Since its inception, the Islamic Republic has been deceiving and lying to the West as its centrifuges churned away enriching uranium to a level only required for a weapons program.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
Just a few months after I was born in Iran, the Islamic (Demonic) Revolution took place, hijacking the country of my birth and, today 90 million Iranians, giving birth to the Islamic Republic. Make no mistake, the Islamic Republic was conceived by evil, born in sin, and against the United States to the core of its DNA. Anyone who thinks that a war against the Islamic Republic and the ayatollahs is wrong, does not know the history and does not understand the dangerous threats that it poses to all Americans.
At its inception, the Islamic Republic never provoked people to chant “All for Allah” or “Sharia Now”. The chants that three generations of Iranians have been brainwashed by are “Death to America”. It’s not just a catchy slogan but the game plan of the Islamists. They mean it. They have demonstrated it in many ways for nearly five decades.
Americans must never forget the hijacking US embassy on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, 52 of whom were held for more than 400 days until January 20, 1981.
The Islamic Republic is the head of the octopus of a global axis of terror that has been responsible for indoctrinating, funding, and arming countless Islamic terrorists who have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands.
Extremist Islam is not compatible with American and western Judeo-Christian values and Democracy. They seek not just to live by Sharia law, which is non-Western and anti-democratic, they seek to impose it on others. Islam subjugates women and minorities through intolerant and even evil misogyny that affords women rights with half those of men. As a woman and a Christian, I experienced this in countless ways before and during my arrest and imprisonment because of my faith. Anyone who cherishes democratic values and gives Islamic regimes like Iran a pass, is undermining the very spirit of democratic values.
From the beginning, the Islamic regime has strived for nuclear weapons, deceiving and lying to the West as its centrifuges churned away to enrich uranium at a level that can only be used in a weapons program. A nuclear Iran under the ayatollahs is an existential threat to the US and the world because they will use it.
Neutralizing Nuclear. The war waged against Iran today is preventing the far more dangerous war with a nuclear Iran of tomorrow.
A nuclear Iran will also trigger a nuclear arms race in the Arab/Islamic world, none of which can be trusted to have this most dangerous weapon, and each of which would feel the need to have them to defend themselves from Iran. The global nuclear threat to human life, and the world’s environment, would be radical and irreversible.
Indeed, America’s first, second, and third priority should be protecting American lives and interests. Americans need to understand a decisive war on the ayatollahs and IRGC is not optional but essential. Yes, Iranians would be free which is also a good enough reason. But Americans would also be free of this threat that, if they achieve, they will use.
The Islamic regime has not only openly declared its hostility toward the United States and spent years attempting to expand its influence, funding networks and seeking to infiltrate systems that safeguard our democracy. Its reach has extended beyond its borders, even exploiting criminal channels through agents in the US and around the world who have infiltrated themselves into positions of influence in politics, civic roles, media, and more. Eliminating the Islamic regime influence will force its agents out of business. That cannot happen soon enough.
Buying Time. Ready to once again lie and deceive, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi smiles while on his way to the first round of talks with the USA in Geneva. Within days, the US called his bluff as war broke out. (Photo:Bild: -/Iranian Foreign Ministry/dpa/sda)
This is not just a geopolitical challenge — it is an ideological one. The danger lies not only in weapons, but in ideas designed to erode values from within. History shows that destructive ideologies, when ignored, spread quietly until they become far more dangerous than any conventional threat, more than missiles or bombs.
If we care about the world our children will inherit, we must take this threat seriously. America is facing an adversary that openly calls for its destruction, and works to influence minds against the very principles that define our nation. To have ignored such a threat would not have made it disappear; it would have allowed it – like a cancer – to grow stronger.
Americans and the West must understand that removing the Islamic regime is not only about saving the Iranian people, but also about protecting the world and the future of their children from a serious threat that is spreading rapidly globally.
