In recent days, the world has been riveted by images from Iran. Fallout from a “disputed” — that is, fraudulent — presidential election has spurred massive street protests, which the Iranian regime is attempting to suppress by force. How will the violence end? Could Iran be on the cusp of a democratic revolution? For answers to these questions and others, National Review’s Kathryn Lopez turned to Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri, author of the new book, The Persian Night: Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why did anyone pretend that Iran had a shot at a democratic election last week? The American media and President Obama seemed to. AMIR TAHERI: Yes, many journalists and certainly President Obama have been desperate for some good news from Tehran. A segment of the Western Left has always regarded the Islamic Republic with sympathy because of its supposed “anti-imperialist” stance. As for Obama, he is trying to reverse Bush’s Middle East policy, which sought to distance the U.S. from its traditional support for despotic regimes in the name of realism. By pushing for democratization, Bush changed the political landscape in our region. Afghanistan and Iraq got a chance to build a different future. Lebanon has just held a genuinely free election, without Syrian troops on its soil. Kuwait has enfranchised women, and has even allowed four women to be elected to the parliament for the first time. Egypt has accepted multi-candidate presidential elections, and even Saudi Arabia has held elections for some of the seats on municipal councils.

Opponents of the Bush Doctrine, including Obama, first claimed that Arabs, and Muslims in general, are not ready for democracy. Once this was proved not to be the case in so many countries, the same people claimed that democracy would only bring the Islamists to power. However, that, too, was proved wrong. In Pakistan’s latest general election, the Islamist share of the vote shrunk from 11 percent to 3 percent. In Iraq, the Islamist parties were defeated across the board in municipal elections. In Kuwait, the Islamist bloc in the parliament was cut by half. In Lebanon, Hezbollah won 11 of the 128 seats in the parliament, and the coalition under its leadership failed to win a majority.

The statement, “Democracy cannot be imposed by force,” is often made by Obama as if it were the cleverest of philosophical observations. However, we know that democracy can be imposed by force, as happened in West Germany, Japan, and Italy, among other places, after the Second World War. In any case, what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq was not the imposition of democracy by force, but the use of force to remove impediments to democracy. Imagine using force to topple the despots in Burma or Zimbabwe. Would that not remove impediments to democracy?

In the case of Iran, the phrase was used to reduce the debate to a choice between preemptive war, regarded as the original sin, and preemptive surrender. Because we don’t want war with Iran, let us surrender to the mullahs! Opponents of the Bush Doctrine had hoped for “a shot at a democratic election” to prove that there was no need for regime change in Tehran. Something that looked like a free election would have made it easier for Obama to sell his appeasement policy. We now know that the theory of “evolution within the Islamic regime,” so dear to Joe Biden, is pure nonsense. Totalitarian regimes cannot reform themselves. LOPEZ: Your new book is titled The Persian Night. When did the “Persian Night” begin and when will it end — and how? TAHERI: The night that has fallen on my country started in February 1979, when armed groups attacked army barracks and police stations in Tehran and seized control of major government buildings. The Shah’s army and government evaporated, leaving a vacuum that was filled quickly by the Khomeinists, who at that time led a coalition of leftist, nationalist, and Islamist groups and parties. The “night” continued with the imposition of theocracy, the massacre of tens of thousands of political prisoners from all points on the ideological spectrum, the forcing into exile of some 5 million Iranians, an eight-year war with Iraq that claimed a million lives, genocidal operations and ethnic cleansing in areas inhabited by Iranian Kurds and Turkmens, and so on.

During this long night, more than 10 million Iranians have spent some time in the regime’s prisons on a wide range of charges, from violation of the Islamic dress code to practicing religions other than Khomeinist Islam. This has been a night of censorship and terror, of attempts at destroying Iran’s multi-millennial culture and civilization. This long night will end when the regime is overthrown. The Khomeinist system cannot be reformed, just as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany could not. The only realistic option in Iran is regime change. This is what Iranians want. Listen to the shouts of “Marg bar diktator!” (“Death to the dictator”) in streets, and from rooftops, throughout Iran.

LOPEZ: In what sense is Iran a “haven of jihad”? TAHERI: Every single terrorist organization in the world has an office in Tehran. The Islamic Republic organizes an international terrorist feast every year, from February 1 to 11. The regime spends vast sums of money in support of what it calls “exporting the revolution.” Right now, the Islamic Republic is sponsoring terror operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, and Egypt, among other countries.

LOPEZ: In the current environment — Ahmadinejad there, Obama here — can anything be done about that? TAHERI: The people of Iran have never wanted the United States to take any risks on their behalf. Apologists for the Khomeinist regime claim that its opponents want a military invasion of Iran. Nothing is further from the truth. Obama, meanwhile, pretends that the choice is between preemptive war and preemptive surrender. Since preemptive war is associated with the “simplistic” George W. Bush, the sophisticated Obama is trying to market his preemptive surrender as “intelligent and vigorous diplomacy.”

