Iran and the regime of the Ayatollahs: the tyranny of darkness
- A revolution that devours itself
- Repressive structure and history of protests
- Origins of the demonstrations and escalation of repression
- The coalition against the regime: echoes of 1979
- The American variable: imminent attacks?
- Conclusion: the moment of truth
For decades, the West has made a serious mistake in describing the Ayatollahs' regime as a ‘theocracy’. We must banish this term. Iran is not governed by God's law; such a definition would confer a misleading legitimacy on what is nothing more than a brutal dictatorship. We are faced with a regime that has manipulated religion, transforming it into a perverse ideology: radical jihadist Islamism in its Shiite variant.
As Edmund Burke once warned, ‘the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,’ but even worse is when good men mislabel evil, thereby conferring upon it an undeserved dignity.
The regime of the Ayatollahs does not represent Islam as a whole, nor even Shiism in its entirety; it represents a malignant ideological mutation. They are not pious religious men, but engineers of terrorism who have manipulated religion to consolidate a ruthless ideology: jihadist Islamism. Hezbollah, the Iraqi terrorist militias, the Houthis, Hamas... all drink from the same poisoned well.
If we refer to Aristotle's classification, the Iranian system does not correspond to the model of classical tyranny, but rather to that of a degenerate oligarchy: a government run by a minority that exploits the rest of the population. As Aristotle himself observed in his Politics, ‘oligarchy is government by the rich... who are few’. A tyranny exercised by a single man can collapse with the fall of the tyrant. A jihadist oligarchy only works with the support of a minority that benefits from the system: part of the Shia clergy, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and the Bonyads (who control up to 40% of the economy), the aligned bazaaris and the regime's patronage network. This minority does not defend a faith, it defends its power and privileges.
This oligarchy forms the core of a revolutionary state that has made the export of terrorism its raison d'être. Its project aims to reshape the Middle East through militias, wars for power and a nuclear programme conceived as a life insurance policy. The same structure that plunders the national economy finances terrorist mandates and places the country in permanent conflict with its neighbours and the West.
A revolution that devours itself
The Islamic Republic imposed the revolution with an iron fist and terror. The generation of fanatics of 1979, joined by many idealists, has been transformed into a nomenklatura that no longer believes in the ‘revolutionary’ project, but rather in the preservation of power and income. The Islamist project, which promised to represent the mostazafin (the dispossessed), is now perceived as a power that governs against the social majority. The cultural war waged by the regime against everyday lifestyles has opened an irreconcilable rift with urban society. The mechanisms that consolidated the system (ideology, mobilisation, selective repression) have become the very forces that today undermine its stability.
Tocqueville's observation is prophetic: ‘The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform itself.’ But this regime has even stopped pretending to reform; it has abandoned persuasion in favour of pure and simple coercion.
Repressive structure and history of protests
Faced with the exhaustion of revolutionary discourse, the state resorts to pure and simple coercion. The repressive apparatus is based on three pillars: the IRGC, with more than 200,000 members and its economic empire; the Basij militia, the regime's brown shirts, a veritable repressive infantry with millions of ‘volunteers’; and the Ministry of Intelligence, which tortures and murders in the country and exports assassins equipped with diplomatic passports.
The history of demonstrations is a chronicle of increasingly bloody repression. In 2009, the Green Movement caused at least 72 deaths. In 2019, between 300 and 1,500 people perished in just three days. In 2022, the murder of Mahsa Amini by the ‘morality police’ claimed more than 550 victims. The current wave is unprecedented: more than 15,000 dead according to conservative estimates, with some 25,000 people detained. The largest massacre in 47 years of a regime of terror.
What distinguishes this moment is that the regime is no longer repressing isolated uprisings, but crushing a national insurrection that it perceives as an existential threat. Hence the orders to shoot to kill; hence the snipers who aim for the head with the sole purpose of terrorising.
As Machiavelli pointed out with cold precision, ‘men must be either well treated or crushed, because they can take revenge for slight injuries, but not for serious ones.’ The ayatollahs opted for crushing, but discovered that an awakened people cannot be destroyed so easily.
Origins of the demonstrations and escalation of repression
The demonstrations broke out on 28 December, triggered by the collapse of the rial, which lost 80% of its value. But to reduce them to an economic explosion would be a mistake. Inflation, water and electricity cuts, youth unemployment above 30%: these are the symptoms of a system that, for 46 years, has prioritised the export of terror over the welfare of its population. The social contract of the revolution has been irrevocably broken.
What distinguishes this moment is the speed of radicalisation. In a few days, ‘bread, work, freedom’ has become ‘death to the dictator!’. Protesters are burning the regime's mosques and waving the flag of the Lion and the Sun. This is not monarchical nostalgia, but a total rejection of the Islamic Republic.
The repression followed a calculated escalation. Until 7 January, the violence remained ‘contained’. On 8 January, coinciding with a total internet blackout, the massacre began. There are reports of assault rifles and armoured vehicles firing into the crowd. A doctor reported that a five-year-old boy was shot while in his mother's arms.
