Category Archives: Politics

Is the Crack-up Boom Here ?

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Bloomberg News recently solicited advice from Argentinians who lived through that country’s high inflation on how Americans should cope with rising inflation. The Argentinians suggested Americans spend their paychecks as fast as possible to avoid future price increases. They also suggested taking out loans that can be paid back later in devalued currency.

These strategies may make sense for individuals. However, encouraging debt and discouraging savings is disastrous for the country. Relying on debt and spending one’s paycheck immediately encourages people to seek instant gratification instead of planning for the future. This depletes both economic and moral capital.

November’s 9.6 percent increase in the producer price index, combined with the consumer price index’s increase to levels not seen since the early 1980s, shows why fears of inflation have become the public’s number one concern. Even the Federal Reserve has acknowledged that inflation is not just “transitory.”

The Fed recently announced it is accelerating the timetable to reduce its monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed also announced it is planning three interest rate increases next year. However, the Fed plans to increase rates by no more than one percent. So even if the Fed does follow through on its promise to hike rates, it will do little if anything to combat rising prices. If the Fed allowed interest rates to rise to anything approaching market levels, it would make the federal government’s debt servicing costs unsustainable. This puts tremendous pressure on the Fed to maintain low rates.

The biggest victims of the Federal Reserve’s erosion of the dollar are lower- and middle-class Americans whose paychecks do not keep pace with the Fed-caused price increases. Yet many progressives still cling to the fallacy that average workers somehow benefit from continued dollar devaluation.

Progressives are even pushing the Fed to increase its money printing and regulatory activities to fight climate change and racism. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has embraced this “woke” monetary policy. President Biden’s reappointment of Powell and nomination of current Fed board member Lael Brainard (who is seen as more committed to a woke Fed than Powell) for vice chairman suggests the Fed will double down on this toxic mixture of cultural Marxism and so-called modern monetary theory.

Recent polls show Americans expect continued large price increases. This indicates we may be on the verge of what Ludwig von Mises called a “crack-up boom.” A crack-up boom occurs when the general population realizes that constant currency depreciation is a feature, not a bug, of central banking. This leads people to seek alternatives to government-issued currency and to factor rising prices into their plans. The crack-up boom will likely extend overseas as more countries reject the dollar’s world reserve currency status. This rejection will be driven by a combination of concern over America’s growing debt and resentment of America’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy.

Crack-up booms have historically facilitated the growth of authoritarian political movements. However, this is not inevitable. If those of us who know the truth spread the ideas of liberty to enough people, we may be able to move through the crack-up boom to a rebirth of liberty, peace, and prosperity. Steps in this direction include convincing Congress to cut spending, legalize competing currencies, and end the Fed.

Paul Craig Roberts

How Far Will Leftist Rulers Go in Destroying the Lives of 100 Million Unvaccinated?

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If they can order that you show your vax papers, why not your whole medical file? Or your voting history? If all it takes is the pen of a fascist, then why do we still call ourselves a free country?

333 million Americans. 30 percent still unvaccinated. That’s about 100 million. Probably a lot more than that when you consider the people not “fully vaccinated” or not getting booster shots (I talk to people in those categories daily.)

Let’s say 100 million, just to be conservative. Hitler slaughtered 6 million. Stalin killed 20 million.

The tyrants of our one-party Establishment (minus Florida and maybe Texas) have stopped at nothing to force people to get vaxed. They have shamed, demoralized, threatened, marginalized and made it impossible for 100 million people to make a living. Taking away a person’s livelihood–isn’t that like starving them?

In principle, how are today’s Bidenistas, Faucifascists, Karens and other tyrants any better than the Nazis and Communists of the last century? How far do you think they will go?

Leftists are playing with fire. When you gradually enslave a previously free people, they eventually wake up — and millions will not be placid. Millions are already very, very angry — more than most of them will show. Watch yourselves, Democrats. You would do well to lay off the fraud and not tamper with the upcoming two election cycles. Leave these millions free to express their rage that way.

Of course, we know tyrants will not listen. Tyrants are not wise. They fail to see that when you take away a man’s freedom, you place him in a position where he has nothing to lose. It’s not smart.

