Understanding Iran: How We Got Here and Why This Moment Is Different

The History They Don't Teach You

When Western commentators discuss Iran, they often start the clock at 1953—the CIA-backed coup that overthrew Mosaddegh. This framing is inherently misleading because it implies Iran had functioning democracy that America destroyed. The reality is far more complex.

Before the Pahlavi dynasty, Iran spent 150 years under Qajar rule—a dynasty of Turkic origin that treated Iran not as a nation to develop but as a possession to exploit. The consequences of their mismanagement were catastrophic. The Persian Famine of 1917-1919 killed millions; some estimates suggest up to half the population perished. By the early 20th century, Iran was broken: virtually no infrastructure, minimal literacy, and a population so steeped in superstition that the mullahs wielded enormous social power.

This sociological context is impossible to ignore. Even Mosaddegh, often portrayed as a pure democrat, rose to power largely through the support of Ayatollah Kashani—a prominent religious figure of the time. This wasn't coincidental; it reflected the reality that in 1950s Iran, no political movement could succeed without clerical endorsement.

Mohammad Reza Shah understood this. He was a secular, Western-educated leader who wanted to modernize Iran and eventually transition it to democracy. But he recognized something that his critics ignore: premature democracy in Iran would lead directly to theocracy. The clerics' grip on society was too strong, the population too uneducated to resist manipulation.

This explains an apparent contradiction: why would a "dictator" focus so relentlessly on education, women's rights, and expanding the middle class? You don't build an educated citizenry if your goal is permanent authoritarian rule. The Shah saw himself as a transitional figure—preparing Iranians for the democracy they would one day be ready to sustain.

The tragedy is that the very modernization he drove produced a generation that demanded political rights before secular institutions were strong enough to survive. When the Islamic Republic seized power in 1979, Iran had "democracy" for approximately five minutes before the clerics consolidated control. Between 1981 and 1988, they systematically eliminated everyone else—leftists, nationalists, democrats—through mass executions that claimed between 8,000 and 30,000 lives.

The Shah's pessimism about Iranian society was proven correct in the most devastating way possible.

The Economic Catastrophe: A Currency's Death

Numbers tell a story that words cannot fully capture.

In 1979, 70 Iranian rials equaled one U.S. dollar. In December 2025, the rial hit a record low of 1.42 million to the dollar. This represents a 20,000-fold nominal devaluation.

But the true picture is even worse. Accounting for the dollar's own inflation since 1979 (the dollar has lost about 4.5 times its value), the rial's real purchasing power has collapsed by roughly 90,000 times. This is one of the most catastrophic currency failures in modern history.

What does this mean for ordinary Iranians? In the early 1970s under Prime Minister Hoveyda, prices were stable for nearly a decade while real incomes grew. A middle class emerged that could travel abroad, buy cars, and send children to university. Today, the minimum wage is approximately $90-110 per month, while a family of three needs at least $400 monthly to meet basic needs. Over one-third of Iranians live below the poverty line and face food insecurity.

The currency collapse isn't an abstract number—it represents a massive transfer of wealth away from ordinary Iranians and a dramatic decline in living standards. More importantly, it reveals the regime's priorities: despite having some of the world's largest oil and gas reserves, the Islamic Republic has impoverished its people while funding militias across the Middle East.

The Regime's Body Count

The Islamic Republic has been killing its citizens since birth. The numbers are staggering:

During 1981-1985, revolutionary courts executed more than 8,000 political opponents. The 1988 prison massacre, ordered directly by Khomeini, claimed an estimated 5,000 to 30,000 lives in a single summer—prisoners executed for their political beliefs after show trials lasting minutes.

Protests have been met with mass murder. The 2019 "Bloody November" protests saw security forces kill an estimated 1,500 people in just four days. The 2022 Mahsa Amini protests resulted in over 500 deaths. And the current 2025-2026 uprising has already claimed thousands of lives, with estimates ranging from 2,000 to 12,000 in just the first weeks.

Beyond protests, the regime executes its citizens at an astonishing rate. Between October 2024 and October 2025 alone, at least 1,537 people were executed by hanging—averaging more than four people per day. Over the past 14 years, there have been more than 8,200 executions—one to two every single day.

The total death toll from political executions and protest suppression since 1979 reaches into the tens of thousands. This is not a government; it is an occupation.

