Bombing Iran into regime change won’t work. 

As much as I’d like to see Iran morph overnight into a Canadian style liberal democracy this is not going to happen. Iran is run by true believers who will do anything to keep their grip on power.

The Revolutionary Guard has now warned street protests:

“will be considered an example of direct co-operation with the enemy”

and

“if they show sympathy for the enemy there is a shoot-to-kill order.”

So it is asking a lot for people to take to the streets, calling for an end to clerical rule by the mad mullahs. Personally, I can’t see it.

Iranian Diaspora

The last census (2021) tells us that 4,175 people in Newmarket (or 4.8% of the Town’s population) were of Iranian ethnic or cultural origin. In Canada overall the Iranian diaspora is a sizeable 200,465 or 0.6% of the population. 

From all the evidence around town – the posters in shop windows to the old Shah era Persian flags on cars - people with Iranian heritage in Town want to see regime change in Tehran. And who can blame them?

I wouldn’t want to live in a medieval theocracy either, ruled over by a Supreme Leader whose word is law and where dissent is brutally crushed. Who wants to live in a country that needs morality police and Shariah Law to keep its population in line? 

And that explains why the Iranian diaspora worldwide is so huge. Anyone with marketable skills gets out. Newmarket has any number of Iranian doctors, dentists, lawyers and others with professional backgrounds who have voted with their feet. And don't forget the successful businesses run by Iranian Canadians dotted all around town. The person who cuts my hair is from Isfahan.

Regime Change from the Skies

Some Iranians here in Town clearly long for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran who was overthrown in 1979. I see posters in shops with his face gazing down on me. But Pahlavi was last in Iran when he was 17 - just before the revolution. There is no way of knowing how much support he would have, even as a figurehead. I suspect not a lot.

In any event, forcing regime change from the skies - as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer put it – hasn’t happened before. And is unlikely to now. Instead, it would require boots on the ground and an open-ended commitment - something the American public would not tolerate.

Trump dismisses the new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight” and demands his unconditional surrender.

As if!

Who seriously believes the Ayatollah is going to bow the knee to Trump having just lost his wife, his parents and one of his sons in the attack on 28 February? 

Illegal

One non-trivial point that seems to have been lost in the fog of war. Trump’s war is illegal under international law. 

The UN Charter says states must not attack another except in the case of self defence following an armed attack or if authorised by the UN Security Council. On 4 March, Trump claimed the US attack was pre-emptive and that Iran was only two weeks away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.  

“If we didn’t hit within two weeks, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon.”

Another lie. Just like his brazen claim to have been totally exonerated by the Epstein files. 

He just makes it up as he goes along.

Unintended Consequences

The war in Iran will have many unintended consequences. Iran with a population of 92 million could fracture triggering a tidal wave of refugees into Turkey and then into the European Union, dwarfing the one million Syrian refugees who made their way to Germany in 2015 and are now settled there. 

The Kurds may agitate for a new state, further destablising the entire Middle East.

While the much-touted safety and security of the Gulf States is now shown to be a mirage.

This is Trump's war of choice.

We in Canada should have nothing to do with it.

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