Latest headline: Fauci Says U.S. Should Consider Vaccine Mandates for Domestic Air Travel. This is what he does. He makes a bold staement about some new violation of liberty. Then he walks it back. Then a week or two later, Biden signs the order. When a court shoots it down, the court order is ignored. This is how our new dictatorship works.

I told you: they are not going to stop. America is an occupied country. No different than if a foreign enemy had invaded. Fauci is not a government official. He’s an open enemy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. As are Biden and the whole gang.

Clear your minds, and face the stark facts. This is not going to get better on its own, I am sorry to say.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Relationships Shouldn’t be Hard Work

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It’s a rare social event where somebody doesn’t ask me to tell them what spouses and couples complain about the most. I see so many problems: money, kids, in-laws (!) — it’s tough to nail it down. But if I had to, I would say that one of the key concerns is the issue of visibility. In other words, spouses hate it when their loved ones don’t pay attention to them. When you feel visible, you feel important.

The word “cherish” in the marital vows strikes at the core. When I hear people moralize on the sacrifices and struggles involved in a committed romantic relationship, I politely respond: Rubbish! If you’re fortunate enough to feel cherished by someone else and to cherish them in return, then there should be nothing sacrificial or uncomfortable about it. Why would anyone want to give up such a good thing?

Cherishing and visibility apply to everyday life. For example, I’ll hear one partner say, “He’s always watching television,” or, “She’s always on the computer.” My first question is, “Do you want him to give up what he likes?” After a thoughtful silence: “No, of course I don’t. I just wish she wanted to be with me as well.”

Bingo! When you cherish someone, you’re motivated to be with him or her. So my question for the TV- or computer-loving spouse is, “Did you get married because you love to be with her?” Most of the time, the answer is, “Yes.” Then I ask, “Why are you cheating yourself out of these things by spending all your time elsewhere? Don’t you deserve those things you say you love about him or her? Would it be better if he or she just wasn’t there?”

Cherishing means treating your partner as a special person. You want to know his opinions, and you actively seek them out. You include her in your decisions. His feelings matter to you, even if you don’t always agree or understand. You don’t dismiss what she has to say or what she thinks — you try to understand. To do otherwise is a sad contradiction.

People who are together but aren’t very happy have, in most cases, simply neglected their relationship. They expected things to run on automatic. Deep down, they still cherish one another. If one or the other became ill or died, the grief would be monumental. The problem is that they’re not showing it while their partners are alive and well.

Spouses who don’t feel visible often feel hurt and angry, but that isn’t going to change anything. What’s required for change sounds more like, “I used to be treated better, but how did I used to treat him?” When you’re hurt, the tendency is to think just the opposite: “She used to treat me nicely, but now she doesn’t. She’s changed.” Well, that might be true, but what did YOU do to contribute to the problem?

I’m not encouraging people to blame themselves unfairly, but the truth is that it almost always takes two to make a relationship flounder. And it takes two to bring it back on course. Leading the way yourself is a good start. If your spouse still loves you, he’ll respond in kind, and appreciate your efforts. If he doesn’t respond, it will be hard to face the fact that perhaps he doesn’t love you, but you’ll be no worse off than when you started.

It’s human nature to want to feel like you’re the center of someone’s universe simply because you’re … YOU. It’s a mistake to associate it with sacrifice, hard work or other misery. If a relationship starts with two people feeling cherished, but develops into something different, then both parties must take responsibility for identifying their roles in causing things to go awry.

When you live a long time in a house, it eventually needs some renovation. Relationships are that way, too. People change. The fact that you’ve become unhappy is no reason to divorce or break up. More likely, somebody has stopped feeling cherished. With a little effort, sweetened by the promise of things “getting back the way they used to be,” both of you can become uniquely visible, and happy, once again.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

The Establishment Wants to Crush the Uppity Peasants

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Some guy named Jared Schmeck recently mocked the senile old pervert who is masquerading as our president by getting His Crustiness to affirm “Let’s go, Brandon!” This humiliation of the regime figurehead, piled upon the myriad other humiliations he has brought upon himself – failing to pass infrastructure, Afghanistan, putting the “can” in “Vatican” – is intolerable to the establishment. This uppitiness must be stopped.