The Islamic Republic constantly worked to undermine US National Security interests. They have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands. They have penetrated the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. They have never stopped trying to achieve nuclear weapons, destabilizing the Middle East and the West. They sell cheap oil to China and drones and weapons to Russia, strengthening American adversaries.
Death on Display. May the nightmare soon come to an end like public executions in a bid to intimidate the Iranian people.
This is a historic opportunity to destroy them, and history and our children will not forgive us if we close our eyes to the threats that if not eliminated, future generations will inherit, or become victim to.
We cannot make a deal with an Islamic enemy that seek our destruction. They will lie, employing the Islamic principle of taqiyya, and hide their intentions at every turn, and wait to pounce until a leader of less fortitude is on the other side of the table. Defeating the Islamic Republic today is essential to defend humanity, preserve democracy and freedom for the future.
Brutal Crackdown. Iranian authorities responded to anti-government protests with an unprecedented deadly crackdown resulting in mass killings and serious injuries.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
If you think the dust has settled over the “Roedean affair” – as the cancelled tennis match between two top Johannesburg private schools (one of them Jewish), is being grandly called – then think again.
The “affair” became public knowledge within days of Roedean Girls High School refusing to play the scheduled match against King David Linksfield girls on February 3, 2026.
From that moment on, the anti-Israel lobby has been hard at working trying to turn a tennis match into an international propaganda tool.
It has not let go. The lobby appears determined to keep the “affair” moving in its desired direction, supported by extremist, Islamist, jihadist lobbies.
That’s despite both schools moving in the opposite direction. Both have gone past claims of antisemitism and back to their core business of educating children.
Roedean has resisted the lobby’s undisguised fury at its public (though prompted) written apology to King David on February 12. The apology does not admit antisemitism but acknowledges the “deep hurt” to the Jewish community.
Roedean showed good faith by promising to reschedule the match, which further infuriated the anti-Israel lobby. If Roedean honours its promise, the lobby will likely use it to maximise political capital for its own agendas.
The drivers of those agendas are not difficult to spot.
These include barely disguised calls for ongoing sports boycotts of King David schoolchildren; revival of claims of “genocide” and “baby killers” against Israel and Jews who support it, with “apartheid” slurs thrown in for good measure; and support for South Africa’s ill-fated, ongoing ICJ (International Criminal Court) lawsuit against Israel on a charge of genocide in Gaza.
Ironically, South Africa lodged the case against Israel just weeks after a genuine genocide attempt by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Underpinning these drivers is the anti-Israel lobby’s pathological anti-Zionism.
Legal and historical scholars say that anti-Zionism is a modern mutation of the ancient virus of Jew hatred known euphemistically in modern English as antisemitism.
It is also the lifeblood of the supposedly “pro-Palestinian” movement.
I say, “supposedly” because of the Orwellian manipulation of language lobbyists indulge in to justify support for groups that clearly don’t give a fig for Palestinians.
Hamas is a prime example. Video evidence shows it diverting humanitarian aid in Gaza into its own coffers, thereby worsening poverty and starvation, and shooting civilians who try to access the aid.
It also routinely uses public executions to stifle dissent and oppress marginalised groups, including LGBTQ+ people.
Hamas does not typically employ the theatrical “rooftop execution” method associated with extremist groups, such as ISIS. Instead, it maintains a systemic environment of criminalisation, torture and extrajudicial killing of LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaza.
It boasts of using its own people as “human shields” in conflict zones. On October 26, 2023, Hamas’s Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh declared in a Lebanese TV broadcast:
“The blood of the women, children and elderly …we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit …(and) resolve.”
Call me picky but I can think of adjectives other than “revolutionary” and “resolve” to describe spirits requiring such infusion to keep going.
Diabolical springs to mind.
I can also think of choice descriptions for Jews who voluntarily support groups that openly desire their destruction.
Unsurprisingly, among the first local anti-Zionist voices supporting Roedean and vilifying King David, was Jo Bluen, the public face of the bizarrely named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP).