Why Iran Is Different: The Foreign Militia Problem

When people ask why Iranian protesters haven't succeeded where others have—Tunisia, the Philippines, East Germany—they miss a crucial distinction.

The theory behind successful nonviolent revolution depends on security forces having social ties to protesters. The soldier hesitates to shoot because that could be his cousin, his neighbor, his former classmate. This social friction creates the possibility of defection, which is how authoritarian regimes fall without civil war.

Iran's regime has specifically engineered around this vulnerability. The IRGC monitors the regular military. The Basij provide street-level enforcement. All are bound by ideology and economic interest—they're not conscripts who might sympathize with protesters but true believers whose power and wealth depend on the system's survival.

But even this wasn't enough. Reports have confirmed that during the current protests, the regime has deployed Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, and Afghan Liwa Fatemiyoun militias to suppress Iranian civilians. These foreign fighters have zero social ties to the people they're killing. They don't speak Persian. They don't share family networks. Their livelihood depends entirely on the regime's survival. They will pull the trigger without hesitation.

This is what makes Iran different from Nepal or other protest movements. When people demand to know why sanctions matter, or why the West should maintain economic pressure—this is the answer. These foreign militias aren't volunteers. They're paid mercenaries funded by Iranian oil money. Every dollar that flows into the regime's coffers is a dollar that can pay a foreign fighter to kill an Iranian civilian.

The regime's reliance on foreign forces reveals something crucial: they don't fully trust even their ideological forces to massacre fellow Iranians at scale. This is a sign of weakness, not strength. But that weakness only matters if the regime lacks the resources to hire substitutes.

Why Sanctions Work

The logic is simple: you cannot pay soldiers who will shoot your own people if you have no money.

The protest chant "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran" captures something profound. Iranians understand that their impoverishment directly funds foreign proxies who now return to kill them. The regime has spent billions supporting Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iraqi militias. That money came from Iran's oil wealth—wealth that should have built schools, hospitals, and infrastructure.

Sanctions don't just punish the regime economically; they specifically degrade its ability to maintain the security apparatus required for survival. The IRGC and its affiliated militias require payment. Foreign fighters require payment. The elaborate surveillance and repression infrastructure requires payment. When the rial collapses and oil revenues shrink, these payments become harder.

The question isn't whether sanctions hurt ordinary Iranians—they do, and this is tragic. The question is whether the alternative—a fully funded regime with unlimited resources to hire foreign mercenaries and pay domestic enforcers—is better. The answer is clearly no. A wealthy Islamic Republic would be even more brutal, not less, because it could afford to be.

This is why sanctions relief without regime change is dangerous. The 2015 nuclear deal released billions to Iran, and that money went to expanding militia networks across the Middle East rather than improving Iranian lives. The pattern is clear: regime revenue funds repression, not welfare.

The Ideological Foundation: The Rejection of Iranian Identity

There's a crucial dimension to this conflict that gets lost in translation—literally.

When Khomeini's speeches are translated into English, a key word is consistently mistranslated. The Farsi word "melliat" (ملیت) gets rendered as "nationalism," leading English speakers to think Khomeini was criticizing something negative. But "melliat" more accurately means "national consciousness" or "Iranian identity." When Khomeini said "melliat is useless to us," he wasn't condemning jingoism—he was explicitly rejecting the concept of Iranian identity itself in favor of pan-Islamic theocracy.

This wasn't incidental; it was the ideological foundation of the Islamic Republic. The regime was built on the explicit rejection of Iranians organizing around being Iranian rather than being Muslim subjects of a theocracy. For 45 years, the regime has systematically suppressed Persian cultural identity, Iranian nationalism, and secular national consciousness.

This is what people are dying to reject right now. The protests aren't just about economics, though the economic catastrophe triggered them. They're a reassertion of Iranian identity against a regime that has always viewed that identity as the enemy.

Islamic Fascism: The Doctrine Behind the Regime

To understand the Islamic Republic, you need to understand its ideological architecture—and the most clarifying framework is one that Western commentators are often reluctant to use: the regime is fascist in structure, with religion substituted for nationality as the organizing principle.

This isn't hyperbole or name-calling. It's a precise analytical comparison that illuminates why the regime behaves as it does.

