The proverb "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" goes back to Roman times. But being repeated through the centuries doesn't mean it's always true.

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump ordered warplanes to bomb Iranian nuclear development sites. If you regard either or both of them as enemies, does that mean the Iranian regime is your friend?

Reader, do not fall into that trap. You can criticize, disdain or even despise the American and Israeli heads of government and still abhor the Iranian regime and everything it stands for.

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution led to the replacement of the country's monarchy by a dictatorship headed by clerics. By 1986, the U.S. State Department had already deemed the Iranian regime "the world's leading exporter of terrorism." And no wonder. There's little doubt the Iranian theocracy instigated and supported a 1983 bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American Marines and other service members.

The Iranian regime also targeted Jews wherever they might be found. In the most notorious incident, 85 people were killed and more than 300 injured in a 1994 explosion at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Prosecutors placed the blame on Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and other officials.

The export of terrorism, of indiscriminate attacks aimed at the United States, Israel and Jews, has continued over the past three decades. During the first Trump administration, the State Department held: "The Iranian regime is responsible for the deaths of at least 603 American service members in Iraq since 2003. This... is in addition to the many thousands of Iraqis killed by the IRGC's (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) proxies."

Trump has a well-deserved reputation for taking any action personally. His Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared, "The Iranian regime has been trying to murder President Trump and other American officials for years." The Biden Justice Department charged an Iranian agent of also "plotting to assassinate former President Donald Trump's national security advisor John Bolton."

The Iranian regime has supplied Russia with weapons including drones and ballistic missiles for its use in its aggression against Ukraine, an American ally. In 2024, the Pentagon reported, "The United States has confirmed reports that Iran has transferred shipments of Fath 360 close-range ballistic missiles to Russia, which we assess could employ them within weeks against Ukraine, leading to the deaths of even more Ukrainian civilians."

The longstanding claims by the Iranian regime that it was developing enriching uranium for peaceful purposes is belied by its actions. Uranium enriched to around 4% is adequate to generate electrical power. Before the recent Israeli and American bombings, Iran had reached purity levels of 60% from which it's relatively quick to reach the 90% level required for nuclear bombs. Moreover, the key installation where the enrichment process would take place was Fordow. This installation was guarded by 300 feet of concrete and anti-aircraft missiles, protection hardly required for a plant devoted to peaceful uses of uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported this spring that Iran had violated its rules intended to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

For years, the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameini has threatened the end of Israel. In 2014, he called in a tweet for its "annihilation." In 2015, he said, "Israel will not exist in another quarter century." A digital clock in Tehran was even erected counting down the days until 2040 when Israel would supposedly disappear. (Israel reported its warplanes blew up the clock on June 23.)

Threats of annihilation together with clandestine development of nuclear weapons could only lead Israel to regard the current Iranian regime as an existential threat to its people.

Of course, Iran and Israel share no border. It's about 1,000 miles from the Israeli capital of Jerusalem to Tehran. The Iranian regime has long embraced a strategy of using militias and armed terrorist groups neighboring Israel, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to foment terrorism and missile attacks. As the U.S. State Department found in 2019, Iran is an "outlaw regime" using the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of Iran's official military, "to provide financial and other material support, training, technology transfer, advanced conventional weapons, guidance, or direction to a broad range of terrorist organizations."

In the 18th century, French diplomat Honore Gabriel Riqueti suggested, in regard to the militaristic forerunner of Germany, that "Prussia is not a state which rules over an army, but an army which rules over a state." Similarly, today Iran is not a state which rules over a policy of aggression and terrorism, but a policy of terror and aggression which rules over a state.

A policy of aggression and terror directed against the "Great Satan" (the United States) and the "Little Satan" (Israel) certainly appears to be more important to Iran's rulers than the economy. From 1978 to 2023, the per capita GDP of Iran grew about two times in constant dollars, while Israel's grew over 11 times. The Iranian regime has squandered the prosperity of two generations and for what? No wonder the Iranian people have shouted for regime change in thousands of street protests.

I myself am no friend of Trump nor of Netanyahu. But I still abhor the evil, murderous regime in Iran.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company and written five novels, which you can check out at keithraffel.com. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. To find out more about Keith and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

DIST. BY CREATORS

Photo credit: Chandler Cruttenden at Unsplash