All that Iranians want the U.S. to do is to be true to its own principles, not to kowtow to the Khomeinist regime, and not to help it restore its shattered legitimacy. We want Obama to condemn the shooting of demonstrators in Iranian streets and the rigging of the election, and to make it clear that he would not shake Ahmadinejad’s bloodstained hand. We want Obama not to organize a strategic retreat from the Middle East, which would create a vacuum that the Khomeinists would fill. We want him not to leave the region’s new and fragile democracies alone and defenseless against the Islamofascists.

We also want him not to flatter the Islamists by pretending that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were bred in an Islamic theological college. Don’t claim that Islam invented the pen and the printing press along with poetry and architecture — as if the Hellenic, Byzantine, Persian, Indian, and Chinese civilizations could be scripted out of history. Today, the U.S. has a choice: It can side with the Iranian people and invest in a future democratic Iran, or it can beg for a dialogue with the Islamofacists gathered around Ali Khamenei. LOPEZ: One of the chapter titles in your book is “Crazy Eddie and Martyr Hussein.” Who are they, and why is it important to know about them?

TAHERI: The “Crazy Eddies” of the moment are to be found in Washington. Hardly a day passes without the Obama administration offering more appeasement goodies to the Khomeinists. Obama expresses “concern” about “reports of violence” from Iran. Only “concern”? Only “reports”? Hasn’t he watched the television news? Has he no access to YouTube? The “Martyr Husseins” of the moment are around Ahmadinejad. These individuals are prepared to see Iran destroyed in the hope of accelerating the return of the “Hidden Imam” by provoking global conflagration.

LOPEZ: You call Iran “schizophrenic.” What do you mean by that?

TAHERI: There are two Irans. One is Iran as a vehicle for the Khomeinist revolution; the other is Iran as a nation-state. The interests of the two do not always coincide, and often they clash. For example, Iran as a revolution must act as an enemy of the United States in order to establish “anti-imperialist” credentials and woo those in Arab and Muslim countries who hate the U.S. because of its refusal to allow the destruction of Israel. Iran as a nation-state, however, has no quarrels with the United States. In fact, the U.S. is the most popular foreign nation among Iranians. In my book, I have given numerous instances of this split personality. Iran is experiencing a Jekyll-and-Hyde form of schizophrenia.

LOPEZ: Executions have been on the rise in Iran. Is that all about maintaining fear and control?

TAHERI: Executions have always been a major instrument of terror in the hands of Islamofascists. According to Amnesty International, the Islamic Republic executed more than 25,000 people in the first three years of the Khomeini regime. Every time the regime felt threatened, it went for mass executions. In 1989 — when, incidentally, Mr. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate in last Friday’s presidential “election,” was prime minister — the regime executed 8,000 people in three days. Iranian human-rights organizations have collected data about more than 100,000 executions since 1979. People are executed on all sorts of charges: anti-regime activity, gay and lesbian lifestyles, being Christian or Bahai, espionage for Israel or the United States, membership in banned political groups.

LOPEZ: Are you afraid there are going to be more mass executions in the coming months?

TAHERI: In his “victory” speech last Saturday, Ahmadinejad implicitly threatened more executions. This kind of regime is always based on mass murder. My hope is that the current popular movement will gain enough strength to make it impossible for the regime to organize the kind of mass murders we saw in 1981, 1983, and 1989. Right now, Iran is holding 10,000 prisoners of conscience, more than any other country in the world. Mohseni Ezhehi, a mullah who acts as minister of security and intelligence, warned on Sunday that some of the prisoners already sentenced to death might be executed quickly as a warning to “troublemakers” in the streets. In the past few days, hundreds of people have been arrested throughout the country. Scores of intellectuals, trade unionists, women’s-rights activists, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations have simply disappeared. We have already appealed to the European Union and the United Nations to be vigilant and warn the regime against mass executions.

LOPEZ: A while back you wrote that Iran was in its “deepest crisis” since 1979. Does that term now apply to the current situation? TAHERI: Well, the ruling establishment is split three ways: There are the bitter-enders led by Ahmadinejad; the “accommodationists” led by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani; and those, like former interior minister Abdullah Nuri, who want an end to the Khomeinist system. The popular movement is also divided, with different centers of leadership in competition against one another.

At the same time, the nation is heading for an economic meltdown — with an average of 1,000 people losing their jobs each day and inflation over 20 percent.

The military is also split; even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s Praetorian Guard, does not appear to be immune to splits. The defense minister, an IRGC general, has endorsed Ahmadinejad in glowing terms. However, the current IRGC commander, another general, has remained silent. On Monday, IRGC units refused to enter Tehran to quell the demonstrations. And in at least two cities, Shiraz and Mashhad, IRGC units stood by and watched anti-regime demonstrations without reacting.

