What Happened in Iran
In 1977, one year before the Iranian revolution, Iran was a country full of diverse and free people. Before the revolution, Iran was undoubtedly Westernized by the Shah under its authoritarian monarchy. It developed many connections with Western states, such as Israel and the United States, which were very prosperous. Yet, many Iranians opposed the Shah’s rule both because of its perceived corruption and because of Iranian resentment of Western cultural influence. The opposition came from a broad coalition that rallied in the streets to bring down the Shah. The coalition consisted of religious leaders who rejected secularization and Western culturalism, left-wing middle-class professionals, students demanding political freedoms and workers angered by economic dislocation and inflation in the 1970s. The Shah fled Iran in January 1979, leaving the country filled with chaos and economic imbalance.
Following this, Ayatollah Khomeini, a senior Shiʼa cleric and vocal critic of the Shah who had been in exile, returned to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979, to a massive popular reception. In March 1979, a referendum offered voters the choice of an “Islamic Republic,” which was approved by an overwhelming majority, and the new regime quickly began dismantling the old order. By December 1979, a new constitution based on the doctrine of velayat e faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) was adopted, making Khomeini the Supreme Leader and creating a theocratic system that placed elected bodies under clerical oversight. Within days, the military declared neutrality, the monarchy collapsed and revolutionary forces took control of state institutions. “Intellectuals” were celebrating the fall of the Shah, not knowing that they were giving Islamists control of the country on a golden platter. The new regime threatened all the relations Iran had with Western countries and imposed oppressive religious laws, such as banning women from singing publicly, requiring them to wear a hijab outside and imposing the death penalty on homosexuals. This turning point in history should teach us something extremely important: that extremist Islamists use people’s perception and ambition for freedom to fulfill their dream of imposing Sharia law on every country possible, by trying to distract the population from the real problems by appealing to liberal sensitivities. This distraction, which is mainly used by Islamists to fit their ideology into the present culture of a certain place, is actually prohibited in mainstream Islam, and it is not supported by most Muslim religious clerics.
On Jan. 8, 2026, economic instability caused nationwide protests throughout Iran. Workers marched through the streets to show discontent with the regime’s handling of the country’s economy. People opposing the regime took advantage of the rallies and joined. They marched side by side with the millions of protesters, making sure their voices would be heard all over the world and showing that their voices would never be silenced. Anxiously, the despotic regime ordered its militias (including the IRGC, a radical Shiite Islamist militia funded by the regime and separate from the Iranian national army) to fire live ammunition at the protesters and chase them down with every lethal weapon they possessed.
Reportedly, the IRGC and the Basij militia ultimately fired live ammunition on Iranian protesters and chased people down. There is even a video of a woman being brutally chased down by a Basij with a machete, resulting in her being badly wounded. Unverified sources report she ultimately died. Iran International reported 36,500 deaths, calling it the deadliest two-day protest massacre in history. In contrast, Iranian state media, controlled by the massacring regime, counted only 3,000 deaths, a figure far below the NGO’s and the opposition’s estimates.
This political reality creates a situation in which the United States must intervene and overthrow the current Iranian regime. Freeing Iran would not only ensure its own safety, but it would also protect Israel by indirectly disarming the IRGC-funded militias surrounding Israel to a considerable extent due to a substantial cut in their funding. U.S. intervention would further ensure stability in the Middle East by ending persecution by the Houthis of Sunnis in Yemen and Hezbollah militants harassing Christians and Druze in Lebanon. Most importantly, though, the tyrannical regime’s fall will ensure that Iranians will finally be safe and experience freedom as we have experienced here in the United States for centuries. We, who have enjoyed and benefited from freedom our entire lives, should keep the freedom of others in the forefront of our minds. Seeing exiled Iranians yearning for their country to be free should make us all think, support and campaign for them because they deserve better.
The Iranian Revolution provides a stark warning: Extremists thrive in the gap between a public’s cry for equality and the actual transition of power. These groups leverage our democratic openness and our social chaos to install a theocratic state. We risk everything when we fail to see that their goal is not to improve their democracy, but to replace it with Sharia law.
Every person enjoying freedom today should campaign for a better tomorrow, for a better world in which Iranians are free.
Javid Shah,
Free Iran.
Photo Caption: Islamic Revolution in Tabriz
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
