The facts on the ground tell us a different story | Mehrdad Kia

It was early June 1967, and three Arab armies were amassing their forces on their borders with Israel. The campaign that promised to destroy the Jewish state was led by Gamal Abdul Nasser, the nationalist and socialist leader of Egypt, who was a close ally of the Soviet Union. On June 5, before the joint forces of Egypt, Syria and Jordan could commence the hostilities, Israel struck and in six days demolished the entire Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian armed forces, inflicting a humiliating defeat on Nasser, who had proclaimed himself the champion of Pan-Arabism or Arab unity. Egypt lost the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, Jordan was forced to relinquish its control over the West Bank of the Jordan River, including the Old City of Jerusalem, and Syria lost the strategic Golan Heights. In six days in June, Israel redrew the map of the Middle East and destroyed Arab nationalism as represented by Nasser. From the ashes of Arab nationalism rose a new ideology, namely, Islamism, which claimed that Islam was not only a religion but a political ideology that opposed U.S. global hegemony and Zionism as represented by the state of Israel.

Fast forward 58 years to June 2025: An Islamic regime in Iran, the true champion of Islamism and an ally of Russia, tried to succeed where Nasser failed; it created a united front of anti-American and anti-Israeli forces to destroy the Jewish state and to compel the United States to withdraw its forces from the Middle East. In pursuing the goal of destroying the Jewish state and expelling the United States from the Middle East, the Islamic regime in Tehran also spent billions of dollars on developing long-range ballistic missiles and on building nuclear capability. As in the case of Nasser in June 1967, however, in less than two weeks in June 2025, the regime lost much of its military and nuclear capability after the United States and Israel unleashed their massive fire power against its nuclear and military facilities.

Despite the claims of the Trump administration that the United States has obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability, the facts on the ground tell us a different story, namely, that as long as the Islamic regime survives, Iran’s nuclear program will only be delayed for a year or two. Air strikes by the United States and Israel cannot on their own neutralize the threat posed by the Islamic regime. A military invasion of Iran will also prove to be even more disastrous than military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11.

There is only one way to neutralize the threat posed by Iran’s Islamist regime, and that is by providing maximum support to the Iranian people, while exerting maximum pressure on the regime so that it will not be able to sell its oil in international markets. It was cash from the sale of Iranian oil to China that allowed the Islamic regime to advance its nuclear program and arm its proxies in the region, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen.

Forty-six years of Islamist rule in Iran has resulted in the imposition of a political system that has systematically jailed, tortured, and murdered tens of thousands of Iranians who opposed it. The only long-term solution to bring peace to the Middle East is to topple the regime in Iran, but not by an invasion or a foreign-sponsored military coup, but by a campaign of support for a people determined to create a new political system based on respect for human rights, including equal rights for Iranian women.