And it’s even less tolerable because “Let’s Go, Brandon” is a manifestation of the class warfare that increasingly characterizes American society. It’s the cry of the working class, bold and joyous, utterly uncontrollable. It has energy and cheer, while the pathetic moaning of the ruling caste’s spokescreatures is rote, boring, and bereft of any power. The regime-approved memes our elite’s minions repeat on cable and in social media are the chant of serfs.

So, the garbage regime and it’s ridiculous legacy media minions must try to stifle this rebellion. They especially hate that this in no Astroturf meme passed around on some media server list after being decreed from on high. LGB is infinitely more dangerous. It’s an organic response that is not pushed or guided, but that evolved totally outside the approved channels. They hate it because it is not theirs, and because they cannot direct it or tame it. So they try to squelch it. But it will come back even stronger. And worse, we’ll be laughing at them as we repeat it.

Their response is as predictable as it is pathetic, which is very. Who cares about the Waukesha leftist race murderer? Hell, who cares about the on-going bloodbaths in the blue cities? Some dude in Oregon dissed The Asterisk! Get the Action News Team mobilized stat! So, we have the media breathlessly reporting his name, hoping that there he will be harassed and fired and otherwise turned into an object lesson for the benefit of the proles.

The most hilarious part is when the ruling caste’s Renfields leverage “rules” and “norms” against disrespecting the dementite-in-chief, expressing shock and horror that Jared the Pleb did not abase himself before Hunter’s daddy sufficiently. You might wonder when the respect the president rule came into effect, but that glaring hypocrisy is intentional. They want you to know that you must play by rules that they are free to ignore. It solidifies your status as second-class citizens.

You must know your place, and they intend to teach it to you. First, they reported that Jared says his crack was “a joke,” as if to paint him as backtracking and trying to excuse what he should be proud of. They want to paint him as broken and repentant, as if participating in some Red Guard self-criticism session or a modern university race/gender seminar. But it’s an obvious lie. Yeah, smart media people, he literally meant Biden was to perform a challenging act of love upon himself. The thing we need to understand is that our enemies are just not very good at their jobs. And you can make it even more difficult for them. Here’s a rule, people – the media will bend whatever you say to serve their narrative so, if you choose to speak to the legacy media at all, it should be a nonstop string of profanity that is utterly exploitable.

Second, we get the blue checks announcing that “free speech does not mean freedom from consequences.” That’s precisely what it means, though. They are against free speech, and you must squash their fascism into their faces at every opportunity. They will still try to get this guy fired or arrested or whatever. Remember, they are communists. They would murder him if they could – luckily, their lack of guns and upper body strength prevents that.

“Kurt, that is crazy talk! You are crazy.”

Those who doubt the drooling, fussy fury of our enemies and their desire to see us enslaved or dead should spend a little time on social media. Besides their hatred for Jared, look at their COVID death wishes for those refusing to wear a face thong or take the medicine that does not work as advertised. If they find out this Jared guy is unvaccinated, they may literally explode and splash those around them with pus and bile.

Remember, this is all part of their plan for soft tyranny. At the momnt, they do not have the power to make you do anything. They must instead convince you to make yourself comply. By showing Jared Schmeck being harassed and harangued by the sex pest enablers at CNN and elsewhere, they hope to scare you into silence. They hope to make you choose to conform and obey.

Here’s the other tiresome part – the Conservative, Inc., crew decrying Jared Schmeck’s disrespect to a buffoon who deserves none. This is all class solidarity, folks. LGB did not spring up among the supine sissies who make up the GOP establishment. It came from the base, and they hate the base. Like the Tea Party, like Trump, they did not create it and they cannot control it, so they hate it. LGB demonstrates a contempt for the institutions, institutions that these people hope to run themselves. They like the system, people. “Brandon” is about burning the whole sorry system down; the pseudo-conservative timeservers are just about changing the management to put themselves in charge.

So, we get lots of pearl clutching about how those uncouth rubes shockingly refuse to observe the rules and norms that apply only to those uncouth rubes. They need to know their place, which is holding trays in the background wearing masks as their betters dine and sip ungagged.

It’s very very very important to obey the rules, you know, but only for you to do it. Not us. Just you. Oh well, I never. The Margaret Dumonts of conservatism, dressing up their shabby stake-holding as “decency,” are ridiculous. The good thing is that they are incompetent as well – they win only if we choose to let them. Choose for them to pucker and bend down.

