The Fall of Iran - Revolution, Oppression, Rebellion

[Arcadia [NG]]

At the very tail end of 2024, I began a longer term research and writing project regarding the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the aftermath which has continued all the way to this very day. Around the time I began to finalize the project in the middle of 2025, the Twelve Day War transpired. At the time, I wrote that the days of the regime seemed numbered, and though it seemed apparent Iran was becoming a powder keg, even I could not have foreseen the events that began to unfold across December into now.

Naturally, there has been much discussion about the conflict, here and everywhere. With that in mind, the best thing I can offer our community is the religious, political and historical context of how all this came to pass, and the personal perspective that I as a Zevist have on the situation.

This will be a three part article, so if you wish to read the full thing (which will be quite long), do make sure to scroll down. Given the thematic nature of each part, you'll see why I have chosen to split the posts. We will, of course, begin with the Iranian Revolution itself.

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Part 1 - Revolution

In 1979, the figurehead of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, a man known as Ruhollah Khomeini, or just "the Ayatollah" to many, promised the people of Iran would be free.

In the over 40 years since, Iran has known little else other than oppression, torture, censorship, tyranny, and every violation to human rights under the sun.

Obviously, this is not the first time the people of a nation were swindled into backing a revolution that brought wide scale death and oppression. To this day, you will still find apologists of the Iranian Revolution, people who will point fingers at the previous ruling Monarchical power, the last Shah of Iran, for their own corruption. You can see how many people truly believed the revolution would bring "democracy" to them, as they held aloft images of the Ayatollah.

As a matter of fact, they'll tell you the Pahlavi dynasty had to go. The people of Iran were fed up, and things had to change. The same rhetoric is used to justify the Communist Revolution. Fittingly, Kremlin backed Communist forces of the era were, despite the apparent misgivings between the Soviets and the budding Islamic theocracy, supporting the Islamist Revolutionaries. One can easily consider this the true face of either movement. It's not as if the Soviets could introduce the idea that religion is the opiate of the masses to a group of Islamic fundamentalists, and it's not as if said fundamentalists could reconcile with Marxism in turn (despite the shared Judaic lineage of the movements).

The fact both powers were staunchly anti-West, was more than enough common ground for one to support the other until it was no longer convenient to do so. Many left wing idiots of Iran were quick to back Islamic Fedayeens (that is, the self-sacrificing footsoldier factions willing to die for Islam) as a means of deposing the Shah. You can really only wonder how so many were fooled into believing a man like the Ayatollah was going to somehow improve human rights in Iran. Perhaps it was because Khomeini, before his return, promised the people of Iran free telephone usage, bus services, heating, water, and so on. Appealing sentiments, to the Communists at his back. Ultimately, he did the expected thing, and washed his hands of the leftists once he had what he wanted, though, even after this, the Soviets and global Communist powers at large continued to speak glowingly about the revolution and its apparent defeat of "Western Imperialism."

In this post-revolution Iran, what rights people did have quickly vanished. It would pain one to see, how deeply involved women were involved in the revolution. Many of them had Western education, and grew up in secular households. Even the Ayatollah himself said:

"You ladies here have proved that you are at the forefront of this movement. You have a great share in our Islamic movement. The future of our country depends on your support", as well as similarly stating "you ladies have proved that you are in the vanguard of the movement, you have proved that you lead the men, men get their inspiration from you, the men of Iran have learnt lessons from the honourable ladies of Iran..."

What did he say after the fact?

"A woman who has entered into a permanent marriage should not go out of the house without her husband's permission, and she should surrender herself to whatever pleasure he wants and not prevent him from getting close to her without a legitimate excuse... If a woman does not obey her husband in the matters mentioned in the previous issue, she is a sinner and has no right to food, clothing, housing, and co-sleeping."

Obviously, what most of the women were fighting for did not come to pass. Whatever oppression they did face, grew a thousandfold worse. In a sense, this was a sign of troubles to come for the global consciousness period, not just for Iran. The Ayatollah lifted up the hijab as a symbol of what women in Iran were fighting for, as, until his reign, the headscarf was effectively banned in society. In his own words, "a nation whose respected women demonstrate in modest garb to express their disgust with the Shah's regime - such a nation will be victorious." How wrong must things have to go that women will be convinced to fight tooth and nail for their own oppression? To many, this should have been a warning sign, and yet, it was heralded as the contrary. With young, educated women being such a staunch backbone of the very revolution which ultimately came to oppress them, let nobody say that what's being taught in universities anywhere globally matters not. As will be described later, students were the backbone of this revolution (but would later be some of its fiercest adversaries).

Further irony played out in the fact that women's rights were already backpedaling at this point, with the Shah having to make concessions by appeasing the Islamists at home to stay gripped on to power. It was this sort of weakness that women believed they were fighting against in the first place. Should anyone be surprised by the bait and switch? Taqiyya deception, as discussed in other articles, is such a fundamental part of Shi'ite Islam you can rightly lay claim to the notion that Shi'itism wouldn't even exist without it.

In some ways, the creation of this despotic regime that has ruled Iran for over four decades now was more inevitable within Shia/Shi'ite Islam than Sunni Islam anyway. In fact, Iran's unique blend of theocratic governance is surprisingly unique to itself, even in the context of the Middle East. One can attribute this to wilayat al-faqih, or, "guardianship of the jurist", which is simply a combination of the clerical power of Iran's leading Mullahs with governmental power. The Ayatollah himself routinely admitted he had little interest in things like the economy, or the actual running of the nation. He was quite quick to portray this idiocy by offering reductive statements about how Iranians shouldn't complain about the cost of melons (ie, food in general) going up because that's not why the revolution was fought in the first place. Which is, given that many of the revolutionaries were disenfranchised, hungry rural types, a particularly bizarre statement.

Returning to the point of Shi'ite and Sunni discrepancies, in the history of the many caliphs of the Islamic before the modern era, state power was generally limited, given the fact it's not exactly easy to apply specific laws over huge swathes of desert in an era before transportation. In the time thereafter, Shia Islam never really had gotten a taste of the ruling life. Forced to eke out an existence as a minority within Sunni majority nations, the world, at this stage, hadn't really gotten to see what would happen when the Shi'ites stepped up to the podium.

One cannot exactly pay compliments to the Sunnis (see anything written about Wahhabism for that), but the specifics of Shia belief were inevitably doomed to lead to an even worse situation. Sunnis, typically (though, not always, if you look at the actual reality of history) will select their leaders based on a consultation process. After all, this is born from the fact the Sunnis perceive the original caliphs as the inheritors of Muhammad's divine rulership. Shi'ites, on the other hand, believe that Muhammad's descendants are the ones entitled to rulership, and were divinely protected from ever having error over anything theological.

You don't need much of an imagination to see how badly this can go wrong. Without getting into the weeds of the supposed line of Muhammad and the inheritance of jurist power within Islam, it just so happened that Ayatollah Khomeini found himself with the ability to re-contextualize and effectively re-energize Shia politicking, with Khomeini now claiming himself to be a direct descendant of Muhammad. Putting it simply, that divine theological ascendancy was now his, and the Ayatollah could really do no wrong in the eyes of a true fundamentalist.

Even still, Khomeni remained strategically ambiguous all the way until he was assured of his power, not wanting to lose the support of the leftists who carried him to the throne. Though an Islamic fundamentalist at heart, nobody could say the Ayatollah wasn't cunning. He knew his opponent, and how he was perceived. There was a reason the Ayatollah was, for a time, the face of global leftist, anti-imperial movements in a similar vein to Che Guevara, with his likeness becoming mournfully endemic.

The Shah had done himself few favors in the eyes of the Islamic population, simultaneously stripping down Islam and "westernizing" Iran in the same movement. With the CIA having had a hand in recent political history, particularly in his favor, conspiracy theories were all too easy to weave. You see the same rhetoric now. A supposed "war on Islam" by the "Judeo-Christian West". Nevermind how many Muslims the West freely lets run rampant within it.

