Iran’s Islamic Regime Is a Menace to Its Own People
But Iranians themselves need to change it, not outside powers
Immediately after I heard the news that the United States had destroyed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, an American reporter asked for my reaction. I told him plainly: We, the Iranian people, never asked for nuclear arms and never wanted to pay for them. Nothing but pain, poverty, and misery came out of this expensive program. If that’s what it takes to end the war, I’m happy about it. I would never condone an attack on my country even though its regime, which the Iranian people have shed their own blood numerous times to remove and replace, has endangered their lives and future with its end-time-adventures.
Still, it is worth recounting how it has brought us all to this point and where my hope is we go next.
Generations Wasted
The Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambition in the early 2000s happened to overlap with my generation, the children of the 1979 revolution, joining society and entering the job market as adults. We had hopes and dreams and the energy to match. Nearly 17 million strong, we remain the largest block of population in Iran, and we could build it. Previous generations, a.k.a. the burnt generation, had been wasted and devastated during the revolution and Iran-Iraq war.
Around the same time, the Islamic Republic unveiled a long-term development plan, pledging to make the nation the economic hub of the region—prosperous, independent, and advanced—aiming for the full realization of the goal by the year 2025; 2025 is now here and Iran—along with our lives and dreams—lies in ruins.
The average GDP growth over the past decade or so has hovered around 0%. The purchasing power and welfare of the Iranian people have consistently plummeted throughout the 21st century. Regular blackouts, shortage of basic necessities such as gas (akin to the shortage of sand in the Sahara), and inflation—consistently over 40%—have been the reality of everyday life in Iran. Failing in every metric, however, has not compelled the regime to change any of its policies, just double down.
More importantly, the disconnect between Iran’s leaders’ ambitions and the authentic needs of its people is not an anomaly, a mere aberration, right now, but rather the latest manifestation of a tragic pattern in modern Iranian history.
Our lives, our youth, our potential have been sacrificed on the altar of delusion. We watched the best years of our lives wasted like water slipping through our fingers. It was painful; we felt helpless and unimportant. The wall of Western sanctions, especially after 2006 to curb the regime’s nuclear ambitions, barred us from the free world and pushed us into the clutches of our revolutionary rulers. As if that wasn’t enough, the Islamic Republic built a taller wall of domestic sanctions around the country, further isolating our lives, creating state monopolies, and limiting people’s freedom to choose—from the car they drove to the movies to the music they could enjoy. We have been hitting walls ever since, imposed by powers—foreign and domestic—that never cared about our rights or our lives and aspirations.
Failed Efforts
As I write this, Iranian people are caught in an excruciating vise. They face a foreign threat, but their own Islamic Republic remains preoccupied with fighting them too, selectively turning the internet on and off, arresting critics, and abducting the families of Iranian journalists to silence dissenters beyond its border.
There is a pretense of democracy in Iran, but elections are tightly controlled behind a silent, opaque, vetting process. Even a couple of former presidents have been disqualified to run again after they broke with the party line.
Nonetheless, we Iranians tried to use elections to reform the country—time and time again. We exhausted the possibility, coming out on the streets en masse to demand our votes be counted. They say it’s a “one man one vote” system, but the ayatollah is the man and has the vote.
Protests against the regime have been part of my generation’s coming of age and the only means for ordinary people to have a say in governing our country. We’ve had many protests in the past couple of decades. Every time, the regime called us deluded traitors and shot bullets and teargas at us. During the 2019 protests, as per Reuters, 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest.
The regime’s prioritization of regional conflict over national development has backfired catastrophically for itself as well. It has pushed Iranian society away from the Islamic Republic. After the revolution, the support for the cause of Palestine had an appeal, especially among those who considered themselves revolutionary. But, over the years, the destruction and misery caused by the regime’s self-serving obsession, and the diverting of desperately needed billions from Iran’s development, has changed public opinion. This rift between the regime and people became embarrassingly clear when Iranians refused to show up in the state-organized demonstration in support of Hamas after the events following Oct. 7—precisely to show their displeasure at the state for aiding and abetting an entity like Hamas that brutalizes the people whose cause it pretends to represent. The regime, however, refused to acknowledge this changing tide and gambled the entire country’s survival by its continued funding and organizing of these proxies, destructive rhetoric against Israel, and pursuit of the nuclear program. It stubbornly dismissed its own people’s warnings about the danger of this combination. Iranian people are now dealing with the consequences.
Pattern of Ruin
The fundamental rift between the regime’s ambitions and the people’s aspirations is not a recent phenomenon but a recurring pattern throughout modern Iranian history. Consider the era of Reza Shah Pahlavi, a towering figure who emerged from the ashes of the Qajar dynasty in the 1920s. His reign saw the construction of vital infrastructure, the establishment of nationwide security, and significant efforts to secularize and centralize the state to lay the groundwork for a modernized Iran. He was instrumental in establishing universities, railroads, and a modern army, pushing Iran into the 20th century. However, his vision, while forward looking, was often imposed from above without sufficient societal buy-in. A prime example was his drastic and forceful policy in the 1930s compelling Iranian women to remove their hijabs. While intended as a symbol of modernity, this decree alienated vast segments of conservative Iranians, building a deep well of resentment that, decades later, religious leaders championing radical values tapped into.
Fast forward to Ali Khamenei's leadership today, nearly 90 years after Reza Shah’s anti-hijab mandate, and we see an even more disastrous repetition of history, albeit in reverse. The brutal 2022 crackdown on protesters expressing outrage over the death of Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested for refusing to wear the hijab, stands as a testament to the ayatollahs’ refusal to acknowledge that Iranian society had changed and no longer wanted to live under the repressive strictures that the regime wanted to impose in the name of religion.
