You Deserve Better, Iran

The Here and Now, Mar 03, 2026

I’ve spent the last three days obsessively refreshing the New York Times app. Every few minutes there are updates: missiles raining down in Tehran, nearly 200 girls massacred by a bomb “accidentally” hitting their school in southern Iran, retaliatory attacks carried out by the country’s (few) allies, the death of the tyrannical Ayatollah Khamenei. But nowhere on the screen—no matter how far past the fold I read—is there coverage of the Ebrahimi family and what has become of them. Instead, I find locations that have been bombed and I enter them into Google Maps, plotting how far they are from my family’s apartment. I look at the red, inverted teardrop pinpointing their building, and I wonder if they will make it through this alive………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

My anger reaches back to the past, all the way to 1953 and the coup. So few Americans know that Iran wasn’t always an Islamic regime. The democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil so that his country could benefit from their primary natural resource. The US couldn’t have that. So the CIA orchestrated a coup, overthrowing Mossadegh, and reinstalling Reza Pahlavi, the former Shah, who was essentially a puppet of the West. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was a direct response to this, and that’s when the Islamic Republic of Iran was born. And it has suppressed and terrorized its people ever since.

……………………………………………………………… From the constant fear of internal crackdowns and external war, to the failing economy and assault on civil liberties, Iranians haven’t known peace in decades. But they continue to stand up and fight for their rights, they continue to educate themselves to contribute to their society and the world, and they continue to sacrifice their lives so that their children can know a better day.

…………………………………………………………… I’m no historian or political scientist, but even I know that regime change cannot come from external forces. It has to come from within. Khamenei may have been killed, but there is no organized opposition coming to step in and rule, there is no charismatic leader around which the people can coalesce, there is no one to save the day and liberate Iran. Instead, there is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military that protects the interests of the Islamic Regime, and it is still very much alive. No one knows how this war will play out, but the likeliest scenario is that the IRGC will retain control, and whoever they tap to lead Iran will be even worse than Khamenei.

………………….. I have a hard time believing that’s what this is. This is Epstein. This is midterm elections. This is a narcissist vying for a Nobel Prize. But most of all, to Trump and the others, this is a game. It even has a game’s name: Operation Epic Fury. They don’t give a fuck if their own people die, why would they care about some brown people halfway across the globe.

…………………. https://substack.com/home/post/p-189699508