Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered the slaughter of unarmed protesters. Thousands have been killed, and many more have been injured.
Over the past two weeks, Iranians have taken to the streets. For the umpteenth time? Enough to make it work this time. Now they are protesting at specific times following a call from Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. The networks of the Iranian liberal movement, 7 Aban Front, keep me informed about demonstrations in Iran. Sometimes I need Google Maps to find out where a town is located. Iran is rapidly uniting against the ayatollahs.
The oligarchs still support the regime. They are a product of the Islamic Republic, but even they may change their position. After all, US President Donald Trump is instilling fear in the Iranian oligarchs. Money is still more important to them than a regime in the name of Allah. Millions of Iranians – bazaar merchants, students, workers, unemployed youth, civil servants, and others – are taking to the streets to demand an end to the regime. They have overcome the Berlin Wall of fear.
Terrible news also reaches me. Someone I know was hit by a bullet. He was born shortly after the Islamic revolution. Fortunately, he was able to be treated at home by a doctor and nurse and is doing better. In any case, he has not been arrested. When he was born, part of the population, intoxicated by the promises of Islamists and Leftists, chanted: Marg bar shah (Death to the Shah). Now he joins the rest of Iran in chanting: Javid Shah (Long live the Shah). The course of history has its own logic of triumph, tragedy, and correction.
New protests are aimed at overthrowing the regime, by force if necessary. Here and there, protesters defended themselves against the violence of the security forces. The regime is also faltering from within. Despite Khamenei’s threats and the total communication blackout, people continue to demonstrate against tyranny.
Current IRGC generals are executors
Khamenei’s A team was wiped out by Israel last summer, so he is playing with his B team: generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The current IRGC generals are executors, not decision-makers. Khamenei’s succession is also a major problem. There are a few suitable candidates. He is no longer willing to negotiate with the US because three of his prestigious and costly projects are now at stake: the nuclear program, proxies such as Hamas or Hezbollah, and a range of ballistic missiles.
Economically, the regime is also not doing well. It is being driven into a corner not only by sanctions from the UN, America, and Europe, but also and above all by mismanagement and corruption within state organs. Organized corruption is an untreatable disease.
And for the first time in 47 years, there is also an alternative: Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. He is now being touted by protesters as the leader of the nation. That is why he regularly addresses the people, and his organization is functioning effectively. In addition, there are powerful secular liberal movements such as the 7 Aban Front, both inside and outside Iran.
The logic of tyranny ends in massacres and organized lies. Last week, for the first time, Prince Reza Pahlavi, the leader of the national revolution against the Islamic state of Iran, called on the population to protest against the Ayatollah regime on Thursday evening and Friday evening around 8 p.m. A risky call. In recent years, no one dared to call on people to protest massively at a specific time. What if it did not happen on a massive scale?
But millions of people took to the streets in cities across the country, chanting: “This is the final battle, Pahlavi is coming back” or Javid Shah. A young woman who belongs to one of the networks in a city in northern Iran sent me a selfie with a message. She asked me to publish that text and photo if she lost her life. I wrote to her: “You’ll just come back and tell me how it went.”
Deep down, I was very worried. A few minutes before 8 o’clock, without realizing it, I looked up, and something in my soul said, “Oh God, please let them come home unharmed.” Because the regime shut down mobile phones, landlines, and the internet on Thursday evening after the protests began, I do not know how that woman and others are doing.
These days, I hear this beautiful passage from the Dutch national anthem in my head. These words comfort me in these uncertain times:
A shield and my reliance,
O God, Thou ever wert.
I’ll trust unto Thy guidance.
O, leave me not ungirt.
That I may stay a pious
Servant of Thine for aye
And drive the plagues that try us
And tyranny away.
The Netherlands emerged as a sovereign nation in its struggle against Spanish tyranny. The Pharaonic tyranny of Khamenei and his IRGC is nearing its end. Iranians are proclaiming, “This is the final battle; Pahlavi will return.” They are attempting to rectify the greatest mistake in the history of Iran and the Middle East: the establishment of an Islamic state in Iran.
Iranians cannot prevail through bravery alone. They require tangible support from the US and Israel. The overthrow of the Ayatollah regime is also in Europe’s interest. Europe seems deaf to Iranians who are correcting a historical mistake – the establishment of the Islamic Republic. That is why this revolutionary correction, a necessary and just one, can be summed up in two words: Javid Shah (long live the king). Unfortunately, Europe is asleep.
The writer is a Dutch-Iranian philosopher and law professor.