While the Pahlavi shahs arguably moved too fast for Iranian society to fully absorb the change, the current ayatollahs’ steadfast refusal to move at all has created an utterly unsustainable dynamic. Their ideological rigidity, combined with the self-inflicted economic wounds, mismanagement, systematic corruption, and other inevitable byproducts of a centrally planned economy, has pushed Iranian society to a breaking point.
The main struggle in Iran, therefore, under the shahs and the mullahs, has consistently been between the ambitions of its political leaders and the needs and priorities of Iranian society.
Future Generations
Throughout the 20th century, Iranian society was largely shaped by two seemingly opposite, yet fundamentally similar, intellectual movements. On one side, Marxism, particularly among the intelligentsia, gained significant traction, often thanks to the ideological sponsorship of our ever-benevolent neighbor, the Soviet Union. Its emphasis on class struggle and a centrally planned economy resonated with a desire for social justice and liberation from perceived imperialist influences. On the other, a significant portion of traditional Iranians reacted against both the perceived excesses of Westernization under the shahs and the fear of godless Marxism, giving rise to a radical form of Islamism spearheaded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. While followers of these two schools prayed to different Gods and envisioned different utopias, they shared a crucial commonality: the prioritization of collective identities and state-defined goals over individual liberty and the autonomy of ordinary people.
By 1979, an unlikely and ultimately tragic alliance had emerged between these two currents, significantly influenced by figures such as Ali Shariati, the intellectual who most influenced the revolution. It synthesized Islamic thought with socialist ideals. Khomeini inherited Shariati’s considerable following after his death in 1977, and Iranian communists, to their detriment, lent their support to the revolution, believing that they could eventually steer it towards their own vision. My parents’ generation was often compelled to subscribe, either actively or passively, to one of these two dominant ideologies.
However, by the time my generation came of age, the abject failure and inherent inability of collectivism—whether secular-materialist or religious—to organize and develop the country was glaringly evident. My peers’ desire to write their own destiny, decide their own future, free from the obligations and prescriptions of whoever happens to be wearing the crown or, in the current context, the turban.
Thanks to decades of relentless cruelty and injustice in the name of Islam, and under the authority of the “deputy of God on Earth” (the Supreme Leader), a significant segment of traditionally religious Iranians too now rejects political Islam and desires the complete separation of mosque and state. For example, in a 2020 survey, 68% of the Iranian population believed that religious prescriptions should be excluded from state legislation. Religious Iranians too want to tend to their spiritual needs, practice their faith, and seek divine guidance without the heavy burden of political expediency or the manipulative priorities of the supreme leader.
In the meantime, the rest of non-traditional Iranian society has moved even further away from the goals of the Iranian Republic. Every credible survey, including those conducted by the regime itself, reveals widespread secularization and a significant decrease in the practice of religion among the general populace. This growing rejection of state-mandated religiosity challenges the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, which bases its rule on religious authority. Ironically, it is the Islamic Republic that has lost its ability to communicate with Iranian people who, by and large, have no interest in the apocalyptic visions of the out-of-touch ayatollah or his revolutionary prescriptions. The next generation of young Iranians after mine want Iran to be a normal country and a respected, peaceful member of the international community.
Although there’s good news about a prospective ceasefire, the Islamic Republic, at least in its domestic rhetoric, shows no interest in abandoning the policies that got us here. The necessity of liberating Iran seems more important than ever. The first step in realizing this dream and becoming a normal country is abolishing the institution of the Absolute Guardian (Valy-e Motlagh-e Faqih) itself, not merely replacing the individual that occupies its supreme leader chair with another, less aggressive, one. This institution is the source of legitimacy of political Islam. It employs the:
Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guard, the military arm of the supreme leader;
Guardian Council, whom the supreme leader controls and which can veto legislations passed by the parliament;
Bonyads, large, for-profit, trusts that operate beyond the jurisdiction of the government. They are directly under the supreme leader and guard the economic interest and state monopolies of the Islamic Republic.
The institution of the Absolute Guardian is already suffering from a legitimacy crisis, not to mention the fact that there is no heir-apparent to the 86-year-old disaster of a custodian. The simplest thing to do would be to leave it up to Iranian people to decide whether they want to keep this institution in place at all through a transparent election.
What role should foreign nations have in liberating the Iranian people? Only overseeing the election to ensure its integrity through civilian delegates. That’s it. The Iranian people are fully capable of managing the rest.
Various scenarios are potentially feasible for the future of Iran but all of them require this step. In a normal Iran, free of Khomeinism and his radical revolutionary interpretation of Islam, the government would govern the country—produce public goods to serve the general welfare of the Iranian people—not micromanage religiosity and piety. I’m convinced that a majority of Iranians, including many currently working for the regime, would support this.
Iran possesses undeniable wealth—a vibrant culture, a strategic geopolitical position, abundant natural resources, and, most importantly, a highly educated and dynamic populace. The enduring tragedy is that its political leaders have consistently failed to acknowledge, let alone serve, the priorities of ordinary Iranians. Instead, they have tried to appropriate this potential for their own ideological or authoritarian ambitions, attempting to force that vision onto an evolving society. The inevitable result is an endless struggle between the state and its people, a conflict that sooner or later reaches a dead end.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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Beautifully written.
As much as the Shat did to make Iran more secularized, he could also be pretty ruthless. From what I have read his government also tortured people. Our government is greatly responsible for how things in Iran have turned out. The CIA ousted a democratically elected president and brought back the shah.