It was this same idea that fueled the fire then. Khomeini envisioned a future in which Islam was ailing. Given how out of control in some regards it seems to be today, many younger people have a hard time imagining that, towards the latter end of the colonial era in the Middle East, Islam was a sick, withered force. The Shah's westernization of Iran was, as such, an easy thing to point to, ring the alarm bells and claim that, unless something was done, Islam and Muhammad's crusade would dry up before the turn of the century.

Just as you see with Christians online today, victimhood is a popular mentality within any Abrahamic religion, and they can conjure up any make believe fiction to convince themselves there's forces greater than them trying to extinguish them. From there, it's easy to proselytize to the masses. Anyone who doesn't like the way things currently are will be easily swept up in believing that Christianity or Islam will be the answer to all of society's problems. The fact that Christians, as of the writing of this article, genuinely believe this when we have a living example in the form of Iran, is absolutely baffling.

Of course, one need not imagine the horrors of this occurring in the modern day. Theocratic tyrannies in older times had at least some difficulty monitoring the population (despite the best efforts of movements like the Spanish Inquisition). If you lived far enough away from the central power, perhaps there was at least some chance you could live a free life. In an online age where everyone has a camera in their pocket, it becomes particularly different for anyone unhappy with the way things are in Iran to mobilize and offer resistance (more will be said on this later). In a sense, this tyranny had really chosen the perfect time to install itself, and it was only because of the march of technology either. The political reality of things had changed, not just in Iran, but globally.

The Cold War was in full swing, and the US was taking careful stock of both its resources and its regional allies. With oil such a pivotal asset, one would probably be surprised that, in the lead up to the Iranian Revolution, the US did not renew any big oil contracts with the Shah's government. Unbeknownst to the world at the time, President Jimmy Carter was already engaging in dialogue with Khomeini before the revolution even truly began. This was not public knowledge until a BBC report in 2016.

In all likelihood, the US was probably unimpressed with Iran's 1973 nationalization (and subsequent price hike) of its native oil industry. In an ironic twist, the Shah that yearned for a westernization of Iran was abandoned by the west's symbolic figurehead. Some would call it a conspiracy theory, but there's more proof than not that things had soured between the Shah and Carter. The Shah, later on, even said so himself. Cheaper oil, it seems, was more important than Iran's liberty.

You don't have to take my word for it. To quote an important BBC Persian Service article:

"But the documents reveal that Khomeini was far more engaged with the US than either government has ever admitted. Far from defying America, the ayatollah courted the Carter administration, sending quiet signals that he wanted a dialogue and then portraying a potential Islamic Republic as amenable to US interests. Only two days after the Shah departed Tehran, the US told a Khomeini envoy that they were - in principle - open to the idea of changing the Iranian constitution, effectively abolishing the monarchy. And they gave the ayatollah a key piece of information - Iranian military leaders were flexible about their political future."

Khomeini had stated (and lied) that he had no particular quarrel with the Americans. Further, he deceitfully portrayed the revolution, with his own words, as "a humanitarian one, which will benefit the cause of peace and tranquility for all mankind".

In turn, Khomeini was assured that the Imperial Iranian Army would not launch a military coup against him. Once a relatively unknown figure, Khomeini was freely able to return from exile and effectively waltz into Iran and be welcomed back with open arms. At one point, such a thing would have seemed laughable.

To quote Khomeini again, "there should be no fear about oil. It is not true that we wouldn't sell to the US." Suddenly, after years of support for the Shah, American represents were now willing to say things to the tune of "we would do a disservice to Khomeini to consider him simply as a symbol of segregated education and an opponent to women's rights." An actual quote from the head of the State Department Intelligence Bureau. There have been, in my opinion, few statements disproved by time quite as heavily as that.

If you know the story, you would know it wasn't before long that this whole affair blew up in Carter's face. Soon after the revolution, the US had the Iranian Hostage Crisis on its hands.

Despite American attempts to stabilize the situation and pursue what was, in their eyes, a constructive relationship with the Ayatollah's fledgling government, this would all be for naught, as the Shah was given clearance to have his lymphoma treated in the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. This was considered an extremely poor move by the State Department, who advised Carter against taking this decision. It was plainly obvious why. The Shah, in the wake of the successful revolution, was as reviled at home in Iran as anyone could be. For the Embassy and US military agents still active in Iran (of which there were many, considering the US was still vying for joint military cooperation with the new government), this act alone would inevitably lead to a nightmare for what Western personnel were left.

Carter still went ahead with it, given the pressure put on him by both Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller to do so. If you wish to engage in conspiracy, one could perhaps even assume this was advice was intentionally sabotaging, and not just suggested out of idiocy alone.

The crisis began with a first attempt upon the US embassy, with the Marxist-Islamic Fedayeen taking a Marine hostage, who was then tortured for information, given a mock trial and sentenced to death, only to then have his freedom secured through diplomacy. This was, however, only a prelude.

The second attempt was orchestrated by a student body, comprised of individuals from Tehran's primary universities. This specific body dubbed itself the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line. They were, in effect, some of Khomeni's most devout, and believers in his supposed divine word. Moreover, they had a direct link to one of Iran's top clerics, Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha. Khoeiniha had originally advised the students against contacting the Ayatollah directly, given that the post-revolution interim government established by the Ayatollah had deported the individuals responsible for the first attack.

One key difference, however, is that the Ayatollah only allowed that with the narrative they were simply Marxists. True believers would, of course, be treated differently, and, although the Ayatollah had established the interim government, it was not at all popular locally. After all, it still bore similarity to the "democracies" of yesteryear, not the theocracy the revolution fought for.

Indeed, despite those within the interim government having had supported the revolution, many of them, including the brief tenured interim Prime Minister, were not fond of the path things were going after the fact. Khoeiniha and the student body were both aware of this, and it was a common conspiracy theory that the interim government was somehow going to be a backdoor for the US to crawl back into Iran.

In any case, elements not wholly Islamic to extreme degrees, and absolutely loyal to the Ayatollah would soon be culled. The attack on the embassy would have a simple knock-on effect. The interim government would be powerless, and soon Khoeiniha and the student body would have their wish, with the government collapsing and the Prime Minister resigning, power now completely in the hands of the theocracy. The Prime Minister himself described the interim government as a "knife without a blade." In essence, a tool with no function. It existed as a vestige of what many thought the revolution was going to be, that is, something that was more democratic than what the Shah had offered. Appearances however, no longer needed to be maintained.

Late in 1979, the true takeover commenced. In true taqiyya fashion, the initial demonstrations outside of the US embassy were being advertised as peaceful, but when it became apparent that embassy guards weren't likely to even use their firearms, the Islamic mob took its chance. Khomeini, as predicted, wholly supported the situation. He even went as far as to call it the "second revolution." Marines and other embassy staff were soon paraded out, photographed and jeered at in front of the Islamists. Within the span of a few hours, a crisis that would go on to last well over a year had begun.

With the Ayatollah's backing, what was to be a brief demonstration stretched out into something far larger. There was too much approval to back out now. Documents had been lifted from the embassy. Documents, which, if it's to be believed, contained all the evidence the Islamists needed that the embassy was nothing but a den of spies. At this stage, Khomeini's rhetoric regarding the US had shifted from faux-neutrality to declaring it as, in his words, the "Great Satan." What was once at least partly political had shifted even more radically in the direction of a holy war. Any criticism levied against him for promises not kept were quickly swept aside.

Iranian propaganda at the time would have you believe the Islamists treated the hostages as their honored guests, and that the demonstrations, even having gone this far, were still meant to be peaceful in nature. As a representative said, "we are not mistreating the hostages. They are being very well taken care of in Tehran. They are our guests."

