Remove terrorist regime
Spectator Australia
29 August 2025
What, above all, distinguishes Western civilisation from the alternative offered by the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Pyongyang axis is that, in the West, the people are always able to change the government in essentially free and fair elections. In the axis, the only way for the people to be free, is to change the regime.
Despite dictators living in constant fear of being overthrown experts sometimes insist, as they did with the USSR, that some or other dictatorship is firmly in place and will last. Despite ridicule from the mainstream media, Ronald Reagan instinctively knew the Soviet Union would collapse and, moreover, he ensured that it did.
As to Australia, even before the birth of our nation, our federal Commonwealth, the people in each of the colonies were well accustomed to participating in elections to choose their governments. Indeed, Australia led the world in extending the franchise (including the right to stand as a candidate) to women.
Last year, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy celebrated the 25th anniversary of their victory in the referendum on not so much a republic but on a politician’s republic. This was to have been a republic where a prime minister, constitutionally bound to resign, could continue in office with impunity. In those same 25 years, it is a sad fact that the number of countries in which the people actually choose their government has declined from 110 to a mere 88.
In addition, in many old democracies, including Australia, there has been a growth in support for a curious mélange of latter-day communism, fascism and fundamentalist Islamism. This is to be found especially among the young and middle-aged who are the product of a system in which education has been at least partially replaced by indoctrination.
Given the importance of regime change in much of the world, and the fact that the retrograde movement to turn Australia into a politicians’ republic is, if not dead and buried, at least comatose, Australians for Constitutional Monarchy dedicated a session of their 27th national conference to the critical question of regime change. Expressed to be ‘from Tehran to Beijing’, it is available on youtube.com/
Among the speakers was the Washington-based President of the International Strategic Studies Association, Gregory R. Copley. Described by Edwin J. Fuelner, founder of the Heritage Foundation, as ‘one of America’s foremost strategists’, he has served for more than five decades as advisor on strategic issues to a number of the world’s national, military and intelligence leaders.
Author of 37 books, his latest is the highly relevant The Noble State, which, according to New York Times best-selling author Yossef Bodansky, confirms Copley as America’s ‘only living grand strategist’.
Copley, an Australian, argues that nobility may be the greatest factor in achieving and retaining strategic power, military dominance, social contentment and societal wealth.
He says that no great civilisations have been sustained without an ‘inspiring noble vision or saga’: the nurtured myths of the society’s creation, epic heroism and inspiration. He also points out that all periods of national or societal ignobility have been the ‘precursors of societal collapse’.
Australia’s 28th prime minister, Tony Abbott, agrees that a cohesive country on a successful stage is more likely if at least part of its governance is removed from the rancour of politics. This, he says, is best achieved with an important place reserved for a hereditary leader trained from birth to a life of selfless service. And thanks to the Crown, instead of a president chosen like a politician, we have as our first citizen, along with Canada and New Zealand, someone who has been selected like a judge.
Abbott points out that anyone inclined to think that monarchy is an anachronism, one out of place in the modern world, should consider the Middle East. He is, however, critical of some clumsy Western attempts to provoke regime change, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the latter, he says that US authorities, out of US folk prejudice against George III, denied the post-Taleban Loya Jirga’s petition for the restoration of the excellent Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. Yet many regard his long reign from 1933 until 1973 as a ‘golden age’.
Daniel Taghaddos, a courageous young Iranian monarchist and co-founder of the Mehran Foundation, presented the case for the restoration of the Iranian monarchy in the person of Shah Reza Pahlavi II, the son of the last reigning Shah. Mr Taghaddos strongly agreed with the view put in Scott Anderson’s recent book King of Kings: The Fall of the Shah, the 1979 Iranian Revolution that with economic development and the dramatic improvement in the status of women, few Iranians could honestly look to their situation in 1977 and argue they were worse off than before Mohammad Reza Pahlavi came to the throne.
He explained that the present Shah proposes that on the downfall of the theocratic dictatorship, Iran go down the democratic path with the people deciding by referendum whether Iran should become a constitutional monarchy, or a republic. This would involve the election of a constitutional convention.
Research suggests that the Shah is the best-known potential leader of a democratic Iran, both in the expatriate communities and in Iran itself. According to research by an American-based organisation, there is a strong support in Iran for the constitutional monarchy and little support for the mullahs who control the country.
Asked what the consequences of restoration on the Middle East would be, Mr Taghaddos agreed this would probably end the terrorist organisations which are the funded proxies of the mullahs, especially Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
In a discussion later, the panel considered the fundamental question as to whether the cruel persecution of the Falun Gong, a non-political organisation committed to the ideals of truth, compassion and forbearance, initiated by Paramount Leader Jiang Zemin to ‘ruin their reputation… bankrupt them financially and destroy them physically’ by exposing them to a communist-designed on-demand trade in human organs, reflected a criminal fear of regime change.
Author Professor David Flint AM is the Convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy and writes regularly for The Spectator.