Judgment to the Butchers of Iran

We dare not forget that freedom has real enemies.

Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from Iran’s Kurdistan Province, was traveling with her family in Tehran on September 13 when she was arrested by the country’s Guidance Force. The Force is Iran’s ‘morality police,’ tasked with arresting women who commit the grave sin of not properly wearing a hijab in compliance with the mandates of the Iranian government, a theocratic regime considered a state sponsor of terrorism for the past 38 years.

The Iranian police put Amini in a van and took her into custody. She would never leave alive, allegedly suffering a heart attack before dying on the 16th in a Tehran hospital. Reports indicate that Amini’s death was actually caused by a skull fracture from heavy beatings endured in police custody, indicating the depths of abuse Amini was likely subjected to for the crime of not covering her head to appease the butchers of Iran.

The protests in the country have moved into dozens of Iranian cities, with protestors removing hijabs, attacking police, and seizing territorial control of areas in Kurdistan. Days after Amini’s death, Iranian terrorists launched artillery at Amini’s fellow Kurds in northern Iraq. In a land ruled by monsters, there is no rest for the weary.

As a reporter, I spend much of my time hearing about how impactful the direction of American higher education is. If American college campuses go to the left, I’m told, we’re headed for a woke communist dystopia. If American college campuses go to the right, I’m also told, we’re destined to end up in a xenophobic hellscape of misinformation. We need to guard against viewing political victory as the end goal of academia—that’s dangerous and degrading to a country with an intellectual tradition of freedom.

But let’s not pretend for one second that the American debate is are comparable in scope to what we see in Iran. In America, a protestor being hit with a bike lock is a matter of national controversy. In America, our political adversaries implement policies and run campaigns. In Iran, protestors being shot in the face and the slaughter of political dissidents is normal practice. In Iran, children as young as eight are shot multiple times at close range, resulting in crushed brains and shattered skulls, for the crime of participating in protests. The jackbooted enforcers of Iran aren’t political adversaries. They’re not people. They’re monsters who use extremist ideology to justify the torture and murder of innocents.

Americans can never forget that our political opponents and our enemies abroad are not the same. Similarly, we can never forget how sending mixed messages weakens America’s resolve. As America announces sanctions and uses its resources to help lift the digital blackout the Iranian mullahs have placed on the country, the Biden administration has maintained negotiations that would lift already-existing sanctions on Iran for its ongoing nuclear testing program. The talks are seen as potentially providing a financial lifeline to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s government, leading some to claim hypocrisy on the part of the United States government.

They are right. If the mullahs can be unseated (and they can), it behooves the United States not to prop up the Iranian regime at the cost of the Iranian people. Failing to support the Iranian people (or worse yet, aiding the regime that oppresses them), is a grievous moral blemish for a country that calls itself free.

The human heart longs for freedom in a way that those who’ve never lacked it can barely understand. I have heard that longing, personally, in the voices of exiled Hong Konger dissidents and exonerated death row inmates. Now, that longing is coming from the Iranian people, in voices far too desperate and insistent to ignore. It is for us in the free world to take heed and call for vindication of the afflicted, rescue for the needy, and the crushing of the oppressor.

Ali Khameini will ultimately see judgment for the fruits of his labor. The Iranian regime and the monsters who uphold it will one day see destruction. The guardians of Sharia law will one day be ground into the dust, buried in eternal forgetfulness.

For the sake of the innocents in Iran, may that day come quickly.