Bluen Morally Bankrupt. A Hamas admirer, Jo Bluen celebrates the death of Israelis soldiers killed in Gaza by inserting inverted red triangle in her social media posts. (Source Instagram. jo bluen (@jozi_blue) • Instagram photos and videos)
I say, “bizarrely named”, because there’s something unhinged about Jews voluntarily supporting groups whose goal is the same as Nazis intended for them in Germany.
The Nazis wanted to make their country “Judenrein” or “Judenfrei” – “cleansed” or “free” of Jews, according to the National Socialist term applied in the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. Hamas and cohorts work towards the same goal extended to the entire world.
The best Bluen says about Zionism is that it is “a fascist project” and “settler colonialisation”. The worst? She accuses King David of being “prepared to sacrifice its own children at the altar of a wild and violent zionism (sic) that is deeply racist and misogynistic.”
No matter: to anti-Israel lobbyists, facts are less important than rhetoric and theatrics.
In a September 2025 article in an online magazine ironically titled Critical Thinking, Bluen accuses “Israel and its accomplices” of having “murdered nearly 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the genocide in under two years since 2023, half a million of whom are children.”
Even Hamas’s own thumb-sucked figures on the civilian and child casualty rates since October 7 never reached such stratospheric heights.
At most, the terror group claimed around 70,000 civilian deaths in Gaza. Its Ministry of Social Development proved that false with its plans in early February 2026 to pay stipends to “50,000 widowed families.” In other words, to the widows of 50,000 combatants!
Bluen, like Hamas, continues a practice that the Nazis introduced of distinguishing Jews and other groups in concentration camps with inverted red triangles. Hamas uses the symbol to identify Jewish and Israeli targets. Bluen adopted it on a social media post celebrating the deaths of IDF soldiers in Gaza.
Anti-Israel lobbyists often resort to pulling the race card when all rational argument fails them. Bluen is no exception.
She calls Zionism a “patriarchal white supremacy” and claims that King David deliberately “targeted” Roedean’s (first black) principal Phuti Mogale. That was probably news to Roedean’s leadership and Mogale, who reportedly resigned rather than waited to be pushed.
Bluen and others also criticise King David schools as bastions of Jewish exclusivity, yet not all its pupils are Jewish. King David Linksfield’s high school’s head girl in 2024 was a Chinese girl and not from a Jewish background. King David schools routinely accepted black children who were not allowed to attend state schools during the apartheid era.
On the global stage, “pro-Palestinian” Islamist activists continue to amplify voices supporting Roedean’s tennis boycott of King David.
New York-based journalist Azad Essa writes for Middle East Eye, an independent UK-based digital channel focusing on the Middle East, North Africa and the broader Muslim world.
Mad Hatter. Throwing his proverbial hat onto the court, former Al Jazeera, now New York-based journalist Azad Essa writing for Middle East Eye, praised the Roedean girls for refusing to play their King David counterparts accusing the Jewish Day School of “supporting apartheid and cheerleading a genocide.”
In an article on February 21, he frames the cancelled tennis match as a heroic, moral stand by the Roedean girls. He claims that they rightly refused to play King David schoolgirls because the school was “supporting apartheid and cheerleading a genocide.”
That’s a textbook study in the collective-guilt argument the anti-Israel lobby uses to demonise and delegitimise Israel.
Essa describes the King David school network as a tool of “settler-colonial ideology.” He quotes a parent comparing playing tennis at King David to “playing against a school still flying the apartheid flag.”
By this logic, Jewish schoolchildren are inherently complicit in the actions of a foreign state thousands of kilometres away simply by attending a particular school.
That’s not political activism. It’s the targeted exclusion of a specific community on the basis of their religion and cultural affiliation. It clearly violates South Africa’s Constitution.
