The Case for Intervention in Iran

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Dan Perry
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Sursa foto: aa.com.tr

The Shah fled Iran 47 years ago today. Tragedy ensued because of a series of mistakes. As Iranians are being murdered by the thousands, the world should help undo it.

 

On January 16, 1979, exactly 47 years ago, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi left Iran because the country had become ungovernable. For months, mass demonstrations had filled the streets. Strikes had paralyzed the oil industry, the civil service, and transportation. Universities were closed, ministries barely functioned, and even loyal institutions no longer obeyed orders.

Iran under the Pahlavis had been a constitutional monarchy on paper, but in practice it functioned as an autocracy centered on the Shah. The 1906 Constitution had created a parliament (the Majles), courts, and limits on royal authority, but by the time Mohammad Reza Shah consolidated power in the 1950s and especially after the 1953 CIA-assisted coup, those limits were largely hollow. Elections were managed, parties were controlled or dissolved, and major decisions flowed from the palace.

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But now the Shah was gravely ill, politically isolated, and increasingly convinced that staying would require a level of violence that might fracture the country beyond repair. Two weeks earlier, in a final attempt to salvage things, he had appointed Shapour Bakhtiar, a liberal opposition figure, as prime minister. It was not totally unserious. Backed by a unified military and a clear commitment to gradual reform, it might have allowed Iran to transition toward something resembling a democratic order. But things took a different turn.

On February 1, the revered cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from fourteen years of exile. Millions greeted him. His arrival was electric, but it was also ambiguous. He spoke in the language of justice, independence, and dignity. Many Iranians, including secular liberals and leftists, still imagined that the revolution would lead to pluralism. Khomeini was perceived less as a ruler than as a moral figure whose presence would help guide a transition. Such things are often wishful thinking.

On February 11, the monarchy formally collapsed in the absence of the Shah. The armed forces declared neutrality. This was the most delicate moment in modern Iranian history. The country was open, vulnerable, and undecided. Its future depended not on fate but on judgment. That judgment failed as the world watched with impotence. US President Jimmy Carter was many fine things, but a nation-building interventionist he was not.

At the end of March, a referendum was announced. Iranians were asked whether they wished to replace the monarchy with an “Islamic Republic.” No constitution was offered. No system of governance was defined. No alternative models were permitted on the ballot. There was no meaningful campaign, no neutral supervision, and no protection for dissent. The vote was presented as a moral affirmation rather than a political decision. Its result was reported as nearly unanimous.

The military allowed it to proceed. It allowed the process to be manipulated. It allowed a state to be transferred intact to a movement that had already made clear its hostility to pluralism and compromise. On April 1, 1979, the “Government of God” was declared, and the Islamic Republic became law. This was the moment Iran’s fate was sealed. The generals believed clerical rule would be symbolic, transitional, and containable.

Since that moment, Iran has lived through almost half a century of catastrophe.

The first victims were those who had made the revolution possible. Revolutionary courts were established within days. Executions began immediately. Liberals, leftists, monarchists, feminists, journalists, and minority activists were eliminated one by one. Newspapers were shut. Political parties were banned. Universities were purged. Women were forced back into compulsory veiling. The revolution that had promised dignity delivered demands for obedience.

This was the first high-profile manifestation the of dangerous mutation of Islam that would come to define our era. Around the corner lied Afghanistan’s Mujahedeen and Taliban, Al Qaeda, Islamic state and all their monstrous fellow travelers.

In November 1979 revolutionary students seized the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans for 444 days, turning a criminal act into a strategic tool of the new Islamic Republic. The hostages became symbols of defiance against US power and instruments in Iran’s internal power struggles, while in America the crisis embodied national humiliation and political paralysis. I remember watching, as a high schooler, the broadcasts of large crowds screaming “Death to America” (and, in what was still a curiosity, “Death to Israel” — a sign of things to come. I remember watching Mike Wallace interview Khomeini on 60 Minutes, as the new leader defended the move, clearly orchestrated by his regime. He was a quite charismatic liar — another sign of things to come.

The hostages’ release in January 1981 marked the final rupture of US–Iran relations and normalized hostage-taking as geopolitical leverage.

By that time, the regime had already transformed the state into an apparatus of ideological enforcement. That same year, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, launching what would become one of the longest and bloodiest wars of the twentieth century. For the Islamic Republic, the conflict was actually a gift politically. War justified repression and sanctified sacrifice. War allowed the regime to equate dissent with treason and obedience with patriotism.

Hundreds of thousands were killed. Teenagers were sent to the front in human-wave assaults. Chemical weapons were used. When the war ended in 1988 without victory or defeat, the regime emerged stronger, more centralized, and more brutal than before. The same year, thousands of political prisoners were executed in secret, a massacre that remains one of the great unacknowledged crimes of the modern Middle East.

After Khomeini’s death in 1989, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei inherited a system already structured for repression. He was not a charismatic figure, nor a significant theologian. What he brought was administrative discipline and unyielding suspicion. Under his rule, the Islamic Republic evolved into a hybrid of security state and economic cartel. The Revolutionary Guards – the regime’s Praetorian force – expanded into vast commercial empires. Their fate now depended on the regime, which allowed their mafia to arise.

For women, minorities, dissidents, and gay Iranians, executions, imprisonment, surveillance, and legal erasure became routine. It continues to this day.

Meanwhile, the regime began to export jihadism, calculating that regional instability would serve it well. It built influence through militias it trained, funded, armed and guided: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite armed groups in Iraq, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, and unwavering military support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Each intervention weakened state sovereignty elsewhere while reinforcing Iran’s strategic depth.

