The Observer view: Iran’s Berlin moment

Israel has a right to exist. It is a response to antisemitism almost as old as humanity, and to the Holocaust, conceived by Zionists, forged in the wake of the second world war and supported by the victors but also by Germany and Japan.

Iran denies that right to exist. A central theme of the Islamic republic’s ideology since its founding has been the demonisation of Israel. A central task of its military-industrial complex has been to develop nuclear weapons to hold Israel and the region to ransom. Its leaders are entitled to their opinions. A racist world view, an authoritarian political system and a murderous and oppressive attitude to women who reject the strictures of a hardline theocracy do not in themselves warrant regime change.

But Iran’s leaders have exported state-sponsored terrorism, not just opinions. For decades they have maintained a network of military proxies from Iraq to the Mediterranean intended to make life hell for Israel.

Israel for its own part has made life hell for Palestinians, not just in Gaza and the West Bank but in the years of its founding. Any fair reading of the history of 1948 must acknowledge the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinians whose “right of return” turned out to be no such thing.

More recently, Israel’s response to the 7 October atrocities has been to level Gaza, killing about 55,000 of its inhabitants in pursuit of Hamas fighters. It has also decapitated Hezbollah and degraded Iran’s air defences and military command structures in a series of increasingly bold operations that have brought within reach the permanent neutering of the Iranian threat.

Politically, strategically and morally, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is on the wrong side of history in Gaza. He cannot be allowed to use Iran as a distraction from the devastation he has caused there. The postponed Paris summit on Palestine should be rescheduled and Palestinian statehood recognised. But in Iran, Netanyahu has created a moment of genuine promise despite his naked opportunism and the immense human cost.

A lesson from the recent histories of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya is that outsiders can topple unpopular leaders but leave only chaos if there is no plan for what follows. Regime change has to start from within. That was the lesson of Eastern Europe in 1989, and there is a mountain of evidence in the bravery of the Iranian opposition that Tehran may be approaching a Berlin moment of its own. Overseas supporters of the opposition can help. Western governments have leverage with targeted sanctions, and they should do more to track, expose and freeze assets that Iran’s corrupt elite smuggles abroad.

The immediate question for Keir Starmer is whether further military action could hasten this moment. It could. The targets are nuclear centrifuges, not people. If the difference between ending and not ending the Iranian nuclear threat is a targeted attack on the Fordow enrichment bunkers by US aircraft, Britain and the EU should not stand in its way.

For the first time a chance exists to force Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, scrap its mission to extinguish Israel and stop sponsoring terrorism. This is a chance to seize – across a table if possible, by force if necessary.

Photograph by Universal Images Group/Getty Images