In the South African Daily Maverick on February 25, Kalim Rajab, a Johannesburg-based, Oxford-educated corporate executive, plays the “Framing Game”. Rajab calls King David Linksfield’s “victory” over Roedean “pyrrhic”, with a “chilling” effect rather one that achieves due accountability.
He omits from his potted biography that he is Chair of the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF). The HSF honours one of South Africa’s most prominent and beloved Jewish anti-apartheid activists, who was also a committed supporter of Israel throughout her life.
Rajab writes, as one critic puts it, with the “measured cadence” of someone who has learned the most effective way to delegitimise a community’s experience of discrimination – by calling it a “strategy.”
He describes King David supporters as “successful in their strategy of framing the narrative as one where the school and its pupils were victimised because of their religion as opposed to any overt political ideology espoused.”
He uses the word “strategy” strategically – to transform victim into perpetrator and a factual description of the “affair” into an allegation of manipulation. Facts that emerged from leaked phone recordings between Roedean’s Mogale and King David head Lorraine Srage tell a different story.
Rajab then does something disturbing: he offers a tactical manual for future boycotts of King David schools and not just on sports fields. These could involve “silent peaceful protests by visiting schoolchildren, including wearing armbands, pins or bodywear to show Palestinian solidarity,” he helpfully writes.
Pupils could “conscientiously object to taking part in interactions with King David.”
Really? A columnist in a prominent South African publication advising on more effective boycotts of a Jewish school? What if columnists in mainstream South African publications published blueprints for boycotting Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Chinese or other schools?
Other fringe, local and usual-suspects ranged against King David include the Media Review Network’sIqbal Jassat and the ironically titled Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI).
All show predictable, monomaniacal obsession with one issue, one state and one tribe.
What escapes them all is that Zionists are not cheerleaders for war or participants in any “evil”, as British writer, theologian and “English gentile” Mark Pickles puts it.
Pickles similarly tears through the “genocide” narrative with consummate ease. It is, after all, a modern iteration of the medieval “blood libel” – that Jews murder non-Jewish children (traditionally Christians) to use their blood for baking matzah during Passover.
Pickles argues that the genocide claim is “as irrational as it is evil…highly damaging and dangerous.” It aims to justify “the murder of Jews, and all attempts – economic, diplomatic, and kinetic – to destroy the sole Jewish nation.”
Groups and organisations with a notoriously long history of antisemitism continue to push the claim with impunity. Yet the “true perpetrators of genocidal intent,” he says, are Islamist factions whose founding documents explicitly call for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
The premise on which the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” lobby hope to sustain the Roedean “affair” is that Zionist Jews are “complicit in genocide“.
That’s a shaky, dangerous premise.
As Canadian anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein warns, it is a way to mark Jews as “fundamentally stained and evil.” Anti-Zionists aim to “escalate all accusations toward the genocide libel… until it hardens into a global consensus,” Louis-Klein writes.
In this “new doctrine”, the Holocaust is no longer remembered but is “overwritten” to serve contemporary agendas.
This linguistic capture is likely what anti-Israel lobbyists hope will sustain the Roedean “affair” in their direction. The “quiet, student-led”, principled stance they claim to want will be the implementation of a hateful dogma against Jews.
It means that the time has come, as New York Times Jewish columnist Bret Stephens argues, for Jewish communities to end their “perpetual apology machine” in pro-Israel advocacy.
Change Gears. New York Times Jewish columnist Bret Stephens urges Jewish communities to shift from “perpetual” apology mode to “unapologetic Jewish confidence”.
He calls for a shift toward “unapologetic Jewish confidence” and “moral clarity” over Israel’s existence and right to defend itself.
The shift is now more necessary than ever because, as British-Jewish columnist and Man Booker Prize-winning author, Howard Jacobson said:
“Jews will never be forgiven for the Holocaust.”
Feature picture: Empty Court. In early February, when a group of girls from Jewish King David High School in Johannesburg travelled to nearby Roedean Girls High School girls’ school for a tennis match, they found no one at the courts.
About the writer:
Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