Kurt Schlichter

Is War Between Israel and Iran Inevitable

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In Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) annual assessment of the security situation and challenges to be faced in 2022, it appears that a moderate improvement in the security situation surrounding Israel is expected. The Israeli government approved the proposed budget submitted by the Defense Ministry. “Israel’s defense establishment will receive NIS 58 billion, an increase of NIS 7 billion.” The extra allocation takes into account the possible operations against the Iranian nuclear facilities and other maligned Iranian schemes. According to reports, Israel would purchase various types of manned aircraft, intelligence-gathering drones, and unique munitions needed for a possible attack on Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear sites.

The evolving strategic cooperation Israel has now with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, is a definite positive development for Israel. In addition, halting the Iranians and their proxies from advancing toward Israel’s Golan Heights, and the support Putin’s Russia is giving to Israel’s operations against Iran is clearly a positive development. The Russians have not obstructed Israeli aerial operations against Iran’s shipment of arms to Hezbollah, nor the Israeli attacks on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases and their proxies in Syria.

What is difficult to predict, however, is when Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist groups in Gaza would choose to launch another mini-war with Israel. During the May 2021 war, or as Israel calls it, Operation Guardian of the Walls, Hamas, and the PIJ suffered significant losses in personnel and arms. Many of their top engineers were eliminated, and their “secret weapons” (mini-submarines, and drones carrying bombs) were destroyed, along with a large quantity of their rocketry. The IDF has recommended a tough approach against Hamas’ attempts to rearm.

Although the Lebanese Shiite-Muslim Hezbollah is far more powerful than its fellow terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, Sunni-Muslim Hamas, it is exercising far more restraint in operating against Israel. Having achieved supreme political and military power in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah knows that a war with Israel at this time would jeopardize all that he and Hezbollah have managed to accomplish. The 2006 Second Lebanon War Hezbollah waged against Israel was a devastating one for the Lebanese. A war now would be even more costly for the suffering Lebanese. While both Hamas and Hezbollah’s raison d’être is the destruction of the Jewish state, Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, will be held accountable in the confessional Lebanese system of government. 

The chances for a war initiated by Israel’s enemies, i.e., Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are projected to be low in 2022. The explosive situation that existed in the last few years on Israel’s northern border has been reduced, and it appears that neither Iran nor Hezbollah are ready for a full-scale war with Israel. Addressing Israel’s Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last month, Israel’s Chief-of-Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi asserted that Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias in Syria were obstructed from receiving precision strategic weapons including additional missiles, drones, and air-defense batteries that could hinder the maneuverability of the Israeli Air Force. But, given the US and its western allies reluctance to use the military option against Iran, and the possibility that the US and the other JCPOA western members might settle for a partial deal is certain to provide Iran with incentives to incite a war against Israel either directly or through its proxies.

At this juncture, the Iranian regime does not have the support of the Iranian people to engage Israel in a devastating war. Iran has not fully recuperated from the 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the US imposed sanctions have created a sharp contraction in the economy. We might also add the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on Iran’s economic woes. The dictatorship of the Ayatollahs, while being less concerned with the hardship of its people, is very much concerned about preserving its power. As such, witnessing recent demonstrations throughout the country with calls such as “down with the dictator,” a reference to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime is fearful of an uprising among its repressed, predominately Sunni minorities, including Kurds, Ahwazi-Arabs, and Baluchis, in addition to the culturally deprived large Azeri minority. Urban Persians and those classified as the educated middle-class are also resentful of the regime.

Once Iran becomes a verifiable “threshold nuclear state,” Jerusalem is likely to change its security assessment, and Israel might act unilaterally to stop the existential threat a nuclear Iran poses to the Jewish state. In that case, war with Iran is inevitable. Although the Biden administration has been consulting with Israel regarding the ongoing negotiations in Vienna, Washington has been dead set against any Israeli unilateral action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel’s Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, pointed out that Israel’s defense establishment “is committed to safeguarding a strong, stable, fortified Israel, and ensuring that Iran does not develop an existential threat to Israel. We will continue to act with responsibility and to safeguard our independence of action in any place and sector, and secure Israeli citizens.”

