GOA - The United States has once again discovered Iran’s streets.

Protests - real, painful, and rooted in social grievances -have been repackaged in Washington as a political moral mandate for intervention, framed as a moral mandate. Morality is far removed from where the US stands when it comes to Iran. 

The US intervenes only when it has economic interests and employs political tactics to advance its self-centred goals. It also intervenes when it desires to support an ally who wants absolute control in a given region. In the ongoing situation where the US purportedly pretends it wants to support protesters against the Iranian ruling system; the world is witness (some blind themselves to the facts) to the invention and reporting of atrocities committed by an adversary without adequate knowledge and analysis and just broad brushes of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion. 

The current campaign to destabilise the Iranian establishment has less to do with the desire for a peaceful West Asia and more with the US pursuing its own agenda in the region. Iran is currently the only country in West Asia to resist American influence, and is in a constant feud with Israel and Saudi. 

The ultra-right opposition of the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran] and in the West care nothing at all about the people. They would even accept sore economic sanctions even if they substantially enhance the gloom of millions of Iranians. It votes for war; it rationalizes the carnages that will surely follow as a result of the war under the pretext of its opposition to the IRI … The US and Israel claim that they contemplate bombing to stop the IRI from having alleged access to nuclear weapons. However, as has often been pointed out, such a bombing will inevitably turn into a large-scale war. The question then is, who benefits from it? … any military action by the Israeli regime against the Islamic Republic will benefit the most reactionary currents in Israel and the West. 

Western propaganda, in general, and US doctrine, in particular, devoid of a scientific and analytical political base, can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets, transforming in the public eye wars of unprovoked aggression into wars of liberation of the oppressed, or turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure stern and self-assertive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions, leading up to war. 

Atrocity fabrication and the consistent means by and ends to which it has been used has become crucial to comprehending geopolitical events in the present day. In the specific context of US threats on Iran, US wants Iran weakened in a way that arrogates power to Israel. After all, it is Iran that has protected and empowered legitimate liberation movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah – from the vile militaristic and brazen attempts of Israel to reduce Palestine, Lebanon, and, until recently Syria, to rubble in the most inhumane ways conceivable.  

From think tanks to cable studios, the familiar script has returned: protect Iranian protesters, restore democracy, liberate women, defend freedom. It is an old language, and Iranians know where it leads.
Every US attempt to “save” Iran has left the country poorer, more isolated, and more violently contested. Yet American policymakers persist, convinced that instability elsewhere is a tolerable cost for control, access, and dominance.

Iran’s political paradigm rests on its own civilizational values

Iran is not protesting because it lacks Western values. It resists because it has its own. Iran's resistance stems from its own values and this emanates from a complex geopolitical and cultural argument rooted in various historical, religious, and political factors. The Iranian government and many of its citizens view their political and social framework as derived from their unique national history and Shia Islamic principles, which they argue provide a distinct and valid alternative to Western models.

To understand Iranian suspicion of US intentions, one must return to 1953. Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, before removal from power, had introduced a range of social and political measures such as social security, land reforms and higher taxes including the introduction of taxation on the rent of land. His time as prime minister was marked by the clash with the British government, known as Abadan Crisis, following the nationalisation of the Iranian oil industry, which had been built by the British on Persian lands since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC), later known as British Petroleum (BP). 

In the aftermath of the overthrow of Mosaddeq, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi returned to power, and negotiated the Consortium Agreement of 1954 with the British, which gave split ownership of Iranian oil production between Iran and Western companies until 1979. Mosaddegh was subsequently charged with treason, imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death and was buried in his own home in order to prevent a political furore. In 2013, the United States government formally acknowledged its role in the coup as being a part of its foreign policy initiatives, including paying protesters and bribing officials.

Iran is not a Western laboratory 

No serious discussion of American intentions in Iran can bypass 1953. When Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised Iran’s oil - asserting control over resources looted for decades by Britain—the response was swift and brutal. The CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup that overthrew his democratically elected government and reinstalled the Shah as a compliant monarch.

This was not about democracy. It was about oil, obedience, and precedent. Mossadegh’s crime was not authoritarianism but independence. That coup implanted a deep Iranian conviction: Western powers tolerate democracy only when it produces the “right” outcomes. When it does not, democracy becomes disposable. 

The Shah, the exiles, and the politics of nostalgia

Today, the descendants of the Pahlavi monarchy are being paraded once again as symbols of a “modern” Iran. The same family that ruled through secret police, torture chambers, and absolute subservience to Western interests is now marketed as a democratic alternative.