If you're at all familiar with Islam at this point, you'd have already guessed these dozens of hostages endured unspeakable conditions. Bound for weeks on end, beaten, forced into solitary confinement, threatened routinely with execution, and this was only the tip of the iceberg. Things were bad enough two hostages even attempted suicide.

Threats were made to boil their feet in oil, or have their eyes cut out. One, even had their disabled son at home in America threatened, while also being told their wife would be receiving pieces of them in the mail.

When a US rescue mission tried and failed, Khomeini declared it divine intervention. Carter's popularity plummeted. With the crisis lasting a full year, and a rescue mission failing with the loss of eight servicemen, it's of little surprise Carter went on to lose the subsequent election in a landslide.

After the Algiers Accord was ratified, the hostages were ultimately freed, but the damage had been done. American-Iranian relations were effectively severed, and it's remained this way since. A vengeful America soon went on to offer a rising Saddam Hussein everything he needed and more to take a stab at Iran and become a separate monster in his own right. In the global sense, the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution was just beginning. One cannot downplay it, given that, in the context of the modern era, some consider this the dawn of the "terrorist Islam" that we're so familiar with today.

Though, with that said, there is one important piece of context. General estimates suggest only 8-10% of the Iranian population was involved in the revolution to begin with. To this day, Iranian men and women die in their battle against Islam, which will be explored in greater depth in the next sections.

SOURCES

Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic - Axworthy, Michael (2013)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36431160 - Two Weeks in January: America's secret engagement with Khomeini

https://al-islam.org/position-women-viewpoint-imam-khomeini-ra/role-women-victory-islamic-revolution - The role of women in the victory of the Islamic revolution

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12...hostage-crisis-us-presidents-legacy/100220132 - The 444-day Iran hostage crisis that undid Jimmy Carter's presidency

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2022.2105027#abstract - Investigating the 1981 Massacre in Iran: On the Law-Constituting Force of Violence

https://www.britannica.com/event/Iranian-Revolution/Aftermath - Iranian Revolution - Aftermath, Reforms, Legacy

 

[Arcadia [NG]]

The Fall of Iran - Part 2 - Oppression

Perhaps the easiest way to encapsulate what changed in Iran after the revolution, is to first take a look at Iran prior to it. As was stated in Part 1, despite the objective, statistical decline in human rights across the board, the decay of its economy, and the obliteration of its own culture, you will still find bad faith charlatans online arguing in defense of the revolution. These people generally belong to one of two camps, either being Islamists themselves, or Communist adjacent types looking to prop up any movement who, in their twisted minds, took a stand against supposed "Western Imperialism", even if it cost a country everything.

Thankfully, you don't need to rely on the word of such people. History and fact speak for themselves. Specifically, let's look at some images of the lives of women prior to the revolution.

On their own, it's not as if these images are precisely remarkable. Nobody would think anything of them, were it not for the fact these are snapshots of Iran. To anyone who knows anything about the country in the modern day, the sheer contrast alone is staggering. Women in education, casually dressed, freely interacting with men. People can try and argue that this is cherrypicking, that is, taking and showing only the best instances, but that would be a poor argument. People were living like this. A few years later, they were no longer allowed to.

What did it look like afterwards?

To the credit of the women of Iran, many of them did regret supporting the revolution, and were aware they were shortchanged. Not everybody donned the hijab willingly. Despite institutional pressure to leave the workforce and education (as is the Islamic norm, with women often traditionally being restricted to their household) many women remained working as a means of quiet defiance. That, and given how the economy cratered, most didn't have a choice, unless they were willing to risk their families going without.

The point of this article, in essence, is to remark upon the groups and individuals who have suffered at the hands of the post-Islamic Revolution Iran. Being on the topic of women, it will begin there.

Take Delara Darabi. There are few better cases available that demonstrate the failure of a nation ruled by Sharia than this. In 2003, Delara was convicted of murdering her father's cousin after confession. In actuality, this crime was committed by her boyfriend at the time. Her boyfriend had pleaded with her, to take responsibility for the crime, as she was a minor and he was not. It was his fear he would be executed, and his presumption that Iran wouldn't be as so backwards to execute a juvenile.

They were wrong. After six years on death row, Delara was hanged from the neck until dead. In the years prior, while incarcerated, she'd begun to paint and write poetry of her experiences. In the final minutes before her hanging, she made one last desperate phonecall to her parents, begging them to save her. Even though her lawyer had fought for clemency, and worldwide pressure and outrage had bought what appeared to be a stay of execution, her hanging was rushed ahead regardless.

Worldwide, Iran has the grim honor of executing the most juveniles. If this wasn't an indictment of a nation, nothing would be. In Delara's case, it was a post-revolution Iran's embrace of Sharia that caused her death. Unlike other, more developed nations, the choice of punishment is in the hands of the victim's family. In this case, they chose qisas. In Quranic terms, this is retributive justice. This is contrast with diyya, which is effectively blood money, an economic payment to the aggrieved.

With the Islamic mindset on women being what it is, Delara never stood a chance. The family would have always chosen the worst penalty, and they seemingly weren't interested in the facts. Law, order, and due process don't exist in Islam. In almost any other country, she'd have been found innocent or an accessory at most, and even that would've likely be swept aside, owing to the fact she was simply a minor who made a dumb decision, as children often do.

Of course this broke all sorts of UN conventions, but, as always, the UN proved its worth by saying little and doing even less. So long as the global community turns a blind eye, Iran will continue executing juveniles. In 2022, there were over 80 minors on death row awaiting their execution. As with Islam, it can always get worse, however. Many of these victims are flogged before their deaths, some taking lashes into the hundreds. And as always, they find a way to make things worse for women in particular. For boys, the minimum age of a death sentence stands at 15. For girls, it stands at 9.

Yes, a 9 year old girl can be detained, convicted, lashed hundreds of times and then hung from the neck at the discretion of Islamic clerics and frankly little else.

It isn't only women and girls, of course, that felt their lives suddenly thrown into upheaval. In fact, the grimmest details of oppression, torture and execution lie elsewhere.

For instance, over 5000 homosexuals have been executed since the revolution. Depending on what spokesperson you ask, Iranian powers will often boast proudly about this fact, or try to smokescreen it. Going back to Ayatollah Khomeini, he put it bluntly. "Homosexuals should be exterminated."

As it stands, Iran is one of the only countries on earth that still actively executes gay men. In some instances, people are executed for being homosexual even though they are not. One particularly infamous incident involved a judge just "deciding" a particular individual was gay and thus was due for death. Another incident involved a young man getting a letter in the mail from the military, stating he was exempt from service due to his supposed sexuality. He was then beaten to death by his brothers.

A phrase often thrown around is that Iran is "going backwards." In day-to-day discourse, this is a phrase often uttered for a lot of places, be it true or otherwise. Generally, it's hard for a lot of people to accept that, two decades into the 21st century, that places are actively shedding more and more of their human rights to the extent that, if we're using Iran as an example, things have actually never been this terrible for so many people, and that includes the Medieval and Ancient eras both.

Again, this is a hard thing to believe, as people think of the past and automatically think of barbarism. Given this, it would probably shock many to know that Ancient Iran was more tolerant towards homosexuality than modern Iran.

In his Outlines of Scepticism from (dated back 1800 years ago), Sextus Empiricus stated simply that Persian law during the time of the Parthians was tolerant of homosexuality, with additional scholarly material suggesting it was even tolerated publicly. Interestingly, even as late as the early Safavid era of the 1500s (in which Iran officially became a Shi'ite Muslim nation), male prostitutes were still legally recognized and even taxed, similarly to how they were in Ancient Rome. Love between males was still being explored in art and poetry all the way into the 1600s. Attitudes towards homosexuality shifted surprisingly late.

