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Multiple things can be true at once. The Iranian people are engaged in a legitimate popular struggle against an entrenched political elite that has failed to meet their material needs and has answered demands for freedom and dignity with unconscionable violence and repression. At the same time, the U.S. has no political, legal, or moral basis to intervene in Iran. The dire state of the country, as is true of Venezuela and Cuba, the two other nations targeted by the latest neo-neoconservative regime change enthusiasts blinded by imperial hubris and a fetishization of military power, is in significant part the result of Washington’s own policies.
Since 1979, the U.S. has pursued policies aimed at ensuring the failure of the Iranian Revolution. In the decades that followed, and with particular acceleration under the Trump administration, this effort crystallized into a sanctions regime designed not to promote democracy or human rights but to drive ordinary Iranians into a state of immiseration. This strategy, deployed against governments that Washington unilaterally deems problematic, occasionally for defensible reasons but far more often for refusing to subordinate themselves to U.S. imperial and corporate power, has been linked to an estimated 38 million deaths worldwide since 1971.
In Iran, as elsewhere, this policy has rested on the cynical belief that mass suffering will produce political unrest advantageous to the interests of the United States and, in this case, of Israel as well. The quiet part was said out loud by Senator John Fetterman, who mocked the government’s recent inability to quell economic discontent through modest financial inducements and celebrated this as “a testament to how our nation and Israel broke Iran.”
The disregard for international law, democratic principles, and human life that underpins this slow violence (see for example Madeleine Albright’s 1996 insistence that sanctions killing as many as half a million Iraqi children was “worth it”) is more evident today than ever. The hypocrisy of an administration that has enabled a genocide in Gaza, decapitated a government in pursuit of oil, threatens to militarily seize the territory of a sovereign country, and condemns repression in Iran while defending public execution of Renee Good by ICE is not lost on anyone.
Beyond sanctions, the template for deeper U.S. involvement in Iran appears poised to follow a familiar, troubling playbook. If Washington moves toward directing regime change under the guise of “supporting” Iranian freedom, the most likely beneficiary would be the exiled son of the former Shah, who has not lived in the country for decades. Such an intervention would amount to a second U.S.-backed ouster of an Iranian government to reinstall a member of the Pahlavi dynasty.
The Shah’s son, who has cultivated warm ties with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, and has been rebuffed by Iranian human rights activists, does not represent a pathway toward Iran’s democratization. The pursuit of U.S. intervention today then might well produce consequences as calamitous and as unpredictable as those unleashed in 1953. This broader history must therefore remain central to any serious assessment of the current crisis in Iran.
The Oil Curse in Iran
Before Venezuela possessed the largest proven oil reserves in the world, that distinction belonged to Iran. More than a century ago, a weak, illegitimate, and cash-strapped Qajar Dynasty sold the rights to petroleum prospecting to British mining magnate William Knox D’Arcy, a speculative venture in a country with no existing oil industry and no guarantee of viable deposits. At the time, petroleum had not yet come to grease the wheels of the West or serve as the engine of its industrial and military power.
As a result, the 1901 oil concession was not met with the same resistance that had greeted earlier attempts by the Qajars to treat the country as their personal fiefdom, outsourcing development and selling national resources to the highest foreign bidder. The Iranian people had long resisted such Western encroachment, repeatedly forcing their government to retreat from foreign contracts. Yet popular pressure failed to materialize for what would become the most consequential concession of all, one that laid the foundation for decades of imperial intervention in Iran.
The discovery of a vast sea of oil in 1908 prompted the creation of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (rebranded the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1935 and again as British Petroleum in 1954). By 1914, citing financial uncertainty for the company and a desire to modernize the British naval fleet from domestic coal to more efficient foreign oil, the British government moved to acquire a majority stake in APOC. The timing proved decisive. The world war that followed fueled a global oil boom, and Iranian production expanded rapidly, with APOC supplying a substantial share of Britain’s wartime needs.
After the war, in 1925, a coup ended Qajar rule, and Minister of War Reza Khan crowned himself Shah, inaugurating the Pahlavi Dynasty. He renegotiated the oil concession on marginally better terms, but the increased revenues enriched the Pahlavi elite far more than ordinary Iranians. The result was a growing inequality that fed a revived anti-imperial consciousness.
British control, combined with a failure to defend national sovereignty, radicalized Iranians across social classes. Nowhere was this discontent more acute than among exploited oil workers, who lived and labored in squalid, dangerous conditions, excluded from advancement and constrained by a rigid colonial hierarchy that starkly contrasted with the privileged lives of foreign staff.
The Rise and Fall of Mohammad Mossadegh
That the Shah served at the pleasure of British commercial interests became evident in 1941, when London, and Moscow, deposed him, citing his perceived closeness to Germany, and installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to secure oil for the war effort and keep it from falling into German hands. For good measure, British and Soviet forces occupied the country for the next five years.
