There is an omission at the center of the story that people tell about the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Western media pundits like to jump up and down about the Ayatollah and the Mullahs but there's something they're not telling you about why the Ayatollah and the Mullahs are in power.
In addition to the usual anti "Islamic Republic" narrative it's worth remembering that in 1979 when Iran had its revolution in order to extricate itself from the Western (CIA)-imposed dodgy monarchy, it could have gone one of two ways. A lot of the heavy lifting during the Revolution was done by student communists, grassroots socialist groups, and liberal intellectuals.
As one analysis of the period notes, "anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included communists, socialists, and Islamists."
These people were deeply committed to secularism, the liberation of women from authoritarian theocracy and regressive traditions. The US did everything in its power to make sure that the Revolution went down the road of Islamic Republic rather than the popular socialist democracy that revolutionaries wanted.
The CIA financed and empowered the Mullahs. They opened the path for Khomeini to return.
As declassified documents and reports show, the Carter administration "paved the way for his return by holding the Iranian army back from launching a military coup," and U.S. officials engaged in secret communications with Khomeini, taking "heed of Khomeini’s pledges" while discouraging a military intervention that would have preserved the secular or leftist outcome demaned by the people.
In a large way it is the US who is responsible for the long list of offenses against women and queer people in The Islamic Republic that critics from the west so digitally report on each year.
This responsibility is underscored by post-revolution U.S. actions, such as when "in 1983, the CIA passed an extensive list of Iranian communists and other leftists secretly working in the Iranian government to Khomeini's administration," aiding the suppression of leftist elements and consolidating Islamist control.
The general policy of American imperialists is that when there is a strong chance that the voters in a targeted nation will elect a socialist party or a leader in pursuit of economic sovereignty, and it's clear that the option of having a puppet regime in place who does exactly what they're told is gone, they will settle for far-right religious extremists or thugs. That was the story in Iran, in Afghanistan with the Taliban and with Saddam in Iraq.
If the US gets their way in Iran today. The country will be broken up into tiny pieces and given to neighbouring US vasel states. What's left will be ruled over by some CIA ISIS Warlord. Complete with open slave markets just like Tripoli or Damascus.
We can only hope that the Iranian resistance will be far more robust than Western media would have us believe.