Even in the days of Iran's final Shah, a mock gay wedding was held for two men with connections to the royal court. Naturally, this was soon weaponized by the Ayatollah as proof that Iran was slipping into immorality in line with the "great Satan of the West."

To provoke further confusion, quite contradictorily, gender reassignment surgery is legal in Iran. For transgenders in Iran, they're able to legally acquire surgery to go from either male to female, or female to male. Most bizarrely of all, this was at the will of the Ayatollah himself.

The truly abhorrent part arrives when you learn that any gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals are in fact encouraged to transition, given the illegality of same sex relationships. To quote even Wikipedia " gender reassignment surgery became state-sanctioned as the cure for homosexuality." For how far things have gone in the West on these fronts, there's still no comparison to be made here with just how insane this is. But let's look further back once more.

In the early years of the Common Era, Sasanian Zoroastrianism put out its own secondary text, the Venidad. Here, the Sasanian writers did much the same as their Islamist counterparts later, decrying homosexuality as a societal ill and stating that a Priest is legally allowed to kill them on sight. A sharp contrast, to Iran's earlier polytheistic days, and even with the earlier days of the Ahura Mazdan religion itself. To this day, many reformist Zoroastrians reject the Venidad as non-liturgical (with many saying outright the Venidad is not within the spirit of the Gathas) and not part of the canon, given it was a very late creation in the overall lifespan of Zoroastrianism.

These corrupted forms of Zoroastrianism and Islam have that one key thing in common. That the ancestral, polytheistic, traditional Gods of the Gentiles are "evil". Xerxes himself, who tried to conquer and destroy Greece tried to claim as such. It was the same story in a different era. Difference was, these corrupted sects of Zoroastrianism failed to keep the lid on polytheism very successfully, perhaps given that many traditions were keenly aware of its earlier iterations. In later eras, polytheistic traditions resurfaced in Iran in various forms, the face of Zoroastrianism changing with the ages, particularly after the times of Alexander the Great, though the soul of Zoroastrianism would continue to ebb and flow in various forms, some better, and some far worse.

Regardless, one might think that Iranian Muslims would have at least some sort of leniency on Zoroastrians, given their history within the nation, and given that Zoroastrianism at some points existed in forms at least vaguely reminiscent of the Abrahamic blight to come, and were regarded at some stages as "people of the book" and thus not technically "shirk" (pagan). This is where one would be wrong.

The Islamic Crusade of 600 CE onwards saw Arabic Muslims bringing their faith to Iran at the tip of the sword, culminating in the collapse of the Sassanids, the last Zoroastrian Empire. From there, Zoroastrianism struggled on for a time, as libraries were burnt, practitioners were heavily taxed (as was the norm under Islam), and new laws made it increasingly hard for them to exist within society. Many, converted simply out of concession, as they were promised this, that or the other.

By the latter end, the conversion process was so intense Arabic had begun to supplant the Persian language altogether, and Persian identity was close to dying out before revival attempts later down the line.

Though it may defy belief, Zoroastrians continued living and practicing their faith in Iran all the way until today. Since we're on the topic of the Iranian Revolution, it wouldn't exactly surprise anyone to know that their numbers dropped heavily directly after it. One such anecdote involves Muslim thugs strolling into Tehran's main Zoroastrian Fire Temple, pulling down the portrait of the Prophet Zoroaster and replacing it with one of the Ayatollah.

It can be said Zoroastrianism, on the whole, even in its corrupted forms, was the lesser of evils. If nothing else, it can simply be considered a showing of Muslims doing what Muslims do best; destroying and degenerating anything they deem heretical to their death cult.

And the Zoroastrians were not the only ones. Those of the lesser known Baháʼí faith have also been systematically targeted and oppressed, perhaps with even greater loathing. As most Western readers are probably unaware of the Baháʼí, I will sum them up here briefly as best as I can.

The Baháʼí religion, as far as religions go, is extremely modern, dating back only to the 19th century. It is what one would define as a universalist religion, that being, the identity of the religion is the claim that "everyone is correct" just in different ways. Baháʼí's see their own Prophet, Baháʼu'lláh, as yet another succession in a long line of Prophets, including Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, etc. Though monotheistic, they also, strangely, consider Buddha and Krishna valid "prophets" as well.

Trying to meld completely contradicting religions together is, of course, a fool's errand. For Islam alone, a problem manifests immediately, in that Muhammad claimed to be the "Last Prophet". This, you might imagine, is one of the main sore points for Muslims.

However, this isn't about how foolish their worldview is. Compared to a Muslim, the average Baháʼí' adherent is at least, statistically, far more peaceful. Despite considering Muhammad a "valid Prophet", Baháʼí' doctrine centers around charity, peace, equality of men and women, non-violence, which, if you've read any of the material on this website, you'd know are basically the antithesis of everything Muhammad stood for.

Again, it doesn't take much to see this as a confused religion, but its 8 million adherents haven't earned the same ghastly reputation Muslims have. As it's the focus of this series, it should be apparent that, the Baháʼí' faith was actually founded in Iran itself.

Equally apparent, is that its founder was summarily executed by firing squad. From the word go, Iran has taken the hard line against the Baháʼí', to the point the behavior against them is petty to the point it has to be seen to be believed.

As early as 1903, Baháʼí' schools were closed, adherents were treated with mob violence, their texts were censored, and they were barred from marriage.

Even during the time of the "progressive" Shah mentioned at length here, an anti-Baháʼí' propaganda campaign was instituted as a means of distracting from the Revolution building up in the background, a sort of means of misdirecting anger, for as well as it worked. Of course, this didn't actually matter, as when the time came, Revolution propaganda insisted that the Shah had more than one Baháʼí' serving as advisor, and that the entire religious movement (due to its "one world" values) was going to inevitably serve as a backdoor to the West.

The Revolution, as one might imagine, really kicked off the crusade against Iran's Baháʼí'. The list of offenses is almost too great to list. Many were executed, many were imprisoned, many were tortured, most pilgrimage sights were ransacked, people were denied employment, and so on.

As I mentioned things growing ever more backward in Iran, it's actually in modern years that the Baháʼí' situation was reached peak pettiness.

At the Baháʼí' Cemetery in Orumiyeh in 2015, even the trees weren't safe from Islamic spite.

Yes, you are reading and seeing this correctly. Muslims are so pathetic that they'll even kill trees belonging to a different religion. Then again, this isn't exactly new for Abrahamic faith, as this trend was apparent even in 700 CE when the so-called Saint Boniface saw Thor's sacred oak felled.

This was not the only cemetery attack in Iran in recent years. Since 2005, there's been over 40 separate incidents.

This image, shows the remains of burial stones in Sanadaj, upturned and smashed by a bulldozer. Not even the dead are allowed to know peace from Islam. As late as 2019, Baháʼí' are not even allowed to register as an "other" religion upon their national identity cards. And for all the supposed hatred between Abrahamic faiths, it should shock no reader to know that Christians and Yehuborim do not receive the same treatment. One could only imagine what terrible fate would await someone who was exposed as a polytheist in modern Iran. Spare a thought for the 40,000 Hindus present in the nation.

As much as I've just informed you of, this is really only the tip of the iceberg for the levels of tyranny present in Iran in the decades following its revolution. This is without going into great depth as to the oppression of certain ethnic minority groups that have been present in the nation for centuries, like the Khuzestani Arabs, or the absolutely absentminded, if not spiteful approach the Iranian government has taken towards its very own history and relics, like the construction of the Sivand Dam and how it's threatening the ancient site of the Persepolis.

Islamic extremism has, simply put, gotten worse and worse as the years have gone by. Many groups who were managing to eke out an existence in decades passed have now recently dwindled to nothing, like the Mandaeans across Iraq and Iran both. Like what was said in the previous parts in this series, much of this extremism started right here, and has only snowballed out of control since.

