Three-minute read
History rarely repeats itself in identical form, but its most dangerous chapters often begin with the same fatal error: mistaking the survival of a dictatorship for its strength, and mistaking appeasement for realism. In the aftermath of the recent military confrontation involving the United States, Israel, and the Iranian regime, some voices in the West have rushed to draw the wrong conclusion. Because the clerical regime did not collapse under bombardment, they present this as proof of its resilience and argue, once again, for a return to the same failed policy that helped bring the region to its present catastrophe: appeasement.
This argument is not only morally bankrupt; it is strategically false. The survival of a totalitarian regime after external strikes does not prove its legitimacy, stability, or popular support. It proves only that airstrikes alone cannot replace a political strategy rooted in the organized will of the oppressed people. The Iranian regime has not endured because it is strong; it has endured because, for decades, Western policy has repeatedly rescued it from the consequences of its own crimes. Through concessions, negotiations, sanctions relief, hostage deals, and the systematic sidelining of the Iranian Resistance, the West has given Tehran time, money, legitimacy, and political breathing space.
The disease is familiar. In the 1930s, the free world watched a fascist menace gather strength in Europe and chose accommodation over confrontation. That illusion did not moderate the Nazis; it emboldened them. Today, the West has repeated the same catastrophic mistake with the theocracy in Tehran, clinging to the belief that a regime built on repression at home and terrorism abroad can somehow be managed, contained, or softened through diplomacy.
As the world of today is still plagued by evil states and various terror groups, it is imperative to get a good sense of #Tehran’s nefarious hostage-taking policy and the need for a different approach.https://t.co/ieaaOkZb6y
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) April 18, 2023
The parallels between the anti-Nazi resistance and the Iranian Resistance are profound, but so too is the tragic betrayal they have faced. Just as early warnings about the Third Reich were ignored in favor of diplomatic concessions, the West has spent decades enriching and emboldening Iran’s ruling clerics. Yet, in their pursuit of this disastrous appeasement, Western powers went even further: they actively sacrificed the very people fighting the regime. To placate Tehran, the West banned, defamed, and cracked down on the Iranian Resistance.
But the Resistance did not break. With iron-clad determination and deep societal roots, they withstood the onslaught, fighting back to legally defeat these Western oppression campaigns and shatter the political labels meant to silence them. They survived, but the West’s illusion of managing a totalitarian state has ended in complete disaster.
Today, Western nations are reaping exactly what they sowed. The consequences of their appeasement have breached their own borders. European and American citizens are routinely taken hostage to be used as diplomatic bargaining chips. Global economic arteries are continually choked by threats in the Strait of Hormuz. And most glaringly, Iranian Shahed drones are raining down on Ukraine, making a European war infinitely more costly, devastating infrastructure, and rapidly reshaping the political landscape of the continent. The West learned the hard way that dealing with evil only invites it into your own home.
NCRI Editorial: Appeasement with #Iranian Regime Cannot Change its Fate, Only Extend the Sufferinghttps://t.co/LkEJxCXVBN
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) October 1, 2025
The regime’s ambition, much like the Nazis’, was never meant to be confined to its own borders; it dreamed of global subjugation driven by radical religious fundamentalism. If not for the Iranian Resistance—who took staggering risks to act as the world’s early warning system, exposing the regime’s clandestine nuclear sites and missile networks—Tehran might have already married its extremist ideology to a functional nuclear bomb.
Yet, despite the drones, the hostages, and the nuclear brinkmanship, Western capitals still hesitate, clinging to the cowardly hope of not upsetting the regime. They have failed to learn from how WWII began, but they must urgently remember how it ended: totalitarianism cannot be managed, reformed, or contained; it must be defeated.
When the world finally woke up to the Nazi threat, the cost of defeating it was catastrophic, measured in millions of lives and ruined nations. Today, this looming global catastrophe can still be prevented, but the paradigm has shifted. The solution does not require foreign boots on the ground, military invasions, or Western tax dollars. The men and women fighting in the shadows inside Iran are willing to pay the ultimate price for their own liberation. All they need is for the free world to finally abandon its appeasement, formally acknowledge their Resistance, and enforce the total, uncompromising diplomatic isolation of the regime they are fighting to destroy.