OPINION:
In late September, Tehran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and cruise missiles and drones aimed at an Aramco oil facility in Yanbu. President Trump and our allies are still deciding whether the U.S. will take action against the group.
On Sept. 3, the Iranian regime fired missiles and drones at American bases in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis seized the port of Mokha and the island of Perim at the mouth of the Red Sea, the group’s biggest territorial gains in years.
As we approach the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the Israeli hostages are home, but the regime that armed and trained their captors is still shooting.
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The Iranian regime is weaker than at any other point since 1979, but it still poses a threat to American troops and our allies.
Just like a wounded predator in the wild, a depleted Iran is the most dangerous kind of adversary. For 47 years, this regime has treated every ceasefire, pause and negotiation as time to prepare for the next round — and Hamas is the proof.
In July, Hamas agreed to a disarmament deal that gives it up to 250 days to hand over its weapons. Then Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas negotiator, declared that the group “will not implement any step” until Israel moves first.
That is not surrender. That is Tehran’s playbook being deployed in the Gaza Strip while the world congratulates itself on a “mission accomplished.”
On Jan. 26, Israeli soldiers recovered from northern Gaza the body of Ran (Rani) Gvili, a 24-year-old officer in the elite Yasam counterterrorism unit who was murdered on Oct. 7, 2023. He was the last of the 251 people Hamas dragged across the border to come home. Eighty-five returned in caskets. The hostage crisis lasted 843 days.
I know this regime in a way that no anniversary statement can capture. I was 6 when my family fled the Islamic Revolution, smuggled through the desert under burlap sacks while Iranian border police fired at us. The men who stole my homeland are the same men who armed the killers of Oct. 7.
The State Department’s report put it plainly: Iran’s “long-standing material, financial, and training support to Hamas enabled Hamas to execute the attack.” Hamas held the hostages while Tehran held the leash.
It was fitting that the war Hamas started arrived at the ayatollah’s door. On Feb. 28, U.S. and Israeli forces launched Operation Epic Fury, and within a day, Iran’s state media confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled my birth country for nearly 37 years, was dead.
Mr. Trump told the Iranian people, “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
Then the ceasefire came, and the regime did what it does every time the world pauses: It regrouped, rearmed and prepared for the next round. Mojtaba Khamenei now sits in his father’s chair, and last month, cells directed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps struck a power plant in the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline.
The 60-day negotiating window to which Washington agreed in June expired in August with nothing to show for it. In Lebanon, Israeli troops spent months besieging a Hezbollah tunnel complex beneath the Ali al-Taher ridge.
Inside Iran, according to Amnesty International, at least 52 people have been executed on political charges this year, a wave that accelerated after the start of Epic Fury.
The war is not a fight over Gaza. It is a campaign to dismantle every arm of Iran’s terror apparatus. The enemies are clear and present: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq and the IRGC cells targeting the Persian Gulf.
Each of these tentacles must be severed.
Finishing the job means ending the Iranian regime, not a “new phase” or a tollbooth deal on the Strait of Hormuz that leaves the IRGC collecting rent on the world’s oil. It means holding Baghdad to its Sept. 30 deadline to dissolve the Iran-backed militias; giving Riyadh the green light to break the Houthis on the Red Sea; hunting down the IRGC cells firing on our Gulf partners; and telling the Iranian people, who buried an estimated 36,000 of their own, according to opposition-affiliated Iran International, after the January uprising, that America will not abandon them.
The Iranian people are the regime’s first hostages, held for 47 years. My family escaped, but most others never got the chance.
Three years ago, the world learned what Tehran’s proxies do when given free rein. American intervention in the negotiation process brought Israel’s hostages home, and we must finish the job so that no one ever has to count the days again.
• Dr. Sheila Nazarian is a Los Angeles physician whose family escaped from Iran to America. She starred in the Emmy-nominated Netflix series “Skin Decision: Before and After.”
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