SOURCES:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47032829 - Iranian women - before and after the Islamic Revolution

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/02/iran-artist-darabi-execution-juvenile - Outcry as Iran executes artist over juvenile conviction, Robert Tait, The Guardian

https://web.archive.org/web/2013072...ynews.com/gcn_432/iraniansourcesquestion.html - Iranian Sources Question Rape Charges in Teen Executions, Doug Ireland

https://web.archive.org/web/2007111...tol/news/world/middle_east/article2859606.ece - Gays should be hanged, says Iranian minister, The Times

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4115535.stm - Iran's sex-change operations

https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/14/opinion/choksy-iran-zoroastrian - How Iran persecutes its oldest religion, Jamsheed K. Choksy, CNN special

https://iranbahaipersecution.bic.org/term/bahai-cemetery - Archive of attacks on Baha'i Cemeteries

 

[Arcadia [NG]]

The Fall of Iran - Part 3 - Rebellion

The post-Islamic Revolution Iran had its moments of turbulence, but very little of it early on was a genuine challenge to the Islamic establishment. Islamist tendencies had its grip on the majority of the population, and both sides of the political spectrum. Indeed, even the most notable protests were effectively Islamic infighting between left and right factions.

This was particularly notable in the 1999 student protests, which was in essence, a struggle between president Mohammad Khatami and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, following the closure of reformist newspaper Salaam. Khatami for his part, though he was someone who seemingly wished for certain democratic reforms within Iran and a certain freedom of press, was not by any means anti-Islamist. Though he held some small contempt for the unchecked elements of the theocracy, he was, ultimately, a proponent of the Islamic Revolution himself, regarding it as a great achievement and going as far as to ridicule any notion of "western" democracy taking root in Iran (something famously proposed by George W Bush).

Even still, the Islamist forces which now ruled Iran even considered this comparatively small degree of resistance and yearning for freedom unacceptable. Sharia law had to be absolute.

On July 8th, students at Tehran University organized a peaceful demonstration outside the dormitory complex to protest the closure of Salam. Around 300 students gathered, chanting slogans in support of Khatami's reforms and against conservative hardliners. Plainclothes forces were present, but the protest remained non-violent. At least, until the next day.

In a raid known as the "Kuye Daneshgah Disaster," approximately 400 of the aforementioned plainclothes paramilitaries (including the Basij, Ansar-e-Hezbollah forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) stormed the Tehran University dormitory, with no regard for Iran's own apparent law that forbade armed forces on campus ground. They attacked sleeping students, kicked down doors, set rooms on fire, threw students from balconies (some from the third floor), and fired plastic bullets or even, in some cases, live ammunition. Uniformed police reportedly stood by without intervening. At least one student, one Ezzat Ebrahim-Nejad, was killed by gunfire, with reports of others paralyzed or severely injured. Witnesses described scenes of chaos, including students being grabbed by the hair, beaten with batons, to the extent blood was smeared all over the walls.

More than seventy students were disappeared, and it's worth noting that these forces were entirely indiscriminate. Many of those who were brutalized were not even active participants in the protest. As one could imagine, this marked something of a turning point. What was once a soft protest, was immediately inflamed, and Iran was treated to scenes and notions it had not heard since the Revolution.

By July 10th, students had organized a mass sit-in at the university, with numbers arriving by the thousands, effectively shutting down the city center. A spokesperson for Khamenei arrived to, as one would guess (as it has, and continues to have been the go-to explanation given for all things by Islamic despots), blame "foreign instigators" for the event. He was then pelted with shoes and garbage from the crowd.

By the next day, the scenes grew even more familiar, the crowds growing increasingly radicalized, with some even having the bravery to chant "death to Khamenei!" Tabriz University was then subsequently raided and given a similar treatment to Tehran's. Four students died in this assault, and far more were beaten in custody.

By July 12th, central Tehran had descended into chaos. Running street battles left downtown areas gutted by burned buses and smashed storefronts. Many students continued to hold the fort at their campus, and clashed with police forces. Some local residents did their own part, casting down flowers on the protesters to honor them, or even offering them food.

Basij paramilitary forces reportedly began to disguise themselves as protesters, and went about defacing and destroying public property in an effort to discredit the movement in the eyes of the public and justify a further crackdown. Ironically, the Basij (known in full as the Sâzmân-e Basij-e Mostaz'afin) is named as such because it quite literally means "Organization for Mobilization of the Oppressed." And yet, here they were, an arm of the oppressive regime trying to stamp out the oppressed trying to mobilize.

Sadly, it wasn't long before the pro-regime counter-protesters were out in full force. Many who aided the Revolution still believed in it, especially among the truly conservative Islamists. Even Khatami himself all but sold the movement out for similar reasons, going on to claim the student protesters themselves were against the "foundations" of the Revolution. Against the pressure of the rising tide, it wasn't long before the student body was slowly rent apart by internal divisions and the sheer presence of the security forces coming down upon their heads. Even an innocuous candlelight vigil planned by one of the students was shot up, with one female student dying.

A massive pro-government rally, organized by the Organization for Islamic Propagation, drew tens of thousands (including, of course, bused-in government employees to swell the numbers). Regime control in Tehran was re-asserted, and many involved in the event were disappeared. Even those known about were subject to imprisonment and torture.

A crackdown on reformist movements, followed, including bans on 20 publications by 2001, new laws criminalizing "thought crimes" and foreign contacts (given that Iran stuck to the story that it was all apparently foreign actors) and vetoes on electoral reforms. If anything, the event became one grand excuse for the regime to establish even more of an iron grip over the people of Iran. And all over what initially started as Islamist infighting between remnant left and right factions.

Given the intensity of the crackdown, it isn't too surprising that mass rebellion wasn't something being seen in Iran all too frequently. It wasn't until 2009, ten years later, did anniversary protests gain any real momentum, but this was far from the most important demonstration that occurred during this particular year.

To reiterate again the critical information necessary to understanding why any of this was happening, one must understand that elected bodies like the presidency and parliament are mere facades, as candidates must be vetted by the Guardian Council, a body appointed by the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Khamenei). This setup ensures that only Islamist regime loyalists can participate, rendering elections all but a sham designed to legitimize clerical dominance rather than reflect popular sovereignty. This had become all too apparent during the 1999 protests (given the boot licking approach President Khatami ultimately took), but the illusions of promise offered during the Revolution were decaying in real time year by year.

Khatami's effectively meaningless tenture came to an end in 2005, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a hardliner, and regime backed by the state's security apparatus. Of course, this isn't just to criticize Islamist policy (which is obviously deplorable enough), but Ahmadinejad's tenure was marked by economic mismanagement, rampant corruption, and even greater international isolation. One could naturally assume that even Iran's "moderates" (which is to say, moderate among a majority Islamic population) were tired of the rot.

The presidential election on June 12, 2009, was supposed to be a contest between Ahmadinejad and reformist challengers Mousavi and Karroubi. Internal polls suggested Mousavi was leading, promising economic reforms, greater freedoms, and a thaw in international relations. But just two hours after polls closed, state media declared Ahmadinejad the winner with a rather ridiculous 63% of the vote, something that basically defied any sort of statistical logic or voting patterns.

Allegations of fraud were immediate and large in scale. Opposition figures claimed ballot stuffing (that is, the creation of fake illegal votes), multiple voting, and the disqualification of over 100% turnout in some provinces. Independent analyses revealed anomalies like sudden, unexplained shifts in voter preferences and impossibly high turnout figures, pointing to, surprising nobody, systematic manipulation by the regime.

Mousavi filed an appeal with the Guardian Council, but the partial recount it ordered was a farce, ignoring key evidence and choosing to uphold the result. From there, what societal weariness that had been building up against the regime spilled over once more.