This rehabilitation is not accidental. Exile politics has always been a favoured tool of empire. From Iraq to Cuba to Venezuela, Washington nurtures pliable elites abroad, presenting them as authentic voices of liberation while ignoring the violence and dependency they represent.

For Iranians who lived under the Shah, this nostalgia is insulting. Modernity imposed through repression is not progress. Westernisation enforced by fear is not civilisation. 

Achin Vanaik, an Indian political scientist, author, and activist writing in the Economic and Political Weekly, has argued that the US vision for Iran goes beyond subverting its nuclear program: the US wants to reverse its political–strategic defeat from the time when the Shah of Iran, a US supporter, was overthrown in 1979, and an Islamic republic system critical of US foreign policy came to power in the country.

Oil, geography, and the real stakes

Iran’s problem, in the eyes of Washington, has never been religion or human rights. It is geography. Iran sits astride critical energy corridors, borders US military outposts, and maintains independent relations with forces resisting Western dominance - Hezbollah, Palestinian groups, and regional anti-imperialist movements. An autonomous Iran disrupts the architecture of American control in West Asia.

Destabilisation, therefore, becomes strategy. Sanctions that cripple civilians. Cyber warfare. Media operations. Covert funding. Each protest becomes a potential lever, each grievance a pressure point. Concern for Iranian lives suddenly surfaces only when it can be weaponised.

The Islamic revolution and civilisational choice

The 1979 Islamic Revolution was not merely a religious uprising. It was a civilisational rupture—a rejection of imposed Western norms, economic dependency, and cultural erasure. Iran’s revolution declared something deeply unsettling to the West: that modernity does not require Westernisation. That progress can coexist with tradition. That political legitimacy can emerge from indigenous values rather than imported templates. This is why Iran is treated as an aberration. Its very existence challenges the Western monopoly over what counts as “civilised governance.”

De-Westernisation is not barbarism

Western discourse routinely equates de-Westernisation with regression. This is intellectual dishonesty and systematically racist. Iran’s rejection of Western political models is not a rejection of civilisation. It is a rejection of moral hypocrisy - where colonial violence is forgotten, coups are sanitised, and “democracy” becomes a tool of control.

Iranian society debates its future internally, through its own cultural and political grammar. That process may be messy, imperfect, and contested - but it belongs to Iranians. External coercion does to reform societies. It fractures them.

Selective outrage and moral theatre

The same Western governments shedding tears over Iranian protesters are the ones that crush, prompt, or covertly back dissent without mercy. They bankroll occupations, defend apartheid, and remain silent as journalists are murdered and civilians starved elsewhere. Human rights, in this framework, are not universal principles but mere tactical instruments. Iran is punished not for repression alone but for disobedience – not toeing the line of imperialistic America.

Autonomy is not negotiable

Iran does not need saving. It needs space - space to resolve contradictions without siege, sanctions, or sabotage. True solidarity with Iranian protesters would mean ending collective punishment, ceasing covert interference, and allowing Iran’s political evolution to unfold without foreign manipulation. Democracy imposed by drones, sanctions, or exiled monarchs is not democracy. It is domination in moral camouflage.

Iranian officials have frequently accused the US of imperialistic ambitions and interference. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has pointed to conflicting messages from US administrations as evidence of deceit. The founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini popularized the term "Great Satan" to refer to the United States after the revolution, viewing the US as an oppressive imperial power. 

The current campaign to destabilise the Iranian ruling system has less to do with the desire for a peaceful West Asia and more with the US pursuing its own agenda in the region. Iran is currently the only country in West Asia to resist American influence, and is in a constant feud with Israel for regional dominance. 

Let Iran be Iran

Civilisation is not a Western export commodity. It is not measured by proximity to Washington or conformity to NATO-approved values. Iran’s struggle - like that of many post-colonial societies is to govern itself without becoming a client, a caricature, or a battlefield for imperial anxieties. The United States should remember its own history of coups, interventions, and broken nations before claiming moral authority elsewhere. The US can hardly claim to be a champion of liberty coupled with justice. History has no example of such a political paradigm in the annals of US history. 

Iran is not a laboratory for Western experiments. It is a civilisation asserting its right to choose its own path. And that, perhaps, is the real provocation. The US aims to "reverse its political–strategic defeat from the time when the Shah of Iran, a US supporter, was overthrown in 1979, and an Islamic Republic system critical of US foreign policy came to power.”