The Structure of Classical Fascism

Fascism, as it emerged in 20th-century Europe, had several defining characteristics: the elevation of the nation or race as the supreme value around which society must be organized; a totalitarian state that penetrates every aspect of life; the cult of an infallible leader; an ideological military force separate from the regular army (the SS, the Blackshirts); rigid in-group/out-group distinctions; the explicit rejection of liberal democracy as decadent; state control of the economy in service of ideological goals; and imperial expansion to spread the ideology and demonstrate its vitality.

Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and Franco's Spain all shared these features despite their differences. The nation—defined racially, culturally, or historically—was the supreme good. Individual rights, democratic deliberation, and pluralism were weaknesses to be eliminated.

The Islamic Republic's Parallel Architecture

Now consider the Islamic Republic's structure:

Where fascism places the nation, the Islamic Republic places the ummah—the global Islamic community. The regime's foundational ideology explicitly rejects Iranian national identity ("melliat") as a Western corruption. Khomeini was clear: people with Iranian national consciousness are "useless" to the Islamic project. The supreme value isn't Iran or Iranians—it's Islam as the regime defines it.

Where fascism has the infallible Führer or Duce, the Islamic Republic has the Supreme Leader operating under "Velayat-e Faqih" (Guardianship of the Jurist). This doctrine holds that in the absence of the hidden Imam, a senior cleric must have absolute authority over the Islamic state. The Supreme Leader isn't just a political office—he's positioned as God's representative on earth, whose authority flows from divine mandate rather than popular consent. Questioning him isn't political opposition; it's apostasy.

Where fascism had the SS or Blackshirts—ideological paramilitary forces separate from the regular military, answering directly to the leader—the Islamic Republic has the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). The IRGC isn't just a military force; it's an ideological army sworn to protect the revolution, with its own economic empire, intelligence services, and chain of command parallel to (and superior to) the regular Iranian military. Like the SS, the IRGC exists precisely because the regular military might develop loyalties to the nation rather than the ideology.

Where fascism divided the world into the superior nation and degenerate others, the Islamic Republic divides humanity into the ummah and the kafir (unbelievers), the Dar al-Islam (house of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (house of war). The Great Satan (America) and Little Satan (Israel) aren't just geopolitical adversaries—they're existential enemies in a cosmic struggle. This framing justifies permanent warfare and makes compromise ideologically impossible.

Where fascism rejected liberal democracy as weak and decadent, the Islamic Republic explicitly rejects Western democracy as a corruption that elevates human law over divine law. Elections exist but are filtered through the Guardian Council, which disqualifies candidates who don't demonstrate sufficient loyalty to the ideology. The system performs democracy while ensuring ideological conformity.

Islamic Imperialism: The Export of Revolution

Classical fascism required imperial expansion—Italy into Ethiopia, Germany into Eastern Europe, Japan across Asia. The ideology demanded it: a vital, superior nation must expand or decay. Territorial conquest demonstrated the ideology's strength and provided resources for further expansion.

The Islamic Republic's imperial project operates differently but serves the same ideological function. Rather than territorial annexation, the regime exports revolution through proxy militias: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, various militias in Iraq and Syria. These aren't just strategic assets—they're ideological franchises, spreading the Islamic Republic's model of theocratic governance and demonstrating its vitality.

This is why the regime funds these groups even as Iranians starve. It's not strategic irrationality; it's ideological necessity. Just as Nazi Germany poured resources into conquest even as the war turned against it, the Islamic Republic must continue its imperial project because the ideology requires it. A regime that retreated to its borders and focused on domestic welfare would be admitting ideological defeat.

The chant "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran" strikes at the heart of this. Iranian protesters aren't just complaining about misallocated resources—they're rejecting the entire ideological framework that treats Iranian lives and Iranian wealth as fuel for pan-Islamic imperial expansion.

The Substitution That Changes Everything

Here's the key insight: classical fascism tied its identity to nationality, which meant its imperial project was ultimately self-limiting. Nazi Germany could only incorporate ethnic Germans; everyone else had to be subjugated or eliminated. The nation, however expansively defined, has boundaries.

Religious identity has no such boundaries. The ummah is theoretically universal—anyone can convert, any territory can be incorporated. This makes Islamic fascism potentially more expansive and more persistent than its nationalist predecessors. There's no natural stopping point, no "Greater Iran" after which the mission is complete.