The protests began immediately on June 13, 2009. This time it wasn't just students protesting, but men and women from all sectors of Iranian society -- young and old, rural and urban. The streets of Tehran were flooded once more, this time in a wave of green, with people clad in green armbands and other wear to represent the Green movement itself. Shouts of "Where is my vote?" and "Down with the dictator!" were heard.

Seeing as it seemingly worked the last time, the regime sent its Basij paramilitary into Tehran university, completely failing to realize sentiment stretched far beyond just the student bodies this time, and protest numbers surged into the millions by July 15th. Unlike with the student protests, beyond the continued support and rallying performed by Mousavi, the Green movement protest remained surprisingly decentralized and organized primarily by social media, with some dubbing it the "Twitter revolution."

From here, things grew entirely beyond the scope of what the regime likely considered possible, Al Jazeera referring to the event as the largest protest movement since the Revolution itself. Riots broke out, not only in the cities, but in the countryside, and shooting was even reported outside the Russian embassy, who, unsurprisingly, supported Ahmadinejad's supposed victory.

After days of protests, vigils and riots, the Ayatollah held a public announcement, stating that the election was "legitimate" and Ahmadinejad's was "divine assessment." After saying this, he then determined that the protests would no longer be tolerated.

The IRGC and Basij militia were unleashed on protesters, wielding batons, tear gas, and live ammunition. Peaceful marches were met with savage beatings. One of the most iconic and tragic moments came on June 20, 2009, when Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old woman, was shot dead by a Basij sniper during a protest in Tehran. A video of her death, showing her bleeding out on the street as onlookers screamed in horror, went viral. In some dark ways however, her family was at least fortunate in how notable the event became. For others killed in the violence, hospitals were prohibited from registering the dead bodies or injured people, and nobody was allowed to even speak with the latter.

In the typical style of the regime, they were all too willing to rub further salt into the wounds of the grieving. Family's of the slain were when penalized with endless bureaucracy and red tape. Many were coerced into signing agreements that they did not complain about the government's treatment of their loved ones. For those who died due to gunshot wounds, some families were even asked to pay for the bullets used to murder them. Any sort of public display of mourning was entirely disallowed also. Many have speculated that this is especially due to the Shi'ite mourning process, which occurs over three periods on the third, seventh and fortieth day after a person's death. The Regime was, ironically, worried that this would create momentum similar to what was experienced by the Pahlavi Dynasty during the Revolution.

In the aftermath, Karroubi went on record to speak about the atrocities faced by those imprisoned and disappeared. Women and even men were raped in prison to the point there genitals were torn apart. Iran's police chief, Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, confirmed as such himself.

Iranian authorities bizarrely tried to claim all these people died of preexisting health conditions while imprisoned. Examinations of the bodies however, revealed the apparent rape, but also broken bones and fingernails torn off.

Internet and news were also subject to heavy censorship, with the former subject to its first assault on the 13th, the very day the protest movement began. Iran's internet was subject to a full 45 minute blackout, returning in a low bandwith state that was assumedly to establish filters for sites like Youtube and Facebook.

The global Iranian diaspora held a variety of solidarity marches and protests, some (like in Sweden) even going as far as to storm the Iranian embassy itself. The Green movement had become more than a flash in the pan, as its relevancy dragged on for several months, even as some of the protests waned due to fear of coming into combat with the Basij. Even Mohammad Khatami, who during the last round of major protests a decade ago, fronted up with support, and was even attacked by the son of one Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of one of the regime's most apparent newspaper mouthpieces.

Months eventually turned to years, as the Green movement returned with a vengeance over the course of 2011 and 2012 with a fresh wave of rebellion against the now incumbent Ahmadinejad. By this stage, pro-government figures were calling for Karroubi and Mousavi's execution, though both remained in house arrest (and remain there to this day, effectively). The expected waves of regime backlash, torture, imprisonment and censorship followed, though a new low was reached when the Basij deployed child soldiers as young as 12 recruited from the rural areas in Tehran, having purportedly been paid and promised a chelo kebab dinner for their violence against anyone assembling in the capital.

At this stage in the regime's lifespan, public unrest never truly went away, though it proved some years until it rose to an extent as seen during the Green protests. The 2017–2018 Iranian protests, also known as the Dey protests (named after the Persian month Dey, corresponding to the December-January period) began as economic grievances over rising food prices, high unemployment, corruption, and the government's 2018 budget which many saw as favoring Islamic religious institutions (naturally, given this was the power base of the theocracy) and foreign interventions (ie, the ongoing conflicts Syria and Gaza) over the domestic needs of the Iranian people. It should be noted 33% of Iranians lived below the poverty line at this time.

The protests highlighted a "triple crisis" in Iran: socio-economic (inequality and hardship), political (resistance to reform and repression), and ecological (owing to mismanaged water during a cycle of droughts and dust storms pervasive since the 90s).

Protests erupted in Mashhad (Iran's second-largest city) on December 28th of 2017, particularly over economic policies and corruption, spreading like wildfire over a two week period to over 140 cities. Along with the familiar chants of those wishing for death upon the Ayatollah and an end to the theocracy itself, many were going as far as to praise the old dynasty of Shah Pahlavi. Referring to the heads of the theocracy, others chanted "people are paupers while the mullahs live like gods."

By December 30th, violence had escalated to the point where the Revolutionary Guard stepped in and killed three of the protesters. As always, the regime's favorite pro-government goons came out in full force to counter-protest as well. By the first day of the new year of 2018, overnight violence claimed nine lives, including that of an 11 year old boy.

Protests continued until the 7th, at which point they were mostly quelled by violent means. The usual wave of torture and imprisonment ensued, though the government tightened its grip on the population even further, banning the teaching of English in primary schools by virtue of the fact it was considered something of a Trojan horse for "western values."

At this stage, no longer was Iran going to have long stretches near a decade long between protest movements. In November of 2019, the "Aban" or "Bloody November" protests began, initially catalyzed by a 50-200% price hike (up to 300% according to some sources) in fuel prices.

This was, notably, a crisis that occurred on top of a re-imposition of tough sanctions by the Trump administration, for Iran's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. Inflation was succeeding 40%, currency was fast devaluing, and unemployment was reaching new highs. This was, of course, on top of all the pre-existing grievances held by the Iranian population that spurred on previous demonstrations, especially Iran's continued prioritization of foreign conflicts over domestic needs, and a general air of hatred growing among the youth towards the theocracy itself.

Things had, by this stage, gone full circle. These demonstrations were the most violent yet, and officially the most akin to the Revolution itself. Many of the common protest chants, as in the prior demonstrations, praised the old Pahlavi dynasty. This time however, people were publicly praying for its return, and there was now a substantial monarchist faction within Iran (with Iranian authorities admitting the monarchy was now popular again among much of the population -- something the regime tried to clamp down upon by attacking said groups across multiple cities.

To make matters worse for the regime, these protests transpired along the same timeline as the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752. Iran initially claimed the flight crashed due to technical reasons, but an investigation revealed it was, in fact, shot down by an Iranian missile, allegedly because the Revolutionary Guard somehow mistook the entire plane for a cruise missile, killing all 176 passengers and crew, many of which were Iranian.

Protests resulted in the destruction of 731 government banks including Iran's central bank, nine Islamic clerical buildings, as well as the tearing down of statues belonging to both Ali Khamenei and the long since passed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Deaths ultimately reached 1500 protesters, with over 2000 injuries and a staggering 7000+ arrests, many of whom were legally children. This, naturally, becomes an even greater concern when one factors in the same reality that was apparent with earlier government responses. Torture in these systems were common place, and it's all but inevitable that a child, or many children, were flogged, raped and killed.

