Mick Hartley

Jonathan Sacerdoti, in the Spectator, on the Iran war:

This is not simply another American intervention abroad, nor merely another “forever war” of Western imperialism. The Iranian regime is more than an authoritarian state pursuing narrow interests. Its ruling doctrine fuses revolutionary Shi’a theology with a militant anti Western worldview forged in the intellectual currents of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran’s leaders see themselves not only as governors of a state but as participants in a historical, international, civilisational mission. And we are their enemy.

Israel has therefore become a natural partner for the United States in this confrontation. Few modern states maintain such a clear sense of civilisational identity or such confidence in the legitimacy of their own survival, and that clarity has allowed Washington and Jerusalem to recognise common cause against the Iranian regime.….

Against ideological adversaries, clarity matters. Movements driven by religious or ideological conviction rarely retreat in response to material incentives alone. They persist because they believe their struggle carries historical or spiritual meaning.

Conflicts of this kind therefore cannot be fought with strategy alone. They require an opposing conviction: the belief that the civilisation being defended is worth protecting. And in this case it certainly is.….

For decades Western policymakers comforted themselves with the belief that Tehran’s rulers were rational actors who could be moderated through negotiation, sanctions relief or gradual integration into the international system. That assumption shaped policy for a generation. The war now unfolding may finally bury that illusion.

In its place should come a rediscovery of moral clarity: the ability to recognise the difference between good and evil, civilisation and barbarity, and the knowledge that our freedoms never come for free. The United States has shown a renewed willingness to speak that language. The rest of the West would do well to remember it.

This is a regime that for over forty years has declared – loudly and clearly – that its main foreign policy objective is to wipe Israel off the map, all the while chanting “Death to America”, and yes, “Death to the UK”. They also believe in the imminent return of the hidden imam. It’s a modern state, close to acquiring nuclear weapons, with a mindset straight from the dark ages. It’s terrifying. Yet for all these decades the west has been pussyfooting around, pretending not to understand.

Obama’s decision to promote closer ties with Iran – to re-calibrate US foreign policy away from Israel and towards Iran – was surely one one of the most astonishing political blunders of recent times. Yes, Obama is a lovely man with a lovely smile: urbane, witty, clubbable. Trump by contrast is a loud-mouthed huckster and bully with zero personal charm. Yet here we are. He’s got it right on this one, just as he’s got it right on gender ideology.

The UK, meanwhile, is sitting this one out – without even the excuse of having a charming charismatic leader with a lovely smile.