The architects of this repression are the radical faction of the IRGC and the head of the judiciary, Mohseni-Ejei, who is credited with the following statement: ‘If we have to do something, we must do it now and quickly.’ This ‘now or never’ logic reflects the panic of an apparatus that knows that each day of protests erodes the obedience of its own troops.
The coalition against the regime: echoes of 1979
A ghost haunts the corridors of power in Tehran: 1979. The revolution that overthrew the Shah was a heterogeneous coalition of liberals, nationalists, communists, students and religious figures. Khomeini rode that wave and then systematically devoured his allies.
What we are seeing today presents significant parallels. The demonstrations have unified sectors that rarely converge: middle-class students, industrial workers, merchants fed up with corruption, ethnic minorities — Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Baluchis — who suffer double oppression for not being Persian or Shiite.
The repression is especially brutal against women demanding their rights and rejecting the compulsory veil, as well as against Generation Z, which is totally opposed to the system. Even some sectors of the traditional clergy (not only the moderates, but also a growing number of conservatives) remain eloquently silent.
The crucial difference: this coalition excludes those who led the movement in 1979. There is no clerical leadership; there is a visceral rejection of the political turban. If the regime falls, it will be to bury jihadist Islamism in power once and for all and to ensure that Iran ceases to be a revolutionary cancer obsessed with exporting its ‘model’.
The words of John Stuart Mill resonate across the centuries: ‘A people may prefer a free government, but if, through indolence, negligence or cowardice... they are not up to the efforts necessary to preserve it... they have little chance of enjoying it for long.’ The Iranian people have shown that they are not up to those efforts.
The American variable: imminent attacks?
Trump has stepped up his warnings: ‘We are ready,’ ‘reinforcements are on the way.’ The deployment of military assets from the Al Udeid base in Qatar and the ‘clearing’ of Iranian airspace of civilian traffic suggest that the military option is not mere rhetoric. The strategic question is this: what would be the consequences of an attack?
Some analysts argue that it would harden the regime, allowing it to invoke the external threat to close ranks, insist that the protesters are the enemy's ‘fifth column’ and justify even more savage repression.
Others claim that the regime is too weakened to take advantage of a reaction to possible attacks. With its legitimacy shattered and its population in revolt, surgical strikes against the regime's power infrastructure and the IRGC could accelerate the implosion.
The reality probably lies somewhere between these two extremes. A massive attack would galvanise support for the regime; selective strikes against the repressive apparatus could weaken it without provoking a nationalist backlash. The key lies in preventing intervention from becoming the dominant narrative that drowns out the Iranian people's cry for freedom. The challenge is not only to overthrow the ayatollahs, but also to prevent the power vacuum from being filled by even more fanatical elements, still backed by the bloodthirsty IRGC.
As Thucydides wrote in his history of the Peloponnesian War, ‘the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.’ The question facing the West is whether it will allow such ancient brutality to continue unopposed in the modern era.
Short-term scenarios
The most likely scenario is a selective repressive escalation: raids on communication nodes, house raids against people connected to Starlink, exemplary executions. The regime will intensify electronic blockades.
It cannot be ruled out that it will activate its terrorist proxies — Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis and even Hamas — to divert media attention with provocations in the Gulf or attacks on US or Israeli interests.
The possibility of an internal fracture—defections among mid-level officers, units refusing to fire—would require sustained popular pressure. The real turning point will come when a section of the oppressive oligarchy decides that it is more dangerous to cling to the corpse of the regime than to negotiate its survival in a post-Islamist Iran.
Conclusion: the moment of truth
The Ayatollah's regime faces an existential challenge that calls into question its raison d'être. A system based on fear, state jihadist Islamism and the export of terror cannot survive forever, and transparency is toxic to bloody repression.
The Iranian power structure has demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice thousands of its children to stay on the throne. The more than 15,000 dead — a number that continues to rise — are not collateral damage, but the price the executioners pay for their survival. This regime will maintain its total information blockade to repress with blood and fire, without witnesses.
The Iranian people do not want to reform the system, they want to bury it. The intervention of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi on Fox News, with his delusional theories about Mossad agents and neighbouring Azerbaijan, is an absurd argument worthy of a B-grade spy film.
But incredulity without consequences is sterile. The West must decide whether it wants to be an indignant witness or an effective actor. We must prepare for the day after: the power vacuum in an Iran liberated from this abject regime could be as dangerous as the agony of a wounded beast.
History is unforgiving to those who confuse prudence with passivity. Jihadist tyranny exists, and its defeat begins by naming it and denying it the impunity of silence. Moral condemnation without real pressure is not prudent diplomacy, it is shameful and cowardly complicity.
Edmund Burke's warning returns with renewed force: ‘When the wicked unite, the good must associate, or they will fall, one by one, ruthless victims of a despicable struggle.’
And when the blood of Iranian martyrs cries out for justice before the court of history, no statement will serve as an alibi for those who, having the power to act, chose to look the other way. The Iranian people have decided that they would rather die on their feet than live on their knees. Will the West rise to the challenge of this sacrifice?