Though the protests did not topple the regime, this was the most vulnerable it had been, and longer internet blackouts were becoming increasingly commonplace. By the time even further protests broke out in late 2021, this time due to water shortages yet again, the regime wasted no time and responded with quick, absolute brutality. At this stage, even rural farmers and the elderly (many of which were shortchanged of their pensions) were protesting, and the regime was fast losing its support to a greater scale than before.

Nothing, however, prepared Iran for what was next.

On September 13, 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, was arrested in Tehran by Iran's Guidance Patrol -- commonly known as the Morality Police --for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly, in violation of the Islamic Republic's mandatory hijab laws. These laws (spoken of in prior articles), enforced since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, mandate that women cover their hair and bodies in public as a cornerstone of Shia Islamic jurisprudence.

Amini was detained and reportedly beaten severely by police, leading to her collapse into a coma and subsequent death on September 16, 2022.

Amini's death ignited further nationwide protests, initially in her hometown of Saqqez and quickly spreading to over 100 cities across Iran, dubbed the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement -- a slogan rooted in the long suffering Kurdish minority culture in Iran.

To fully appreciate the nature of just how vile this is, one must understand that this isn't exactly an isolated incident, rather just the most extreme example of such. These hijab laws exist to "protect" societal purity and prevent "corruption" under the usual barbaric Islamic precepts. Non-compliance is treated not merely as a civil infraction but as moharebeh (enmity against God), a crime punishable by death. This wasn't just a case of ill fortune. The Morality Police patrol the streets to enforce these laws.

Though it has become a pattern at this point to say every protest was the largest since the Revolution, this was indeed the case, as every subsequent event was larger than the previous one. At this stage, it was polled that up to 84% of Iranian's would have preferred a secular society over the theocratic one, something unthinkable at the time of the Revolution. The tides had turned.

Full credit must be given to the women of Iran for how bravely they fought during this period. Many of them had the bravery to tear off their hijabs in public and make a display out of burning them, or even going as far as to cut their hair. Others went even further, slapping the turbans off Islamic clerics as they walked down the street.

This time, the regime dropped all pretense, and held more than one public execution. Their tactics grew dirtier still, when food poisonings broke out over six notable Iranian universities, affecting over a thousand. Pro-government thugs even allegedly instigated a poison gas attacks against young school girls.

Despite Khamanei tried to claim that he cared about the death of Amini, he quickly followed it up by saying "rejecting hijab was religiously and politically forbidden". The regime had to fully rely on the Basij volunteer militia this time, out of concerns the armed forces would refuse to attack such a large number of civilians and would turn on the regime itself.

The protests would eventually wane, as they typically did (especially under heavier regime oppression than ever), but the atmosphere had changed. Despite the increase in punishments for refusing to obey the hijab law, Iranian society had shifted.

"A young woman walks down a street in Tehran, her hair uncovered, her jeans ripped, a bit of midriff exposed to the hot Iranian sun. An unmarried couple walk hand in hand. A woman holds her head high when asked by Iran's once-feared morality police to put a hijab on, and tells them: "Screw you!"

The regime, sadly, had learned much from its own overthrowing of the monarchy, and knew how to deal with crises such as this, and managed to survive as it had before. Even still, it had grown apparent that this was far from the last time something like this would transpire, and sooner or later, the regime would face something on par with the Revolution itself.

In June 2025, Iran had an especially tumultuous year, given its dual conflict with Israel and US in the form of the Twelve Day War, with air strikes targeting its uranium enrichment facilities out of fear Iran was creating nuclear weaponry. Though Israel's warmongering and territorial interests are not something to praise and give any credence to, the reality remains that these events further pushed an already fragile regime closer to extinction. Polling suggested up to 44% of Iran's population considered the regime itself responsible for the conflict, with only 33% blaming Israel, which is a particularly condemning look at how the regime is perceived by the Iranian people. Several key leaders of the IRGC were killed during the events of the war.

All said, the global opinion on the conflict was surprisingly soft on Iran. Most every Muslim majority country (and plenty of others, including European and Asian powers) expressed their usual "deep concerns." Needless to say, these same Muslim countries would soon find themselves singing a different tune.

In the waning days of 2025, the streets of Iran erupted in a wave of fury that has shaken the foundations of the Islamic Republic. What began as localized strikes in Tehran's Grand Bazaar on December 28, 2025, quickly ballooned into nationwide demonstrations across all 31 provinces, marking the most widespread and sustained challenge to the regime since the revolution. Though other protests as noted by this article have been progressively noted as "the largest since the revolution", it's hard to precisely illustrate the sheer scale of what began to unfold at the end of 2025.

The protests ignited amid an economic freefall that had been accelerating throughout 2025. The Iranian rial, already weakened by years of international sanctions, mismanagement, and the regime's costly proxy wars across the Middle East, hit record lows against the U.S. dollar—trading at over 1.4 million rials to $1 by early January 2026.

Shopkeepers in Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, long a symbol of Iran's commercial heart and once a bastion of regime support, shuttered their stores in protest against soaring costs and currency instability. This initial action by merchants rapidly drew in students, workers, retirees, and ordinary citizens. Already, these protests boasted a more diverse crowd of Iranians than even the most notable other protests up to this point.

Slogans quickly evolved from calls for affordable food and wages to direct assaults on the regime's legitimacy. Again, Iranian streets were hearing: "Death to the dictator," "Long live the Shah," and pleas for the return of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as a symbol of a freer, pre-revolutionary Iran. Though I cannot definitively lay claim to just how popular Pahlavi truly is among the common person in Iran, the relevancy of his name for these protests especially is something that must be made note of, as you'll see.

The Islamic Republic's policies, funneling national wealth into supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, while neglecting domestic infrastructure and welfare, had left millions in poverty by this stage.

By early January 2026, demonstrations had spread to over 210 cities, involving strikes by truck drivers, university walkouts, and even defections from regime-loyal areas. The regime's inability to deliver on basic promises, even under the ostensibly reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, highlighted its fundamental rot: a theocratic system more interested in ideological purity and regional adventurism than the well-being of its citizens.

Faced with this existential threat, the Iranian government did what it usually did and discarded any pretense of dialogue or reform. Supreme Leader Khamenei labeled protesters "rioters" and "terrorists," authorizing a "decisive" crackdown that human rights groups have described as the deadliest in modern Iranian history.

Security forces, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), unleashed indiscriminate violence: firing live ammunition into crowds, using tear gas, and conducting mass arrests. Eyewitness accounts reported close-range shootings, hospital arrivals with gunshot wounds, and bodies piling up in morgues.

Death toll estimates vary widely due to the regime's censorship, but credible reports put the number of protesters killed beyond 40,000 by late February 2026—figures that dwarf previous crackdowns like the 2019 protests (1,500 deaths) or the 2022 movement (around 550). Keep in mind, that this is a low ball estimate. Though it cannot be confirmed, I have seen estimates as high as 90,000.

Over 24,000 arrests were documented, with many detainees subjected to torture and forced confessions. A nationwide internet and mobile blackout, imposed around January 8, 2026, aimed to stifle the coordination of the protests and hide atrocities from the world, but leaked videos and smuggled reports painted a picture of the expected state-sponsored terror.

The sheer brutality of all of this must be made note of. Given the size of the protests and the existential threat the regime now faced, foreign Shia militias were brought into the country to kill its own citizens. These included the Iraqi PMU, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Pakistani Liwa Zainabiyoun, and the Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun. Despite the corruption in Iran, Iranian police may have actually hesitated firing on their own people. Foreign Islamic insurgents would not.

Testimonies have also revealed Iranian security forces raiding hospitals to not only arrest, but execute, wounded protestors. Doctors inside Iran have said that plain-clothes security agents entered hospitals, blocked medical staff from treating wounded protesters, and intimidated or arrested medical workers. In at least one case, staff said agents blocked doctors from reaching a wounded man shot in the head, and he later died after being denied full care. A number of media reports, quoting anonymous Iranian doctors and families, say that security forces have shot or “finished off” wounded protesters inside or near hospital settings. One such account involves a wounded teenager whose father says security forces shot him despite being on a ventilator.

