It has taken more than 40 years, but finally the rulers responsible for the brutal repression Iran has suffered since its 1979 revolution have revealed themselves to be little more than a bunch of incompetent and corrupt liars.

The regime’s woeful attempts to conceal the full extent of its involvement in the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet as it left Tehran mean that the ayatollahs no longer have any credibility when it comes to running Iran’s affairs.

There may be a few die-hard supporters of the regime claiming the Trump administration is ultimately to blame for the disaster, because it would never have happened had the White House not inflamed tensions by killing Qasem Soleimani, Tehran’s terrorist mastermind.

This argument, though, has no credence as it was Iran that precipitated the crisis in the first place by killing an American contractor in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, and then organising a violent protest against the US embassy in Baghdad.

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Moreover, not even the most fanatical devotee of the ayatollahs’ religious dictatorship can deny that it was the Iranian military, not the US, that fired the anti-aircraft missile that brought down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, killing all 176 people on board.

The regime then compounded Iran’s national humiliation by, initially, refusing to accept responsibility for the disaster, only to be forced to accept culpability after Western intelligence agencies were able to prove categorically that the aircraft had been shot down, and was not the victim of engine failure, as Iranian officials had claimed.

Telling bare-faced lies has become a familiar refrain for the ayatollahs in their desperate bid to cling to power as the country has lurched from one crisis to another.

When confronted, for example, with incontrovertible evidence of their mismanagement of the country, such as their catastrophic handling of the economy which has brought oil-rich Iran to the brink of Venezuelan-style penury, their response is to blame the US and its allies for punitive economic sanctions. No mention is ever made of why the sanctions were imposed in the first place, such as their funding of terror groups and their efforts to deepen their interference in countries like Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Now, thanks to the gross ineptitude of the regime’s handling of the Ukrainian aircraft disaster, it is abundantly clear to the thousands of Iranian demonstrators who have taken to the streets that it is their own government, not the Americans, who are the villains of the piece.

Consequently, the Islamic Republic is experiencing its greatest existential crisis since its creation in 1979; one where it is no longer tenable to resort to the repressive tactics that have previously enabled it to crush dissent, such as deploying the Revolutionary Guard, as it did during the 2009 Green Revolution, to kill and terrorise civilian protesters.

Key figures within the regime are said to be deeply unhappy with the country’s current predicament, with more moderate figures, such as President Hassan Rouhani, claiming military leaders misled them about what really happened to the plane.

Tensions between Iran’s so-called moderates and the hardliners loyal to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are nothing new. Ever since the moderates helped to negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal, the hardliners have done their utmost to undermine it.

Britain, Germany and France, the European signatories to the agreement, yesterday responded by officially triggering a dispute mechanism. This could ultimately result in them joining Washington in ending their co-operation with Tehran, thereby deepening Iran’s international pariah status. With the hardliners on the back foot in the wake of the Ukraine aircraft disaster, as well as the demise of Soleimani, their iconic leader, there is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Iran’s moderates to seize the initiative, and begin the process of repairing relations with the outside world.

In this context, they should heed Boris Johnson’s suggestion yesterday that the best way to de-escalate tensions between Iran and the West would be to negotiate an improved nuclear deal, one that addresses the Trump administration’s concerns.

The ayatollahs need to understand that, unless they can find a way to extricate themselves from their current predicament, it is simply a matter of time before their beloved Islamic Republic is consigned to oblivion. (© Daily Telegraph, London)

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