The IDF has taken into consideration that an operation to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities would more than likely create a major conflagration, involving Hamas, and Hezbollah. Israel is counting on its three-pronged missile defense systems: short-range Iron Dome, medium-range David’s Sling, and long-range Arrow III missiles. In addition, Israel has the use of the Patriot surface-to-air interceptor missiles. Iran does have the ability to deploy missiles, drones, and cruise missiles, though its Air Force still deploys older generation US aircraft, and the US sanctions curtail Iran’s ability to acquire updated western military technologies. Israel’s technology, on the other hand, is at least a few steps ahead of the Iranians, and it has the capabilities (albeit not absolute) to protect its civilians and military personnel. In the near future, and in view of the increase in the defense budget, projects that were delayed will now be reactivated. Israel’s high-tech industries will be moving into laser technologies and electromagnetic beams, as well as cyber and artificial intelligence (AI). 

The fifth annual Blue Flag drill was held in Israel’s Negev last October with thousands of troops and dozens of aircraft from around the world including the US, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, as well as personnel from Australia, Croatia, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, and South Korea. Israel’s Air Force (IAF) commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, invited as his personal guest the commander of the United Arab Emirates Air Force, Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Nasser Mohammed al-Alawi.

Gen. Norkin believes that the international drill reaffirms the IAF’s legitimacy to act against external threats. He said, “We are living in a very complicated region, and the threats to the State of Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran are only increasing. Holding the international exercise in this current reality, while continuing our public and overt operational activities on all fronts, is of utmost strategic importance, and has an extensive impact over the IAF, the IDF, and the state of Israel.

Finally, security cooperation and intelligence sharing with regional states, and in particular the Gulf states of UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, provides Israel with a new sense of confidence. Yet, one must caution Israel and the IDF in particular, not to resort to overconfidence, or reducing its vigilance.

Notes from the Underground

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Socialism is legalized crime. It makes sense that socialist cities are encouraging violent crime to rise. It’ what the DemComs want. America’s great cities will join the ash heap of history, sadly.

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President Joe Biden’s first year in office has resulted in record illegal immigration to the United States and defiance to constructing new border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

By the end of the month, analysts project that nearly two million illegal aliens will have attempted to cross the southern border since Biden took office — hundreds of thousands of which have been released into the U.S. interior. [Breitbart News 12-28-21]

DemComs smugly assume they will be in power forever, and this is why. They figure bringing in all these illegals, who fled authoritarian countries, will lead them to embrace an authoritarian, one-party America in exchange for freebies. Will it work? Dishonest, collectivist schemes always have unintended, unexpected consequences. We shall see what happens.

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In a population of almost 40 million Californians, 1 percent of taxpayers account for nearly half of the state’s income tax revenues. And Elon Musk, the biggest of the “1 percenters,” just walked. [Lawrence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education]

California is heavily dependent on the top 1 percent of income earners to finance their unlimited, expansive socialist programs. Those top income earners are starting to flee. How can California be so stupid? They’re counting on the REST of the country to adopt their policies, so there will be nowhere else to flee. They’re counting on the DemComs to always be in power nationally, to make the US completely socialist, so California won’t seem so oppressive by comparison. They’re also counting on Florida, Texas and other states NOT to secede if we continue on our present, utterly destructive path. Quite a tall order.

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“Common people will believe anything if they are frightened. But critically-thinking people will look for deception and find the truth through the smokescreen of fear. Listen to critical thinkers, not fearful reactors.” — Dr. Suzanne Humphries

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“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Stephen Hawking

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“I think college is basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they are not for learning. You can learn anything for free.” — Elon Musk

Conflict: The Iran Regime and its Citizens

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Posted on 12/27/2021, 2:20:05 PM by Kaslin

In July, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) hosted a three-day conference to discuss the future of the Islamic Republic and the prospects for a change of government facilitated by the domestic activist community. Those prospects already appeared substantial in the wake of the previous month’s boycott of the country’s presidential election, which reportedly caused voter turnout to be the lowest in the four-decade history of the clerical regime.

The boycott inspired NCRI members and supporters to conclude that pressure on the regime had not been seriously alleviated over the past year in spite of the fact that the coronavirus pandemic caused a decline in large-scale public unrest. Prior to the pandemic, Iran was experiencing a virtually unprecedented growth in that unrest, with one nationwide uprising encompassing more than 100 localities in January 2018 and another being nearly twice as large in November 2019.