After years of being invoked by many of the protest movements, Reza Pahlavi took an especially active stance, calling for further widespread protests and resistance against the Islamic Republic, urging Iranians to take to the streets and resist state repression, encouraging security forces and police to stop suppressing civilians and join the people’s movement. Around this time, the traditional lion-and-the-sun flag of Iran began to appear not only in the streets of Iran, but on social media as well, especially X. The change of the flag in the emoji library, amusingly, forced many Islamic Iranian officials to have to take the Iranian flag out of their bio. This was one of only but a few bright spots of humor in what had become a bloody spectacle.

The protests did not occur in isolation. U.S. President Donald Trump's threats of intervention, including statements like "we are locked and loaded," and that "help was on its way" only emboldened protesters. Time passed, and during that time, it was vague whether "help" would actually arrive at all, or what form it would take.

When outside intervention arrived, however, the scale of the Iranian affair had become unprecedented, with the regime and its leader facing total obliteration.

In the early hours of February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated series of airstrikes and missile attacks on Iran, marking the beginning of what has become known as the Iran War of 2026. This conflict, codenamed Operation Epic Fury by the U.S. and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel, targeted Iranian military facilities, nuclear sites, and high-ranking officials.

By January 2026, amid Iran's ongoing protests, nuclear advancements, and threats to U.S. interests, President Donald Trump initiated a massive military deployment to the Middle East, the largest since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The build-up began in late January with the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, including guided-missile destroyers, to the Arabian Sea.

In February, Trump escalated further by redirecting the USS Gerald R. Ford--the world's largest aircraft carrier--from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, accompanied by additional destroyers equipped with Tomahawk missiles and advanced air defenses. By mid-February, the U.S. had assembled 16 warships, over 150 aircraft (including F-35 stealth fighters and B-52 bombers), and shifted THAAD and Patriot missile systems to the region.

This force posture was designed for sustained operations, capable of weeks-long bombing campaigns targeting Iran's state infrastructure, nuclear sites, and ballistic missile capabilities. Trump described it as an "armada" to pressure Iran into concessions, warning that "bad things" would happen without a deal. Talks for a "deal", as everyone by now knows, had stalled. The US, it seemed, had been unable to come to an agreement over Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and regional influence (specifically its terror proxies).

It should be said of course, as is obvious to anyone, that it's extremely likely the ultimate decision to attack Iran was at least partly because of pressure from Israel. It was an open secret Netanyahu had wanted to destroy the Islamic Republic for years, and this would be his one chance to do it. As has been said repeatedly, though nobody is going to praise the US government specifically for aiding Israel's aggressions and regional interests, given the Iranian regime had just slaughtered so many of its own, it had already signed its death warrant, one way or another.

The opening strikes on February 28 focused on decapitating Iran's leadership, resulting in the deaths of approximately 40-48 high-ranking officials, according to U.S. and Israeli reports. These precision operations utilized Tomahawk missiles, F-35 jets, and single-use drones, striking compounds and facilities in Tehran and western Iran.

First and foremost, was the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The 86-year-old ruler was assassinated in an airstrike on his Tehran compound around 1:15 a.m. ET. Iranian state media confirmed his death early on March 1, along with his a significant part of his family. Given Iran had long boasted that Khamenei was completely safe and hidden, and for him to die so immediately, was a sign of just how compromised and corrupt Iran had become. A government and infrastructure so sabotaged by Mossad and any other foreign intelligence agency does not merely just happen. This was decades of build-up.

Ali Shamkhani, Former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and current Defense Council Secretary was also killed in the initial wave of strikes on security facilities in Tehran. Shamkhani was a key architect of Iran's regional strategy. Aziz Nasirzadeh, Iran's Defense Minister, died in airstrikes targeting military command centers. As head of defense, he oversaw Iran's missile and drone programs. Mohammad Pakpour, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Ground Forces, was killed alongside other senior commanders in precision strikes on IRGC headquarters. Pakpour managed Iran's internal security and proxy operations. These were just a few.

Iran has retaliated with drone and missile attacks on U.S. bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, closing the Strait of Hormuz and spiking oil prices. It's impossible to know exactly why Iran, first and foremost, seemingly decided to attack its own Muslim neighbours, especially considering many of them were actively trying to shield it diplomatically from a potential US/Israeli attack. Though, one theory is that whatever interim power currently "runs" Iran, does not have anything close to full control.

They had admitted themselves that orders had been given to various Commanders, and that those Commanders would simply carry them out at their own discretion. The aim, maybe, was to attack the Gulf states to an extent it would create global economic shockwaves and disrupt the world enough the War would end. Or, perhaps, they simply responded however they wanted without much reason at all.

As things currently stand, Trump has predicted a "four-week" war but acknowledged it could extend longer. Obviously the question on everybody's lips is: "Will this actually be the fall of the Islamic Republic of Iran?"

As of the writing of this article, we are roughly a week in to the hot conflict, and I could make no prediction as to the ultimate fate of the regime. Anything I say here, is nothing except speculation on my part.

Given the attitude of the population, given how much Iran has angered its neighbours, given how much of its leadership is dead, I struggle to see a situation in which the regime simply comes to exist again as it had in the years proceeding the revolution. Regardless of the interest of the various other parties involved, good and ill, the world at large would not mourn the end of the Islamic Republic.

Speaking of my own personal viewpoint, it goes without saying I hope for a future in which the people of Iran, especially its most oppressed elements, know freedom from the tyranny of Islam.

SOURCES

https://iranwire.com/en/special-fea...nd-broken-dreams-irans-1999-student-uprising/ - Blood, Batons, and Broken Dreams: Iran's Bloody Friday

https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/irans-1999-student-protests-hot-summer-shook-tehran - Iran’s 1999 student protests: The hot summer that shook Tehran

https://web.archive.org/web/2009081...leader-claims-sexual-abuse-in-Iranian-prisons - Opposition party leader claims sexual abuse in Iranian prisons

- Shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan (Warning: Graphic)

https://archive.md/20121215203002/h...ws.com.au/story/0,25197,26093533-2703,00.html - Ahmadinejad's Basiji run a regime of rape, murder to suppress critics

https://web.archive.org/web/2011101...tol/news/world/middle_east/article6583797.ece - Leading demonstrators must be executed, Ayatollah Khatami demands

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/13/iran-child-soldiers-tehran-protests - Iran 'using child soldiers' to suppress Tehran protests

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/...on-the-2017-18-protests-amid-a-triple-crisis/ - The Islamic Republic of Iran four decades on: The 2017/18 protests amid a triple crisis

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/17/iran-no-justice-bloody-2019-crackdown - Iran: No Justice for Bloody 2019 Crackdown

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-66788392 - Iran's women on Mahsa Amini's death anniversary: 'I wear what I like now'

https://www.newsbreak.com/share/420...li-decimation-of-nuclear-capabilities-experts - Islamic Republic close to collapse in Iran, civil war possible after US, Israeli decimation of nuclear capabilities: experts

https://gamaan.org/2025/11/05/12-day-war-survey-english/ - Iranians’ Attitudes Toward the 12-Day War

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/12/what-we-know-about-the-protests-sweeping-iran - What we know about the protests sweeping Iran

https://web.archive.org/web/2026021...lede/cora-engelbrecht-lede-iran-waits-for-war - Even the Hospitals Aren’t Safe in Iran

https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-evening-special-report-march-1-2026/ - ran Update Evening Special Report, March 1, 2026

 

[Imperator]

Thank you, Guardian Arcadia, for this comprehensive thread—it is very insightful.

 

[Helleniser]

Thank you for this series of articles, NG Arcadia.