyone in Australia and across the Western world agreed that the Iranian regime is despicable.
Millions of people across the world – only a small minority of Iranian heritage – were taking to the streets and social media, embracing the ‘Women, Life, Freedom,’ movement, sparked by the brutal death of Mahsa Jina Amini, beaten to death by authorities for failing to wear her hijab properly. After Iranians rose up in unprecedented numbers to demand liberation from the theocratic oppression they lived under, leading the regime to murder hundreds of them in repressing their protests and subsequently execute hundreds more, how could anyone doubt that the Iranian regime was evil and vile?
Now, many of these once-supporters of innocent Iranians claim that exact same regime is an innocent victim of Israel and US strikes against its illegal nuclear weapons program.
One LGBTQI+ group has readily embraced the regime, declaring that, “Iran has a right to defend itself,” while posting malevolent comments about Israel. This is the same regime that criminalises same-sex activity and has executed an estimated 5,000 gays and lesbians since 1979.
There are many immoral regimes across the world, but Iran is uniquely heinous in numerous ways.
Today, life for many Iranians is now worse than it was before the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement, as the regime continues its unforgiving crackdown; its security forces weaponise rape against women and men as part of their efforts to stifle opposition to the regime’s cruel and oppressive laws.
Teheran passed the ‘Hijab and Chastity‘ law in September 2023, which increased the state’s already harsh Islamic dress code, equating a woman refusing to wear a hijab to being naked.
Under the law, women face up-to to ten years in jail. Meanwhile, gender segregation at workplaces, universities, hospitals, and parks was expanded.
And executions continue to soar, especially against minorities, including those from the ethnic provinces of West Azerbaijan, East Azerbaijan, Sistan, Baluchistan, and Kurdistan. It was recently revealed that at least 975 people were executed in Iran last year, including 31 women.
And there is a link between its nuclear weapons ambition and its human rights abuses. The Iranian regime has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build nuclear weapons capabilities because it views them as a vital tool for holding onto power unchallenged. This is on top of its role in seeking to achieve Teheran’s aggressive foreign policy goals including destroying Israel, overthrowing Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and UAE, and exporting its religious doctrines across the whole of the Middle East.
The Iranian regime is the key force that has destabilised the Middle East for almost 50 years, sponsoring 13 proxy terror groups that spread fear and shed blood.
Iran is also playing a direct and deadly role in the ingoing Russia-Ukraine war, supplying Russia with a cache of weapons, including UAVs and ballistic missiles.
As well, the regime also actively supported Syria’s now-deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad for 13 years during the country’s bloody civil war, spending between $30-$50 billion financing a war that killed an estimated 500,000 people.
What’s more, its terror proxy, Hezbollah, spent years committing massacres, rape, torture, and even burying people alive, to keep the Assad regime in power.
Meanwhile, Iran’s creating, arming and financing of Hezbollah as a tool to attack Israel, while helping it dominate Lebanon through threats and shows of force, was responsible for turning that once relatively wealthy country into a “failed state” where the government became incapable of supplying even basic services. Happily, following Israel’s success in severely weakening Hezbollah last year, there are hopes today that the Lebanese state is starting to bounce back.
Teheran is also seeking to turn Iraq into a client state, with five of its proxy terror groups increasingly controlling the country, and even stripping it of vital infrastructure and sending the components back to Iran. Again, there has been some hopeful pushback in recent months, as Iran and its proxies have been weakened by their war with Israel.
About 80% of Iranians do not support the very regime that subjugates and subjects them to unimaginable suffering.
For those who have forgotten 2022 or simply believe the Iranian regime is somehow virtuous because they do not like its enemies, it’s important to remember what this regime actually is and what it does.
Iran, the region, and the world would be a significantly better, safer places without it. Obviously, “regime change” is something neither Israel or the US can cause directly bring about – that would require a ground invasion of the sort no one is contemplating. But it is hard to see how any well-meaning and informed observer can fail to hope that the recent war could be the catalyst for the Iranian people to finally accomplish what they so sadly failed to under the banner of “Women, Life, Freedom” in 2022.
Alana Schetzer is a Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
