What more can the Iranian diaspora do to change the situation in Iran? “More,” as you put it, implies that the diaspora has done something significant.But it – we – alas, have not. There are those who are focusing on the mechanics of what they perceive to be an imminent toppling of Tehran. But what I consider the real work has yet to begin. We have yet to exercise together the democratic interchange we envision for Iran. We’re deeply disarrayed.Have the US and the EU abandoned Israel regarding the existential threat Iran’s regime poses to the Jewish state’s security? Abandoned, no. But thrown up their hands in diplomatic helplessness, probably yes. Israel is increasingly casting itself in the image of its own mortal enemies.Its leadership lacks vision and does not stand on the great principles that the previous generation of Israeli leaders, i.e., Rabin and the like, stood. Jewish extremists are employing the very tactics that anti-Semites have employed to drive out the Jews. As a child growing up in Iran, my father suffered the blows of ignorant or fanatical bystanders who thought he, an “unclean” Jew, ought not to attend public school. Today, a Jewish eight-year-old girl is spat on in Beit Shemesh.I lived in Iran when the buses were segregated and women were stripped of their various rights. Iran’s decline began with the decline of the society’s egalitarian values. Israel is following its No. 1 enemy’s example today. Israel is becoming its enemy, which makes the perceptive observer doubt the validity of its cries of Iranian foul play.
Isn’t it unfair to compare Iran’s authoritarian society with Israel’s democracy? No tyranny identifies itself as a dictatorship. Even North Korea’s official title is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.Iran’s regime is not an exception. It is important to remember that tyrannies are not born overnight. The transition to such rule is often gradual and insidious.When in Paris in 1978 and prior to taking over power, Ayatollah [Ruhollah] Khomeini sounded like an egalitarian leader who believed in civil liberties, freedom of expression and gender equality.It was only after rising to power that he implemented laws that over time eroded and undermined the rights of women or press or academia. No democracy is absolute. But Israel’s relative democracy is being eroded and undermined by... extreme religious forces [similar to those] that undermined Iran’s great hope of a democracy in 1979.Should military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities be a real option from the West and Israel? For Israel, the long-term consequences of such an attack will be gravely costly.With so many wars in the past two decades, Israel cannot afford to also begin preemptive ones. For the West, really the US, the attack is something that is only metaphorically on the proverbial table. But war is not something that Americans can afford nowadays – a fact that many experts and politicians have made clear. Therefore, as a threat, it echoes as an empty one.The writer is The Jerusalem Post’s European correspondent and a fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.