Growing up in Iran, through school and university, meant total, non-stop exposure to the regime's imams. Especially two of their core religious beliefs never changed. First: Israel will be wiped off the map. Second: the West, including the United States, will eventually be taken over by Islamists, and an Islamist system of governance modeled on Iran will overwhelm them.
These are not policy preferences. To the regime, they are God's mission, a prophecy that will eventually be fulfilled. They believe Allah wants them to achieve it; otherwise they forfeit paradise, its rewards and the virgins. This conviction drives the fight.
It is why the Iranian Constitution itself elevates exporting the Islamic Revolution as a foundational obligation. The preamble and related provisions frame the Revolution as ongoing at home and abroad, and calls for the formation of a single global Muslim community (ummah). Article 154 states that the ideological mission of the armed forces includes extending the sovereignty of God's law. The struggle is fundamental.
The founding Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, made the goal explicit:
"We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle."
This worldview underlies the regime's reaction to the recent U.S. midterm elections. Iranian officials openly cheered the outcome. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei himself reportedly declared: "The process of the US's collapse has accelerated." Iran's officials also worked hard to shape the conditions that produced it. In the weeks before the vote, attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz intensified. Iranian forces and their proxies struck vessels, driving oil prices higher to raise the cost of gasoline for American voters. The Iran-backed Houthis, at the same time, stepped up their own attacks. Pressure was deliberately timed to influence the political outcome in the United States.
Iran's regime is celebrating for several reasons. They see at last the validation of their prophecy that Islam will take over the West, foremost America. With candidates such as Abdul El Sayed gaining ground, they believe the process has begun — seats in the Senate today, the White House tomorrow, and eventually the ability to impose Sharia law just as they did in Iran.
They prefer Democrats in power: Democratic administrations have repeatedly turned a blind eye to the regime's human rights record. During the 2009 Green Movement protests, when the Iranian people chanted "Obama, are you with us or with the mullahs?" the ruling mullahs must have been delighted to see that the White House stayed mostly silent. Executions, torture, and the systematic suppression of women continued with absolutely no consequence.
Democrats have also been historically soft on Iran's nuclear weapons. The Obama-era deal delivered sanctions relief and billions in funds -- which helped build them -- while containing sunset clauses that would free the regime – last year, in 2025 -- to expand enrichment and legitimately have as many nuclear weapons as the regime could acquire. That economic and diplomatic recognition served to dramatically strengthen Iran's proxies and networks and laid the groundwork that enabled the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel by Hamas. The regime understandably prefers partners who treat its nuclear program as a minor inconvenience rather than the existential threat that it is to its oil-rich neighbors and the West
Democrats have consistently been showing less solidarity with Israel as well as less interest in confronting the regime's terrorism and proxy warfare. When protests erupt inside Iran, the regime has found it far easier to suppress and kill its own people: there has been no Western pressure to stop.
The only important counterpoint that remains is that the US president is still Donald Trump for another two years. The Trump Administration needs to begin to highlighting Iran's human rights violations, executions, and systematic repression. It needs to publicly name these crimes – that would be one of the clearest signals that the United States stands with the Iranian people, not with the regime that rules them.
Meanwhile, last week the United Nations, Europe and the international community rewarded Iran by secret ballot, electing it with 144 votes to a committee on human rights, disarmament and counterterrorism.
The administration also needs to maintain its strong alliance with Israel, despite what jihadist Arab leaders and their sympathizers inside the Trump Administration might say. Iran's regime for nearly half a century has labeled America the "Great Satan" and Israel the "Little Satan." Standing firmly with Israel against Iranian terrorism and proxy networks is not optional diplomacy; it is a strategic necessity to protect America's only reliable Western forward base in he the Middle East so that Russia and China do not "fill the vacuum" as they would no doubt love to do. Russia already has two military bases in Syria, Tartus and Latakia, and would presumably like more. Since the time of Tsar Peter the Great, Russia has wanted a warm-water port.
Iran, as Trump has repeated, must never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.
For now, the Iranian regime is celebrating the US midterm election results, especially since both President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have signaled that further military action against Iran is "highly unlikely." Iran's rulers see that they are still in power and that all they have to do is hang on for another two years. Before they will be able to rebuild their nuclear war machine, destroy Israel, and resume advancing Islam in the West.
Once Gaza is up and running again under the grip of the terrorist group Hamas, Iran's leaders most likely assume they will be able to throw even more weight around: the international community will resume its usual political blindness toward Iran's domestic brutality and its customary generosity for expansionist plans.
Trump and his administration should stand with the Iranian people and Israel against Iran's terror machine to make sure Iran never crosses the nuclear threshold and that its regime will vanish, never to harm anyone again.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a political scientist, Harvard-educated analyst, and board member of Harvard International Review. He has authored several books on the US foreign policy. He can be reached at dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu
