In the waning days of World War II, even the drug-addled Adolf Hitler knew the end was near. On March 19, 1945, Hitler issued what became known as the “Nero Decree.” As Allied forces closed in, Hitler ordered a scorched-earth policy within Germany’s own borders.
All industrial plants, transport facilities (bridges, railways), and communication networks were to be destroyed in order to leave the Allies “nothing but scorched earth.”
Hitler famously told Albert Speer that if the war was lost, the German nation would have proved itself “weak” and unworthy of survival. He believed the “best” Germans had already died in battle, leaving only the “inferior” to face the consequences.
It was Speer who, for the first time, disobeyed a directive from Hitler and refused to pass on the “Nero Decree” to military units in the field. That was the major reason that Speer, heavily involved in the slave labor program, was spared the gallows.
On April 12, 1945, Joseph Goebbels ordered the Berlin Philharmonic to perform the finale of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. In a grim touch, Hitler Youth distributed cyanide capsules to the audience during the performance. Hitler took his life on April 30, along with his wife Eva Braun, as well as Goebbels and his entire family.
The massacres of Iranian protesters in January showed a regime willing to do anything to remain in power. The shackles have been removed on the fanatical Basij as well as the Revolutionary Guards, who deliberately mowed down row upon row of protesters with automatic gunfire.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made it clear that any attack by the U.S. on Iran will start a regional war. Is that just bluster, or can Iran really precipitate a Middle Eastern war on its own?
Khamenei will do his utmost to get Israel involved in any conflict with the U.S. If he can do that, he will get his wish of a regional conflict. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is smarter than that. Israel can absorb some blows from Iran, respond proportionately, and leave Tehran and its allies with no place to go.
It’s the aftermath of a U.S. attack that should worry us.
UnHerd:
Do not be fooled by the worldliness of Iran’s artistic and literary culture or the prosperity and accomplishments of its diaspora. For much of its post-Islamic history, Iran has contained a minority of fanatics; the difference is that today’s fanatics have guns in their hands and their backs to the wall. This is what Hatam Ghaderi refers to as the revolutionary “hard core” which has gathered around Khamenei, and is composed of Revolutionary Guardsmen, hardline clerics and members of the Basij militia.
They learned their trade fighting small, dirty wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen; their worldview formed in prayer halls and barracks where a hatred of the godless West is propagated alongside a deep yearning for the return of the 12th Shia imam, who disappeared from view 10 centuries ago and will emerge to inaugurate an epoch of justice and peace. Religious meetings are conducted by men who sing of martyrdom and purity; they regard the killing of godless “rioters” acting at the behest of Israel as a virtuous act. With blood already on their hands, they have no way back into general acceptability, and nowhere to go but further and further into their own fantasies of martyrdom, all the while nurturing fond expectations of divine intervention. There is no reason to exclude Ali Khamenei from their number.
UnHerd’s Christopher de Bellaigue does not think that the Iranian theocracy will die a quick death.
“The correct analogy is not with the kleptocracy that melted away with the fall of Assad but with those members of the Waffen-SS who carried on fighting even after Hitler’s death in 1945, exhibiting the same unappeasable contempt for death and hatred of their enemies that they did when he was alive.”
That means that even if the mullahs are overthrown (probably by Revolutionary Guards who aren’t getting paid), there will be a civil war between those still loyal to Khamenei and those looking to supplant him.
The Islamic Republic is unlikely to survive. “It’s people hate it too much,” writes de Bellaigue. How long it takes before the last vestiges of theocratic rule are wiped away will determine how far along the Iranians are in fulfilling their leader’s vision of Götterdämmerung.
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