The images and reports emerging from Iran are grim and unsettling. Hundreds killed, thousands arrested, the internet cut, and streets filled with fear and anger. It is both morally necessary and human to feel concern for ordinary Iranians caught between economic hardship, political repression, and geopolitical confrontation. But concern must not be confused with recklessness. At this critical moment, the loudest voices in the West are once again pushing a familiar and dangerous narrative: that mass protests represent a clear moral mandate for regime change, and that external pressure – or even intervention – would somehow deliver freedom. History, however, tells a very different story.
If there is one lesson written repeatedly across the modern Middle East, it is this: the collapse of state authority under external pressure does not bring liberation. It brings chaos, fragmentation, and suffering on a far greater scale. From Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan, Western-backed disruption of existing regimes has produced disasters whose consequences are still unfolding. Iran, far larger, more complex, and more strategically central than any of those states, cannot afford to become the next experiment in moralized destruction.
None of this requires denying the harsh realities of Iran’s political system. The Islamic Republic is authoritarian, deeply conservative, and often brutal in its response to dissent. Trade unionists, women’s rights activists, and political opponents have paid a heavy price over decades. The death toll reported by human rights groups during the current unrest is alarming, even if precise figures remain hard to verify due to information blackouts. These are real tragedies. But acknowledging repression does not automatically validate protests as a constructive or legitimate path forward – especially when those protests risk opening the door to foreign manipulation and national disintegration.
It is no coincidence that Iran’s current turmoil is unfolding under the shadow of renewed Western threats. Donald Trump has once again spoken openly about bombing Iran, imposing crushing economic measures, and supporting protesters – while simultaneously making clear that his primary interests lie in oil, power, and American leverage. This is not solidarity; it is instrumentalization. Trump has never hidden his contempt for democracy, having incited an attempted coup in his own country. To imagine that such a figure is suddenly concerned with the freedom of Iranians requires a willful suspension of reason.
Iran’s modern trauma began precisely with Western intervention. In 1953, the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown by a US- and UK-engineered coup to protect Western access to Iranian oil. The resulting dictatorship of the shah, openly backed by Washington and London, ruled through torture, repression, and inequality. The 1979 revolution was not born from religious fanaticism alone, but from decades of humiliation under a regime imposed and sustained from abroad. Any serious analysis of Iran must begin with this fact.
Those now cheering unrest from Western capitals rarely confront the full implications of what regime collapse would mean in Iran. The country is ethnically, religiously, and socially diverse, with Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs, Lurs, Turkmens, and others living within a delicate balance. Iran’s population is far larger than Iraq’s was in 2003, and its internal divisions – currently contained within a strong state framework – could easily become fault lines for prolonged civil conflict. Protests that target religious sites and symbols, whatever their emotional origins, risk inflaming precisely the kinds of sectarian and ethnic tensions that have torn other societies apart.
Moreover, the Iranian state is not an isolated clique ruling over a uniformly hostile population. Millions of Iranians continue to vote for conservative candidates, support the system out of conviction, habit, or fear of alternatives, and see the Islamic Republic as a guarantor of national independence in a hostile region. The regime’s support base is real, entrenched, and armed. Any attempt to forcibly overturn it – whether through sanctions, sabotage, or military action – would not result in a clean transition, but in a drawn-out and bloody struggle.
The role of Israel further complicates the picture. Israeli officials have openly boasted of covert activity inside Iran, and prominent Western figures have joked about intelligence agents “walking beside” protesters. This is not accidental rhetoric. Israel’s strategic interest has long been to weaken and fragment its regional rivals, not to see them emerge as strong, independent democracies. The destabilization of Syria after Assad, actively encouraged and exploited by Israel, should serve as a stark warning. A chaotic Iran would not benefit its people – it would benefit those who thrive on permanent regional disorder.
Sanctions, too, deserve scrutiny. The economic misery that has fueled much of the current unrest is inseparable from decades of Western economic warfare. Punishing an entire society to induce political change has failed everywhere it has been tried. In Iran, sanctions have hollowed out the middle class, strengthened black markets, and empowered the most security-focused elements of the state. Protests born from economic desperation under siege conditions are not a sign of democratic awakening; they are symptoms of collective punishment.
To defend the Iranian regime at this moment is not to romanticize it, nor to deny its flaws. It is to defend the principle that political change must come from within a stable state, not from its destruction. It is to recognize that however imperfect the Islamic Republic may be, it remains the central structure preventing Iran from descending into the kind of abyss seen elsewhere in the region.
The protests, particularly when encouraged and applauded by foreign powers with a long record of hostility toward Iran, are not a path to freedom. They risk becoming the prelude to intervention, fragmentation, and national ruin. Iran does not need Western bombs, Western sanctions, or Western fantasies of liberation. It needs sovereignty, stability, and the space to evolve on its own terms.
The tragedy of the past century is not that Iranians have resisted Western-backed change, but that they have been subjected to it so many times. Ignoring that lesson once again would not be solidarity with the Iranian people. It would be another act of historical blindness – paid for, as always, in Iranian lives.
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