The nuclear program served a similar dual purpose. It fear abroad and distraction at home, also summoned up a sort of national pride among the easily fooled (in any society, a not inconsiderable population). Negotiations rose and collapsed. Sanctions tightened and loosened. The population absorbed the economic damage, and occasionally tried to resist.

Such resistance is never easy when a regime is as fanatical and hellbent as the one in Iran. Their religious mania is such that the lives of the non-devout or disloyal count for nothing, and there is no protection under the law, which exists for the regime and not the people.

Nonetheless Iranians rose up in 1999, when students challenged the suffocating controls on thought. They rose in 2009, when some still believed their votes mattered (Iran held highly controlled “elections” for parliament and president – but only a few are allowed to run). They rose again in 2017 and 2019 against economic despair and political stagnation. They rose in 2022 after a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in custody for the crime of showing her hair. Each time, the response was violence, imprisonment, execution, and digital silence. Each time, the world responded with statements, concern, and caution.

The West never did quite enough in what is admittedly a difficult situation. There was always fear of escalation, of terrorism, and of harming the population when going after the regime – whether with total economic sanctions or with a military assault. Such reasonable concerns are why despots survive.

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There is also the argument that no country has the right to intervene in another’s affairs, even if that country is not democratic and thus is basically ruled by criminals. Indeed, Trump’s new National Security Strategy explicitly says that democracy is not for everyone and America should stop promoting it – a shocking departure from bipartisan consensus that got lost in the flood of daily outrages from the White House.

Yet the Islamic Republic has been intervening for decades. It has intervened in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Palestine, Yemen, and more with its militias, terror networks, and nuclear brinkmanship. It is that – Iran’s meddling with the entire Middle East – which, on top of its unspeakable repression, constitutes the case for intervention.

And that case is acute, because Iran once again stands at a moment of darkness. After about two weeks of protests which have spread nationwide, at least 3,000 people have been killed by the regime, and possible many times more. The internet is down. Communication is severed. Families cannot reach their loved ones. History is unfolding but it is hidden from our sight.

The regime is putting out a fake narrative: that the protesters are “terrorists” operated by the CIA and the Mossad. On a television program this week I debated with a thirtysomething Iranian woman – actually a senior executive in Iran’s Press TV – who was pushing this propaganda hard, and I did my best to debunk it, explaining that in any case she could not speak freely, sitting in Tehran.

A few days ago Trump urged Iranians to take over their institutions and keep protesting, promising that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” Now he claims that the killing has stopped, hinting that the credit is his and this is good enough.

Perhaps this is a misdirection, and help is really coming. We can hope. But Trump’s an unreliable ally for anyone in their right mind. He generally will claim credit for anything quick and easy and them move on, exaggerating the success and saying something nasty about a predecessor or a rival. He does not seem to have the stamina for a war.

Intervention does not necessarily mean invasion or occupation — models with a pretty bad history. But there are many things that can be done.

I would actually begin by issuing a warning – so as to not kill civilians – and then annihilating every major building or facility associated directly with the regime. That kind of violence risks backfiring, as the regime will try to rally opinion by presenting it as an attack on Iran. My sense is that it would fail in that regard, and the symbolic value would be great. It may also compel a palace coup and embolden the protests – that is the combination that brings a dictatorship down.

There should be quiet talks with the military on undoing its mistake of 1979, which it allowed the referendum, as well as with the Guards, who should be offered amnesty, and permission to keep some of their spoils, if they stand aside. At the very least this would weaken the regime by causing a split in the ranks of the security services.

Another powerful lever is legitimacy. Trump can rally much of the world behind a message that would make explicit, in diplomatic language and policy, that the Islamic Republic has forfeited political legitimacy by massacring its own people and destabilizing the region through proxy warfare. That means treating the regime not as a normal government but as a permanent human-rights violator: downgrading diplomatic relations, limiting access to international forums, and shifting rhetorical and symbolic recognition toward Iranian civil society rather than the state. Authoritarian systems depend on being treated as normal. Removing that status is a form of pressure.

Next is personal accountability. The regime survives because individuals believe repression carries no personal cost. Targeted sanctions, visa bans, asset freezes, and legal exposure against judges, IRGC commanders, intelligence officials, and prison administrators change that calculation. This does not punish Iran as a country; it isolates those who make violence possible. Over time, it creates fear inside the ruling elite, which is far more destabilizing than fear among the population. That also attaches to economic pressure focused upward: Broad sanctions tend to hurt ordinary people and entrench authoritarian systems, but precision pressure aimed at IRGC-controlled businesses, shipping networks, smuggling routes, and front companies might weaken the financial backbone of repression.

And then, of course, there is information and connectivity. Few actions would matter more than ensuring Iranians can communicate with each other and with the outside world. Satellite internet access and expanded broadcasting into Iran directly weaken the regime’s control.

Iran’s regime is weaker than it was because of the thrashing it took from Israel last June, the weakening of its proxy militias and the fall of its client dictator, Assad of Syria, about a year ago. The collapse of the currency isn’t helping.

It also has an emerging potential transition leader in exiled some of the Shah — Reza Pahlavi. I interviewed him a year ago (see story here and video below) and found him convincingly committed to returning whenever possible and offering himself as a transitional leader enroute to elections and a liberal democracy living in harmony with the West and the region (including Israel!). He has support.

So the case for a strategic intervention is strong, and it might succeed.

Iran’s tragedy has gone on too long, and its people need help. If this moment passes without action, the judgment will not fall only on the Islamic Republic but on a world that knew what was happening, understood why it mattered, and chose caution over conscience.

No one blames America for intervening in World War II against the Nazis. They blame it for waiting too long, and for not bombing the train tracks on which Jews and others were taken to Auschwitz to be murdered. Iranians are being murdered.

 

 

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