This also explains the regime's particular hostility to Iranian nationalism. For the Nazis, German nationalism was the fuel. For the Islamic Republic, Iranian nationalism is the enemy—a competing identity that limits the universal claims of the ideology. Every Iranian who identifies primarily as Iranian rather than as Muslim under the Supreme Leader's authority is a threat to the ideological project.

Why This Framework Matters

Understanding the Islamic Republic as fascism with religious characteristics rather than just "authoritarianism" or "theocracy" clarifies several things:

First, it explains why the regime cannot reform. Fascism doesn't moderate; it either expands or collapses. The ideological structure requires permanent struggle against internal and external enemies. A "moderate" Islamic Republic is a contradiction in terms, which is why every "reformist" president has failed to produce meaningful change. The Supreme Leader and IRGC will always override electoral outcomes that threaten the ideology.

Second, it explains the imperial project's persistence despite domestic costs. The proxy militias aren't a policy choice that could be reversed—they're an ideological necessity. The regime will fund Hezbollah while Iranians starve because the ideology demands it.

Third, it explains the brutality of internal repression. Fascist regimes don't just imprison opponents; they annihilate them. The 1988 prison massacre, which killed thousands of political prisoners in weeks, wasn't an aberration—it was the ideology functioning as designed. Enemies of the Islamic project don't deserve due process; they deserve elimination.

Fourth, it reframes the choice facing the world. You cannot negotiate with fascism; you can only contain it, weaken it, and wait for it to collapse from internal contradictions. The nuclear deal's fundamental flaw was treating the regime as a normal state actor that would moderate if given economic incentives. But the regime cannot moderate without ceasing to be itself. Sanctions and isolation aren't punishments—they're containment strategies appropriate to the nature of the threat.

Finally, it honors what Iranian protesters are actually fighting. They're not just demanding better economic management or even free elections. They're rejecting an entire ideological system that has stolen their national identity, murdered their compatriots, and subordinated Iranian welfare to a foreign imperial project. They're fighting fascism—and the world should recognize it as such.

The Seyeds: A Religious Aristocracy

There's another dimension to the Islamic Republic's power structure that Westerners rarely understand: the role of the "seyed" (سید) in Iranian society, and how the regime has weaponized this concept to create a ruling religious aristocracy.

What Is a Seyed?

In Islamic tradition, a seyed (also spelled sayyid) is someone who claims direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad, specifically through his daughter Fatimah and son-in-law Ali. In Shia Islam, this lineage carries enormous religious prestige. For over a thousand years, being a seyed meant something in Persian society—a connection to the Prophet's bloodline that commanded respect and often material benefits.

You can identify seyeds in the Iranian clerical system by their turbans. Non-seyed clerics wear white turbans; seyeds wear black or green turbans. When you see images of Iran's leadership, pay attention to the turban colors. You'll notice something striking: black turbans dominate the highest positions of power.

Ayatollah Khomeini was a seyed. Ayatollah Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, is a seyed. The presidency and senior clerical positions have been overwhelmingly held by seyeds. This isn't coincidental—it's structural.

The Religious Aristocracy

The Islamic Republic presents itself as a meritocracy of religious scholarship—the most learned and pious rise to lead the ummah. The doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih supposedly places the most qualified jurist in charge, not the best-born.

But in practice, the system operates as a religious aristocracy where claimed descent from a 7th-century Arab conqueror determines who can access the highest levels of power. Being a seyed doesn't guarantee power, but not being one creates a ceiling. The black turban is effectively a marker of noble birth in a system that claims to reject such distinctions.

This parallels classical fascism's obsession with blood and lineage more closely than most realize. Nazi ideology was obsessed with racial purity and Aryan bloodlines. The Islamic Republic is obsessed with prophetic bloodlines. Both systems create hereditary hierarchies while claiming to represent something universal—the Volk or the ummah.

The irony is sharp: a revolution that claimed to overthrow monarchy and aristocracy created a new aristocracy based on claims of Arab descent ruling over Persians. The seyeds are, in effect, a religious nobility—their status inherited rather than earned, their authority derived from blood rather than merit or popular consent.

The Colonial Dimension

This adds a layer that many Iranians feel acutely but rarely gets discussed in Western coverage: the Islamic Republic isn't just a theocracy; it's a theocracy that privileges Arab lineage in a Persian country.

