By Gurnam Singh | Opinion |
The images flickering across our screens from Tehran, Isfahan and Mashhad over the past few weeks carry a hauntingly familiar message. Once again, we see the brave sons and daughters of Iran standing before the barrel of a gun, their voices rising in defiance in the face of terrifying violence, demanding nothing more than the right to breathe.
As I watch these events unfold and hearing of so many protesters being gunned down by the Revolutionary Guards, I am struck by a profound sense of empathy for a people whose history has been a relentless cycle of hope and betrayal. For nearly half a century, the Iranian spirit has been held hostage, first by a Shah that looked toward Washington, and then by a bunch of fake God Men that look only toward a perverted conception of Islam. My heart aches for the grandmother in Shiraz who has seen every uprising from 1979 to the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022, only to see her grandchildren facing the same Basij batons today.
A Century of Broken Promises
The tragedy of modern Iran is that it has been trapped in a suffocating binary; the nostalgic, iron-fisted “modernization” of the Pahlavi monarchy or the stagnant, ideological “resistance” of the Islamic Republic.
The Mohammad Reza Pahlavi era, often painted as a “Golden Age” by those in the diaspora, was in truth built on a hollow foundation. The 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh remains the original betrayal of the Iranian people. This literally represents a moment when Iranian sovereignty was traded for U.S. interests. While the Shah projected a high-tech utopia to the world, it was a facade maintained by the brutality of the the domestic security and intelligence service of Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty (SAVAK) and deep levels of corruption. He tried to import ‘modernity’ from the West while denying his own people a voice. Given the wonderfully eclectic culture and history of Iran, exchanging this for this an impoverished Western consumer capitalism, was indeed a bad deal.
The Failed Revolution
Then came 1979 and the Iranian Revolution and the ousting of the Shah. It was supposed to be the great correction full of promise and hope. Even people like me on the Left who were opposed to US hegemony, this was hailed as a great revolutionary movement in history. But we watched in real-time as that revolution was cannibalized, and the socialists massacred in the first weeks under Khomeini. The Ayatollahs didn’t liberate Iran, as they promised, but simply displaced one form of absolutism for another.
Indeed. Some argue that under the previous rulers, women had more cultural freedom, which the Ayatollahs totally disposed of. They replaced the “King of Kings” with the “Representative of God.” For 40 years, they have used “Western Arrogance” as a shield to deflect from their own oppressions, corruption and mismanagement, leaving the Iranian people, especially women and girls, as the primary casualties of a what can only be characterised as an Islamist fascist regime.
The Glow of a New Dawn
The current protests, born this time of economic despair but fuelled by a long-established yearning for dignity and freedom, tell us that the status quo is no longer a viable option. The Iranian people are no longer asking for “reform”; they have reached a point where they feel risking death and the possibility of a new settlement is a price worth paying.
And as the bullets of the state reign in to clear the protestors from the streets, resulting in thousands being killed in cold blood, the divide between the people and rulers continues to widen.
Though it not certain when the regime will fall, there is good reason to believe that we are approaching the end game. The key question now is what kind of settlement will best serve the people of Iran. For me this must be based on secular democratic sovereignty. This must result in an Iran that is neither a client state of the US, Russia or China, nor subjugated by a corrupt priestly class.
A New Dawn
The past 50 years has been a never-ending struggle for the Iranian people and their aspirations. For too long, the Iranian citizen has been treated as a subject to be managed or a martyr to be exploited.
As we look toward, let us hope that the nightmare is finally coming to an end. The era of the Shah is dead; the era of the Ayatollahs is spent. It is time for the world to stand in solidarity with those who seek a new path for an Iran that finally, and truly, belongs to itself. The people of Iran have spent long enough in the shadows; it is time they felt the warmth of the liberty they have so dearly bought with their own blood.
Gurnam Singh is an academic activist dedicated to human rights, liberty, equality, social and environmental justice. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick, UK. He can be contacted at Gurnam.singh.1@warwick.ac.uk
* This is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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