By Dr. Andras Simonyi
More than twenty years ago I wrote a piece for the Financial Times “How the Stratocaster [aka the electric guitar] beat the [Russian] Kalashnikov” about the impact of rock music on the youths of Eastern Europe. It was inspired by the Mullahs banning the Beatles in Iran. I concluded the article expressing the hope that one day I will play with my rock band, the Coalition of the Willing, on Main Square in Teheran.
President Trump finally did what previous U.S. presidents should have done. He drew a red line for Iran’s mullahs, and when they crossed that line he took his own words seriously. Of course it’s way too early to tell how the Iran situation will unfold. By now we know, the brutal, murderous Iranian regime is making one miscalculation after the other. It scares me to think of the naïveté of those who would choose appeasement over confrontation, any time. Have no doubt, the regime would have used its nuclear capability if it had one and it will, if we allowed them to acquire one. We know how it has continually disrupted our societies, how it has helped create a mess in big cities of America and Europe, and how it has murdered its opponents at home and abroad. It won’t stop doing it, unless we stop them now. Like we should have years ago, but chose for appeasement instead.
Those demonstrating on the streets of New York, London and elsewhere in the free world in support of the Iranian regime against the USA, mourning “supreme leader” Ali Khamenei are the ideological descendants of those who protested in support of the Soviet Union and Communism against the USA in the eighties. The analysts, the political “scientists’ (politics is NOT a science!) who are arguing that regime change in Iran isn’t possible, or that we should tread carefully, not support it actively, are successors in the chairs of Universities, in think tanks that forty years ago suggested regime change in Eastern Europe was not possible and that only chaos can follow, that the brutal communist regimes would never surrender. If it had been up to them, I’d probably be writing all this on a piece of saved toilet paper in the Gulag.
They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Arguably, the Iranian regime is more brutal than the late communist regimes were in the eighties. But there are some lessons to be learned from the tectonic changes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. The west was surprised at how sudden and fast the collapse of communism, a seemingly solid system was. But we who were inside the system, we knew that behind the facade, it was crumbling.
I have been arguing for a very long time, that today’s Iran resembles the former East Germany aka the “German Democratic Republic” of the day, more than any other former communist country. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, with that the GDR, the Communist East collapsed within a few hours. The GDR regime was brutal. It was seemingly stable. The older generation had been exhausted by the wait, had been suppressed into accepting that this is their fate, their destiny. They had been brain washed into thinking that the communist regime was there to stay for a thousand years. Yet, the youth of that country (and of the other central European countries), longed for freedom, for a future. They would not give up. They were driving change. The infamous STASI, like the IRGC in Iran was in full control of the situation, until it wasn’t, until it isn’t. The East German leadership was sclerotic, just like the Iranian leadership today, where even the possible successors were in their sixties and already sclerotic in their mindset. They, like the mullahs today, totally underestimated the impact of Western soft power on young people: rock and pop music, fashion, literature, movies. When you know that Iranian youths are listening to Ozzy and Taylor Swift, they wear Levi’s and read books by Krasznahorkai and watch David Lynch movies, you know they can’t be brainwashed by the Mullahs, you know they long for change.
Analysts in the west should keep in mind how wrong they were about the possibility of change then. They should stop blasting their analysis on why regime change in Iran is not possible. Stop over-analyzing the possible aftermath. Stop suggesting that only chaos can follow. They should rather focus on encouraging the people of Iran, help them figure out the how.
Trump is right: now is the historic opportunity. And Americans and Europeans should stand united in supporting of it. Getting rid of the Mullahs in Iran will be a game changer. It will have a major impact on not just the Middle East, on the security of Israel, but on Europe’s and America’s security as well. Yes, the impact of almost fifty years of a brutal regime will last for a long time, like communism has unfortunately left its mark on Central European societies, damaged its DNA. But reparation of those “genes”, even if it will take a while, is possible.
Most importantly, regime change will give the opportunity of a talented people to make a contribution to the world, to prosper and be a source of stability, rather than being an outcast, a threat to its neighbors, to Europe, to the United States.
Regime change in Iran is desirable and possible.
As I write this piece, I am getting my guitar and amp ready for the opportunity to play in Tehran.