Both uprisings featured slogans like “death to the dictator” which evoked public support for the goal of regime change. This message was reinforced afterwards by smaller-scale demonstrations and by the boycott not only of the presidential election but also earlier elections for parliament seats and governorships. In each case, “Resistance Units” affiliated with the NCRI’s main constituent group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK), promoted non-participation as a means for Iranian citizens to “vote for regime change.”

The MEK’s influence over those boycotts was clearly an extension of the influence it had demonstrated in the midst of the uprisings. Although regime authorities had long sought to dismiss the democratic opposition as poorly organized and lacking in popular support, this narrative effectively evaporated in 2018 when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei acknowledged that the MEK had “planned for months” to popularize anti-government slogans and lead protests in every province.

This message was reinforced by Khamenei and others in the context of the subsequent uprising, and even after that movement was suppressed via an extraordinary outpouring of violence, authorities continued to warn about the potential for the MEK to lead further protests and continue expanding its social profile. Such warnings persisted even during the pandemic-related downturn, and have since been proven prescient by new waves of protests.

While many of those protests have been focused on specific grievances such as poverty-level government wages, poor resource management, water shortages, and blackouts, many of them have still featured the demands for regime change that defined the uprisings in 2018 and 2019. Those demands have also been repeated by Resistance Units in the form of public displays that risk arrest for their creators by featuring images of Mrs. Rajavi, or by burning pre-existing public images of the supreme leader.

Behind all of these activities, there appears to be a growing sense that the problems currently facing Iranian society can only be solved through the ouster of the clerical dictatorship. Mrs. Rajavi highlighted this perception in the July conference and concluded that it would be a driving force behind the unprecedented increase of “hostility and enmity between the Iranian regime and society” throughout the year to come.

In offering that prediction, she recognized and praised the very same trends that regime authorities had recognized with a sense of mounting dread. The regime and the Resistance appear to be in agreement about the vulnerability of the clerical dictatorship, though the former is working to conceal it while the latter is working to exploit it. The outcome of this competition may very soon be determined by whether Iran’s foreign adversaries are also able to recognize the same vulnerability, and whether they choose to facilitate Tehran’s concealment or to join the NCRI in adding to pressure on the regime.

Such recognition shouldn’t be difficult to achieve. The Iranian regime’s actions both at home and abroad have frequently betrayed its own vulnerability for all to see. Even the installation of Ebrahim Raisi as president, over the clear objections of the Iranian people, was indicative of just how much the regime felt threatened by the recent growth of unrest.Raisi’s primary claim to fame is as one of the leading perpetrators of a massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988, and this legacy of human rights abuses was reinforced during the 2019 uprising, when Raisi was elevated to the presidency.

Even the installation of Ebrahim Raisi as president, over the clear objections of the Iranian people, was indicative of just how much the regime felt threatened by the recent growth of unrest.

Raisi’s primary claim to fame is as one of the leading perpetrators of a massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988, and this legacy of human rights abuses was reinforced during the 2019 uprising, when Raisi oversaw key aspects of the crackdown as head of the judiciary. His ascension to the presidency was characterized by Mrs. Rajavi as an emerging source of the aforementioned “hostility and enmity.” And even before Raisi was inaugurated in August, the growth of unrest lent support to that conclusion.

Of course, Supreme Leader Khamenei wouldn’t have chosen Raisi as president if he did not believe that the “butcher of 1988” would be capable of overcoming that unrest. But his ability to do so may depend in large part on whether the international community choses to turn a blind eye to his culpability for crimes against humanity, or whether it opts instead to exert more pressure on his administration and on the regime itself.

Only by adopting the latter option will Western powers be fulfilling their solemn duty to safeguard human rights for vulnerable groups throughout the world. But what is just as important is the fact that this strategy will challenge Tehran’s longstanding impunity and thus make it less likely that the regime will expand its nuclear activities, its financing of international terrorism, or any of its other malign activities.

Beyond that, new international pressure on the Iranian regime would go a long way toward supporting the democratic opposition in its efforts to facilitate regime change. This goal has been absent from Western policymaking for a very long time, but the ongoing trend of domestic unrest in the Islamic Republic should awaken lawmakers to the fact that regime change is closer at hand than ever before, and more attainable than many observers ever thought possible.