Christine Flowers: Vicious Iranian regime getting what it deserves

Years ago, when I first started to handle asylum cases, I had a consultation with a man from Iran who had managed to get tourist visas for himself, his wife and his two young daughters.

This was 20 years after the Shah had been deposed and the Ayatollah Khomeini and his thugs had kidnapped Americans at our consulate in Tehran.

This was sixteen years after Khomeini and his thugs had financed the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, killing almost 300 of our young men.

This was, and remains, the same regime that killed dissenters, women who simply wanted to be able to walk in the sunshine without the heavy black cloth of erasure on their heads, and men who believed that a republic based on religion instead of reason was an abomination.

This man, whose name I no longer remember but whose voice still sounds in my ear, was a member of the Bah’ai faith, which was one of the many groups being persecuted under the Islamic Republic.

It was considered an “apostate” faith, traitorous to Islam since it was an offshoot of the religion.

My client and his family had suffered horror after horror, including having to watch his father’s own body rot in their front yard because the regime denied burials to members of the religion.

As someone who wept at the gravesite of her own mother, after a beautiful and respectful ceremony with Catholic rites, I cannot imagine the pain that this poor man suffered watching the desecration of a person he’d adored.

And this was only the smallest of the inhumanities that were done to him. He filed for asylum, and today, the man, his wife, and his daughters are living happily in the U.S. as citizens.

This was my limited contact with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime so brutal that even its Arab neighbors saw it as an enemy.

Iran has waged actual wars against its despised enemy, Iraq, and proxy wars through the terror groups that it funded: Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda.

There is no question that Iran is at the center of what we once called the “Axis of Evil.”

And it has been a threat to the United States for decades. To hear some people on what is now called the “woke right” criticizing our intervention this past week as “Israel’s War” is both an example of ignorance and bigotry.

The ignorance comes from the fact that at least as many Americans have been victims of this regime as Israelis. The bigotry is an example of what I have been decrying these last weeks in my columns: Jew hatred.

I am using that term instead of “antisemitism” because many of those on the “woke right” have been telling us that Arabs are also Semites and, therefore, the word is incorrect.

That is a smokescreen for the actual bigotry of the intention, but I’ll play along. Calling this “Israel’s War” is Jew hatred, and I don’t care how many conservatives become apoplectic.

Some things are so obvious that they cannot be reasoned away by sober arguments about “forever wars” and isolationism.

It is true that one of the principles of MAGA is America First, which is why I refuse to claim that label. I voted for Donald Trump two times, enthusiastically at first because I believed that he would help us overturn Roe with his judicial picks — mission accomplished! — and holding my nose the second time because I could not stomach a Biden presidency.

The devastation in Afghanistan vindicated my choice.

This time, I did not vote for him, but instead wrote in the name of Marco Rubio, a man who represents my vision of the GOP.

Ironically, Trump did me a huge favor by making him secretary of state, a role that he has played with great effectiveness, and engagement in the international community.

My larger point is this: Even if MAGA is in favor of the interests of America foremost and exclusively, annihilating a regime that has kept Iran in its stranglehold for many years was an act of patriotism toward the hostages in Tehran, the murdered Marines in Beirut, and all of the other U.S. victims of terror around the world.

This is, indeed, America First.

That’s why I have no time or stomach for people like Megyn Kelly, who found fame and fortune following the blowing winds and figuring out which hurricane to follow.

She is a chameleon whom I never trusted and who has changed colors more times than a disco glitter ball on the set of “Saturday Night Fever.”

She is in good company with a man colloquially known as Tucker Qatar-lson, whose loyalties are not only suspect, they are obvious, faux Catholic kook Candace Owens, conspiracy quack Glenn Greenwald and others who are either guided by animus towards Israel, or a desire to placate the Arab world.

Little do they know that the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, has different ideas about what is in its own welfare.

I strongly support our actions in Iran. The process might be flawed, and there are issues about how it is managed, but the motivation was justified.

My old client, the hostages in Tehran, and the souls of those Marines would surely agree.

This article originally appeared in the Delco Times.

Christine Flowers can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.