We do not have a history of civil wars in Iran. But the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad tandem appears to be deliberately pushing the country toward such a situation.

LOPEZ: Do the Iranian people have any hope of a democratic revolution? TAHERI: Most certainly. The democratic discourse is already dominant in Iran. For the first time in decades, the Iranian intelligentsia is united in its support of democratization. The intelligentsia have been split between left and right from the 1920s onwards. But now that Communism is dead and other leftist ideologies have lost their appeal, all the rivulets are flowing back into a mainstream of democratic pluralism. Needless to say, Islamism has also become a bankrupt ideology, while traditional nationalism appears outmoded. The only lively option for most Iranians is democracy. Our nation has seen free elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it wonders why it should not have the chance to choose its own leaders. All the more so because Iran was the first Muslim-majority country to establish a parliament (in 1906) and hold free elections. Iran also has a rich history of political activity across the ideological spectrum. The Khomeinists have tried to impose uniformity on my people, just as other totalitarians — from Stalin and Hitler to Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung — tried in their respective lands. But they have failed. Iran is ready for pluralism, and it could develop the leadership to build a democratic system of government. LOPEZ: What happens if Iran attacks Israel, or vice versa? TAHERI: Iran as a nation has no reason to attack Israel. In fact, when we consider Iran as a nation-state, we see Israel as its natural ally. The reason is that Israel, like Iran, is opposed to an exclusively Arab Middle East. Both want a pluralist Middle East in which there is room for diversity; a Middle East where one finds Iranians, Turks, Kurds, Christians, and Jews, as well as Arabs. In all Arab countries — including Syria, which lives on a subsidy from Tehran — the name of the Persian Gulf is changed “the Arabian Gulf.” In Israel, however, it remains the Persian Gulf, as it has always been.

Most Arab countries — again including the mercenary regime in Syria — support the fiction that the Iranian province of Khuzestan, where 80 percent of Iran’s oil is located, is part of the “Arab homeland.” They call it “Arabistan” (Land of the Arabs) and support a number of secessionist groups operating in or close to the province. (Incidentally, I myself am from Khuzestan — I was born in its capital, Ahvaz.) Several Arab countries also claim sovereignty over three Iranian islands strategically located close to the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, however, makes no territorial claims against Iran. Iranians are proud that Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Iranian empire, liberated the Jews from bondage in Babylon some 2,500 years ago and helped them return to their ancestral land and rebuild their temple. During the Iran-Iraq war (1980–88), Israel helped smuggle key arms to Iran, helping us defeat Saddam Hussein. There is absolutely no objective reason why Iran, as a nation-state, should be an enemy of Israel, let alone want to go to war with it.

As the vehicle for the Islamic Revolution, however, Iran must be and is an enemy of Israel. The Khomeinists hope to assume the leadership of Muslims in the Middle East, thus creating what Ahmadinejad calls “the hard core of an Islamic superpower.” However, most Arabs are Sunni Muslims, and would find it hard to accept the predominantly Shiite Iran as the leader of an “Islamic superpower.” It is in the hope of seducing the Arabs that Ahmadinejad speaks of “wiping Israel off the map.” As a vehicle for the Islamic Revolution, Iran has been at war with Israel for 30 years, a proxy war that it has waged through agents and allies such as the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah, the Islamic Jihad, and, more recently, the Palestinian Hamas. Iran as a vehicle for revolution is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state. Iran as a nation-state, however, would see its interest in the preservation of Israel.

As for Israel’s attacking Iran, I think Israeli leaders will think carefully about what I have already said. Do they want to risk losing Iran as a strategic ally in order to score a tactical point against Iran as a vehicle for revolution? If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear installations, this might slow the program for a few years. But if the Khomeinist regime remains in power, the program could be revived. Briefly, I don’t think the Khomeinists will retaliate by directly attacking Israel itself. They would not want to risk an escalation that could ultimately force the U.S. to enter the fray in support of Israel. Instead, the Khomeinist regime will respond through its proxies among Lebanese and Palestinian radicals. LOPEZ: What should people never forget about Iran? TAHERI: As long as Iran is controlled by Islamofascists, it will remain a threat to America. Therefore, America’s interests and indeed its security require the emergence of a democratic regime in Iran. Successive U.S. administrations, from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama, have tried to appease the Khomeinist regime and failed. Remember the Soviet Union? It was always an existential threat as long as it was a totalitarian state, even during the so-called détente period. Today, Russia may be a rival, a competitor — even a nuisance — but it is not an existential threat to the United State. Strategically, the only realistic policy vis-à-vis the USSR was regime change. It is the same with Iran today. No one is asking the U.S. to invade Iran or even to help the opposition. But the minimum the U.S. can do is not swim against the tide of history in Iran. The tide of history is toward change. With every day that passes, Khamenei and Ahmadinejad — the men Obama hopes to woo — look increasingly like figures from another time and another place.