After the war and occupation, Iranians renewed their demands for sovereignty, beginning with reclaiming what they saw as their inalienable birthright: control of the natural wealth beneath their soil. Mohammad Mossadegh embodied this struggle. A European-trained lawyer and leader of the National Front coalition, he became the first fully democratically elected prime minister in 1951, sidelining the authority of the Shah and riding a wave of widespread popular support. His ascent was so significant to both Iran and to broader geopolitics that it prompted Time Magazine to name him “Man of the Year” and hailed him as the “Iranian George Washington” by 1952.
Yet he committed what, in the early Cold War, was an unforgivable offense: he nationalized Iran’s own natural resources. This move was wildly popular. The depth of exploitation was evident in that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more in profits in 1950 than it had paid Iran in royalties over nearly the entire previous half century. Mossadegh insisted he was willing to compensate the company, a practice consistent with recent nationalizations, not only in places like Mexico but in Britain itself, which had nationalized its coal industry under the Labour government in 1947. The British nonetheless refused any negotiated settlement.
London instead responded with economic warfare, imposing a de facto embargo designed to starve Mossadegh’s government, obstruct his reform agenda, and grind the population into submission, not unlike more recent sanctions regimes. The campaign only intensified nationalist fervor; some Mossadegh’s allies declared it preferable for Iran’s oil to be destroyed “by an atom bomb” than to remain under British control. When economic coercion failed, London turned to overthrowing the government, a plot Mossadegh uncovered, leading to the expulsion of British personnel from the country.
In Washington, Downing Street found willing accomplices. The pretext for intervention was that the economic turmoil, engineered by British policies, might in turn create a political vacuum that the Soviets or domestic communists would exploit. In reality, CIA documents acknowledged that Mossadegh was not a communist but a committed nationalist, and that Iran’s communist party was marginal, among the population and within the military. Despite this intelligence, the United States turned toward regime change, establishing the first ever model for covert coups that would follow around the world.
In 1953, after the CIA fomented an artificial uprising and Mossadegh was arrested by a U.S-backed military loyalist, the Shah, who had fled the country in anticipation of a failed plan, was restored to power. For their trouble, American oil companies were granted a 40 percent share in the new consortium that controlled Iranian oil, while another 40 percent went to British Petroleum.
The Last Shah of Iran?
Lacking popular legitimacy, the Shah depended heavily on U.S. backing to maintain control. His rule was enforced through the expansion of the secret police, SAVAK, which functioned as an instrument of state terror rooted in surveillance, repression, and torture. U.S. arms transfers helped sustain this coercive order. By the end of the Shah’s reign, U.S. weapons sales to Iran were in the billions annually, with cumulative purchases over the decade perhaps as high as $20 billion.
As the regime poured staggering resources into armaments, it failed to adequately provide for the well-being of its population. The economic shocks of the 1970s drove millions into the slum-like peripheries of cities like Tehran. These dispossessed joined a broad coalition of women, religious clerics, merchants, laborers, students, and activists who mobilized against the monarchy. Political ferment deepened as President Carter, in a display of strategic myopia, publicly toasted the Shah, praising Iran as an “island of stability,” and crediting his “great leadership,” asserting that he had the “respect and the admiration and love” of his people.
That the revolution which soon followed would assume an Islamic character, or culminate in the creation of a theocratic state, was not predetermined. It drew on the influence of the exiled religious figure, soon to be Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as an Islamic political vocabulary shaped by Ali Shariati, whose synthesis of Marxism, Iranian history, and Shi’a Islam resonated widely. Yet it was driven above all by a general popular discontent. As in revolutions everywhere, ideology supplied meaning, but material conditions set the stage. Iranian scholar Hamid Dabashi captures this reality in his observation that “Khomeini may not have led a revolution for the price of melon, but many of his followers thought they did.”
If there was a shared ideological thread running through the protests then, it was anti-imperialism. Demonstrators rejected the forced Westernization and authoritarian secularism of the Pahlavi state and rallied behind the slogan “Neither East nor West,” an expression of Third World nationalism and assertion of self-determination. So too did the memory of Mohammad Mossadegh animate the uprising. His figure, representing a crushed experiment in democracy and an anti-imperialist past, remained deeply embedded in Iranian political consciousness.
The Pahlavi government met this movement with escalating violence. This repression, historian Ervand Abrahamian writes, “placed a sea of blood between the shah and the people,” ensuring the monarchy could not survive and hastening the defection of the military. The revolution soon set in motion events that culminated in the student seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran who feared that Washington intended to rehabilitate, and reinstate, the Shah after admitting him for cancer treatment. The result was a prolonged 444-day standoff that institutionalized mutual hostility and cast a long shadow over both countries and the region.
