The timing of the open war that Israel has just launched to defang the Iranian jihadi regime may have been a surprise to many, but the conflagration has been a long time coming. The Jewish people learned a terrible lesson in the Holocaust: When someone tells you they want to kill you, believe them.
It’s a lesson I’ve had to take to heart, thanks to the jihadi regime in Iran, the cancer that has poisoned the Middle East and cast a dark shadow over my native Iraq. In 2017, I had the honor to represent my country as Miss Iraq Universe. When I met my fellow contestant from Israel, Adar Gandelsman, the two of us took a selfie together in the name of peace.
Immediately, the Miss Iraq organization demanded that I remove the post, and I began to receive death threats that forced me and my family to flee Iraq. A few years later, pro-Iranian forces in Iraq changed the law to make any of its citizens who contact an Israeli, even for peace, liable for the death penalty.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the Iranian regime has been saying it wants to destroy the Jewish state and the United States, and its deeds match its rhetoric. May this Israeli operation pave the way for the destruction of the ayatollahs’ tyranny itself.
In 2001, former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani favorably contemplated nuclear warfare with Israel, saying Israel’s small geographic size meant that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.”
In 2005, Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted a conference called the “World Without Zionism,” in which he openly called for Israel’s obliteration, saying: “As the imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said, Israel must be wiped off the map.”
In 2018, Iranian Army Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi said Iranian forces were working to “annihilate” Israel and predicted they would succeed within 25 years.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Iran’s horrific threats were executed as a monstrous reality. Over the last 600 days of conflict, Israel has dealt powerful blows against Hamas and Hezbollah, taking out the senior leadership of both terrorist groups — a key factor in the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran’s closest ally, in a historic reversal for Tehran.
By Sarah Idan
