Forty-seven years after crowds surged through the streets of Tehran and the Pahlavi monarchy fell with astonishing speed, the Iranian revolution remains one of the most misunderstood events of the late 20th century. It is invoked, too often lazily, as shorthand for intransigence, for clerical rigidity, for a nation locked in permanent defiance. Yet history is rarely so simple. The upheaval of 1979 was born not in abstraction but in grievance: a memory of humiliation, of foreign interference, of a political order that appeared modern in its façade yet brittle at its core. To revisit that history is not to romanticize it, nor to deny the contradictions that followed. It is to acknowledge that the revolution emerged from a particular set of circumstances, many of them shaped beyond Iran’s borders.
The 1953 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh, orchestrated by British and American intelligence services after he nationalized Iran’s oil, left a scar that has never fully healed. For many Iranians, it confirmed a bitter lesson: that democratic aspiration could be sacrificed when it collided with western strategic and commercial interests. The restoration of the Shah was experienced not simply as a domestic political reversal, but as a moment when sovereignty itself was curtailed. The decades that followed were marked by rapid development and equally rapid repression. The Shah’s White Revolution altered the social landscape, expanding literacy and infrastructure, while concentrating power ever more tightly.
The SAVAK security apparatus became synonymous with fear. Oil wealth flowed, yet political participation narrowed. A state that projected confidence abroad appeared fragile at home, its legitimacy tethered to patronage and coercion. It was against this backdrop that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s message gained force. His appeal lay not solely in theology but in a language of dignity and resistance. The sermons smuggled into Iran on cassette tapes carried a promise that governance could be wrested from autocracy and foreign tutelage alike. When he returned in February 1979, greeted by vast crowds, it signaled not merely the fall of a monarch but the collapse of an entire political architecture.
The Islamic Republic that followed has been the subject of intense scrutiny and, frequently, hostility. It defined itself in opposition to what it characterised as imperial dominance. The hostage crisis of 1979 entrenched enmity with Washington; the eight-year war with Iraq, backed by several western and regional powers, deepened a siege mentality. Sanctions became a structural feature of Iran’s economic life, constraining growth and amplifying hardship. Yet the state endured, building domestic capacities in education, healthcare and defence, while pursuing alliances beyond the western orbit. None of this absolves the republic of its own failings. Iran is a society of striking diversity and generational change.
Its streets have seen protest as well as celebration. From student demonstrations in 1999 to the Green Movement in 2009 and the unrest following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, many Iranians have voiced demands for accountability, social freedom and economic opportunity. These are not the inventions of outsiders; they are expressions of a society negotiating its own future. It is precisely here that the current moment demands care. In recent weeks, anti-Iran protests promoted and amplified in western capitals have been presented as organic expressions of solidarity. Yet the choreography tells a different story. Political figures long committed to isolating Tehran appear on stages beside exiled opposition personalities.
Funding streams are opaque. Rhetoric veers quickly from human rights to regime change. The line between support for civil society and instrumentalization of unrest becomes perilously thin. There is a troubling familiarity to this pattern. When western governments with a documented history of intervention in Iran adopt the language of liberation, scepticism is not only understandable; it is rational. The memory of 1953 is not a relic. It shapes how external gestures are interpreted, particularly when accompanied by ever-tightening sanctions that bear most heavily on ordinary citizens. Inflation, currency collapse and shortages are not abstractions. They are daily realities for families whose geopolitical significance lies largely in the fact of their vulnerability.
Condemnation of these orchestrated demonstrations is not an endorsement of every policy pursued in Tehran. It is a rejection of a political theatre that reduces a complex society to a prop in broader strategic contests. When protests are framed primarily as leverage against a rival state, the lived experiences of Iranians risk being subordinated to the priorities of foreign capitals. The language of freedom becomes entangled with the calculus of containment. There is, moreover, a selective quality to the outrage. Authoritarian excesses among western allies in the region often elicit muted criticism. Arms sales continue; diplomatic courtesies are extended. The moral vocabulary deployed against Iran is rarely applied with equal fervor elsewhere.
Such asymmetry reinforces the perception that principle is too often contingent on alignment. Iran today is neither the revolutionary fervor of 1979 nor the caricature of an unchanging theocracy. More than half its population was born after the revolution. They are digitally connected, acutely aware of global currents, and impatient with economic stagnation. Their aspirations are varied and, at times, contradictory. Some seek reform within existing structures; others imagine more fundamental change. What they do not require is the appropriation of their grievances for geopolitical spectacle. The path to a more open and prosperous Iran, if it is to emerge, will be shaped primarily by Iranians themselves.
Sanctions framed as tools of accountability often entrench the very dynamics they purport to challenge, consolidating a politics of resistance against perceived siege. Nearly half a century after the revolution, Iran remains an argument as much as a state: an argument about sovereignty, about the limits of foreign influence, about the balance between faith and pluralism, security and liberty. To engage with that argument honestly requires more than slogans chanted in distant capitals. It requires a recognition that history weighs heavily, that intervention leaves residues, and that solidarity untethered from strategic ambition looks markedly different from solidarity deployed as leverage.
The temptation to choreograph dissent abroad may offer short-term political theatre. It does little, however, to resolve the enduring questions that have shaped Iran’s modern history. If there is to be a recalibration of relations, it will not come through spectacle. It will come, if at all, through a sober reckoning with the past and a commitment to principles applied consistently, not selectively. Until then, the echoes of 1979 will continue to reverberate, not as an invitation to interference, but as a reminder of the costs that interference can exact.
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