This animus deepened as the U.S. backed Iraq in its invasion of Iran soon after the revolution. The eight-year war killed roughly one million people and revealed Washington’s willingness to bleed regional powers to maintain its geopolitical influence. Continued U.S. support for Israel and the Islamic Republic’s resistance further solidified the adversarial relationship.
The events of 1979, shaped by the blowback from 1953, also set the U.S. on a trajectory of deeper imperial entanglement. These moves included a tightening partnership with Saudi Arabia, a more direct response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and laid the foundations for the Gulf War. Taken together, they created the conditions for the catastrophic, mass murderous “War on Terror” that was to come, revealing a direct line from U.S. policy toward Iran to the wider architecture of American empire across the Greater Middle East.
“We’re Looking at Very Strong Options”
The popular protests in Iran are just, and the exceedingly violent response is an affront to the most basic principles of human rights and dignity. But rolling back the regime through U.S. intervention, rather than through the actions of the Iranian people themselves, cannot plausibly be described as support for democracy. It represents the opposite. It is an attempt to reimpose a former client state and reclaim a strategic foothold lost in 1979, in service of a broader ideological project aimed at reasserting U.S. hegemony in the region and beyond.
The Iranian people deserve freedom, and have the right to determine their own political destiny. The horrific slaughter of protesters and imprisonment of dissidents must end. Yet U.S. intervention would both co-opt the movement and almost certainly foreclose any real possibility of justice or democracy.
The precedent here is unmistakable. There was once what was presented as a compelling case for removing Saddam Hussein, given his record of atrocities. But regime change in Iraq, pursued under the ulterior aims of an imperial America, carried out through lies, deceit, and illegality, and urged on by an exile elite with no local legitimacy, became one of the defining crimes of the century. To follow a similar course in Iran today would not only risk replicating those failures. It would reopen wounds that remain painfully fresh, even as they are all too easily forgotten.
Eric Ross is an organizer, educator, researcher, and PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a coordinator of the national Teach-In Network sponsored by the RootsAction Education Fund.
Protest, Pressure, and the Risk of Misreading Iran
Peter Bach
January 14, 2026
Photograph Source: راننده از تهران – CC0
Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince of Iran, released a video in Farsi last week calling on Iranians to go outside on Thursday and Friday evenings at 8pm. He urged them to chant from wherever they were, be it streets, rooftops, windows, inside homes, as a collective act of protest against the Islamic Republic’s leadership. Was this part of a plan?
For what it was worth, I had already begun thinking about Iran a few days into the new year, as my time in the English countryside was coming to an end. Bizarrely enough, I heard what I took to be the washing machine. A steady, menacing hum. Then I realised it was coming from outside, then from the sky, and was likely connected to the nearby military airbase shared with the Americans. I realised I now knew that sound from elsewhere—from Bagram, Kandahar, Camp Bastion, Lashkar Gah—not the sound of fury exactly, but of military activity stepping up.
I scanned the press that day. Reports indeed suggested the United States was building up its military presence in the UK following its unilateral mission to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and his wife. According to several accounts in the press, both local and national, at least ten C-17 Globemasters and a pair of heavily armed AC-130Js had already landed at two bases, including the one nearby. The Ministry of Defence declined to comment, but the rural Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard noted a US spy plane among the movements, probably a Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady.
Understandably, these developments would be linked to Greenland as well as the seizure of a sanctioned oil tanker, later three, though another two were to slip through the Channel unchallenged. My instinct at the time was to wonder whether any of this was not also connected to Iran, where demonstrations were still under-reported. Nor was the Iranian situation entirely disconnected from Venezuela. It was well understood how the operation there undermined Iran’s strategic energy partnership with Caracas, cutting off another source of oil exports and leverage against US sanctions.
The protests in Iran had begun over the collapsing economy and the plunge of the rial, spreading through Tehran’s Grand Bazaar and into other cities. This was despite heavy security, including the familiar, malevolent swarms of state motorbikes. Officials quickly blamed “foreign enemies,” notably the US and Israel.
By the second week, protests had hardened into broader anti-government dissent. At least 36 people had been killed and more than 2,000 arrested. Iran’s chief judiciary promised “no leniency.” In Kurdish regions, security forces reportedly used teargas, pellet guns, and live ammunition. Footage posted via Starlink showed shopkeepers, students, and opposition figures calling for sustained protest.
That week back in London I happened to meet two seasoned ex-diplomats. The first said a great deal in the Middle East—and beyond—now hinged on Iran, which was acutely sensitive to any international take on things after the US raids in Venezuela, with fears something similar might be about to be attempted in Tehran. “Geopolitical spillover” was the phrase. The collapse of the rial, combined with inflation and sanctions, was fuelling unrest but now human-rights groups were reporting children killed and dozens of minors detained.