Iran is one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, with a distinct identity stretching back 2,500 years before Islam arrived. The Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century was traumatic—libraries burned, Zoroastrian priests killed, the Persian language temporarily suppressed. Persians eventually reasserted their cultural identity, adapting Islam to Persian traditions and preserving their language, but the conquest left deep marks.

Now consider what the Islamic Republic represents: a system where claimed descent from Arab conquerors is a prerequisite for the highest religious authority, where Persian national identity ("melliat") is explicitly rejected as un-Islamic, and where the regime's resources flow to Arab causes (Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen) while Persians starve.

For many Iranians, this isn't just authoritarianism—it feels like a continuation of foreign domination. The seyeds ruling Iran claim authority not from Iranian tradition or Persian civilization but from blood ties to the Arab prophet who conquered Persia. The revolutionary chant "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon" isn't just about resource allocation; it's a rejection of a system that subordinates Persian identity and Persian welfare to an Arab-centric religious project led by those who claim Arab blood.

The Legitimacy Problem

The seyed system also creates a legitimacy problem the regime cannot solve. Religious authority in Shia Islam has traditionally been somewhat democratic—believers choose which scholars to follow, and scholars rise through demonstrated learning and the respect of their peers. The Islamic Republic corrupted this by making the state enforce one scholar's authority over all others.

But by stacking leadership positions with seyeds, the regime reveals that it doesn't actually believe religious merit alone determines fitness to rule. If it did, turban color wouldn't matter. The implicit message is that blood matters—that descent from the Prophet creates a special capacity for religious leadership that ordinary believers lack.

This is aristocracy with religious characteristics. And like all aristocracies, it breeds resentment among those excluded from power by accident of birth. A brilliant religious scholar without seyed lineage faces barriers that a mediocre scholar with the right family tree does not. The system selects for bloodline, not capability.

What This Means

Understanding the seyed dynamic clarifies several things about the current moment:

First, it explains part of the regime's fragility. An aristocracy that has impoverished its people while maintaining hereditary privilege is historically unstable. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and yes, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 all targeted aristocracies that had lost legitimacy. The Islamic Republic may face the same fate.

Second, it illuminates why Iranian nationalism is so threatening to the regime. Persian identity offers an alternative basis for social organization—one rooted in Iranian civilization rather than Arab religious lineage. Every Iranian who feels pride in Persepolis, Cyrus the Great, or Persian poetry is implicitly rejecting the seyed hierarchy's claim to natural leadership.

Third, it connects to the economic catastrophe. Aristocracies extract resources from populations; they don't exist to serve them. The regime's willingness to impoverish Iranians while funding foreign militias makes more sense when you understand that the leadership sees itself as a religious nobility with obligations to the ummah, not as servants of the Iranian nation.

The protesters in the streets aren't just demanding economic reform or political freedom. They're rejecting a system where claimed Arab descent makes you more qualified to rule Persians than any actual Persian. They're rejecting religious aristocracy dressed up as divine mandate. And they're reclaiming an Iranian identity that the seyed establishment has spent 45 years trying to suppress.

This Moment

Iran today faces its largest protests since 1979. Thousands have been killed. The internet has been cut. Foreign militias patrol Persian streets, shooting Persian people in Persian cities.

But something has shifted. The regime's external allies are weaker than ever after the 2025 war with Israel. The rial has collapsed. The protests are remarkably unified across ethnic groups in a way previous movements weren't. And the very presence of Arab and Afghan militias killing Iranians in Iran—a civilization with 2,500 years of continuous history and profound cultural pride—may deepen rage rather than suppress it.

No one knows how this ends. History shows that regimes can survive tremendous pressure if their security forces remain loyal and well-paid. But history also shows that no one predicts the fall until it happens. The Shah's regime looked permanent until it wasn't.

What the outside world can do is limited but meaningful: maintain economic pressure that degrades the regime's ability to pay its killers, provide communication tools to evade internet blackouts, impose targeted sanctions on specific commanders, and maintain diplomatic isolation. Not weapons—that would trigger civil war. But strategic support that improves the odds while Iranians fight for their own freedom.

The Iranian people have paid for this moment in blood—thousands dead in these protests alone, tens of thousands since 1979. They deserve a world that understands what they're facing and why this time might be different.