Some demonstrators had begun renaming streets, including one in Tehran after Trump. Opposition figures in exile spoke of a historic opportunity, though they had all been down this road before. Iran’s army chief warned of pre-emptive military action in response to the hostile rhetoric coming out of Washington. Trump, meanwhile, issued fresh threats. “Death to the dictator” became a common chant in the streets of Iran.
After meeting the second ex-diplomat, I wondered why this country gripped me so. Was it because I’d seen what regime collapse had looked like elsewhere? Was it because I distrusted Western interventionist optimism? Or was it because Iran sat at the crossroads of so many mistakes many have watched unfold in the past?
Press coverage turned to the details of possible Western military intervention. This was expected to mean precision air strikes to degrade Iran’s capacity to suppress the protests. There was even talk of a no-fly zone to “protect” civilians. While Trump’s statements amounted more to threat than plan, not perhaps for the first time, US officials insisted strike options remained “on the table.” The relevance now of UK airbases seemed indirect, meaning Cyprus rather than Gloucestershire.
If Iran responded by targeting US or allied bases, it was expected Washington might authorise retaliatory strikes on missile or drone sites. As these possibilities were weighed, I thought back to a traditional Iranian family feast in Italy in my late teens, celebrating Nowruz. I remembered sprouts, apples, garlic, baklava, poetry. Two of the Iranians were gifted painters. This was shortly before the Revolution. I believed, in my innocence, that Iran was, above all else, a culture of warrior-poets and beautiful people. I wondered now whether that memory complicated, or sharpened, my response to today’s calls for regime change.
Meanwhile, protests demanding an end to clerical rule continued to escalate. Security forces responded with live ammunition, internet blackouts, and mass arrests. Rights groups reported dozens more killed and thousands detained. Famously harassed staff at BBC Persian reported at least 70 bodies in one hospital one night. While the ageing Iranian leader tried to explain the world to a young population, the Norwegian human-rights group Hengaw reported that some security personnel had been arrested for refusing orders to fire.
However, and this may be crucial to know, many Iranian protesters remain wary of the West even as they oppose their government. There seems little enthusiasm for foreign intervention. Especially with reports of UK diplomats believing Trump may be motivated in part by distracting US voters from the economy in the run-up to the mid-terms. On the subject of Iran at the weekend, former UK Iranian ambassador Sir Richard Dalton also said, “I don’t trust the Americans.” He cited previous records with regime change. Surveys suggested a significant minority in Iran preferred Western powers not intervene at all, seeing the movement as an internal struggle. Some also noted the irony of American authorities shooting their own citizens while condemning Iran for doing likewise.
What worries some now is not indifference, but misalignment, between Western signalling and the harsh realities faced by protesters. Many do seem to favour Western diplomatic pressure, which is something very different. Polls during earlier protest waves showed strong support for defending protesters’ rights, even as direct military involvement remained unwelcome.
This is why Trump’s public warnings risk being counter-productive. Strong US rhetoric allows Tehran to portray the movement as Western-backed, justifying even worse crackdowns and reawakening nationalist sentiment. Threatening military action, even rhetorically, raises the stakes, emboldens hardliners, and makes protests more dangerous. The effect is often the opposite of what is claimed. In other words, not protection, but exposure.
We keep hearing that it may be preferable, then, that the protesters hear it from a crown prince. Pahlavi is the eldest son of the late Shah, himself reinstalled by the US, but he has no governing experience, which is why some regard him as a pawn. Unlike Western leaders, however, he occupies a space outside the regime that is nonetheless still within Iran’s historical imagination. His association with the Shah is said to have softened among younger protesters. In Iran today, though, or so it appears, credibility is earned not through exile or inheritance, but through risk-sharing, which is something no one outside the country like Pahlavi can fully do.
We are also told the Supreme Leader is preparing to leave. He had not left at the time of writing. Maybe he has since. What is certain is that others are positioning themselves abroad and at home. The danger, as ever, is that those with the least to lose will shout loudest, while those with the most to lose will be left to absorb the consequences.
Protests have continued amid intensified repression, with no rupture inside the regime and no external intervention beyond talk and sanctions, though Trump has just taken a more direct stance again in the past day by urging Iranians “keep protesting,” saying that “help is on its way,” cancelling talks with Tehran and intensifying pressure with more tariff talk and the warning that military options remain open. Recent reports suggest that overall fatalities have climbed into the low thousands—with one Iranian official acknowledging about 2,000 deaths—making the past week one of the deadliest of unrest. However, the central problem remains unchanged. Pressure from below persists, but the danger of outsiders misreading, and thereby worsening, the moment has only grown.
Peter Bach lives in London.
