It wasn’t Trump’s mind or morality that stopped his Iran attack.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, 21 Jan 26
A week ago President Trump was posturing about an imminent attack to overthrow the Iranian regime embroiled in massive protests. His declared motive was to save the Iranian protesters seeking internal regime change who were being slaughtered by the regime.
Then Trump pivoted, declaring since the regime was no longer planning to execute protesters, he wouldn’t attack.
But it wasn’t Iranian government benevolence that persuaded Trump to stand down. The two reasons Trump’s explanation was covering up were reality on the ground and a phone call.
The massive but failed protests were not solely a spontaneous internal revolt. They were fomented and supported by both the US and Israel to complete their long sought dream of regime change to destabilize Iran, Israel’s last hegemonic rival in the region. Israel’s Mossad was definitely on the ground and likely the CIA as well. Trump was cheering on the protests from the sidelines.
Trump was poised to attack to complete the regime change operation when protest success appeared imminent. But Iran’s government quickly and decisively snuffed out the protests, ending Trump’s dream of adding more thousands to his massive, murderous death toll bombing 7 countries in his first year of term two.
Trump also got a call from the real boss of US Middle East policy….Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He told Trump that with the regime intact, Israel would be decimated by thousands of Iranian missiles once Trump attacked.
Iran’s government may be secure for now but Israeli, US dream of Iranian regime change will never cease.
Trump lied to the New York Times when he said the only thing that can stop him from foreign intervention is “my own mind, my own morality.” What stopped Trump from attacking Iran again, as he did in June, is what stopped him then… failure on the ground and a call from the guy giving Trump his orders on Middle East foreign policy.
IAEA chief warns Iran nuclear standoff ‘cannot go on forever’
The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief warned Tuesday that a standoff with Iran over inspections and its near-bomb-grade uranium stockpiles cannot continue indefinitely, raising the prospect that Tehran could be declared in non-compliance with its obligations.
“This cannot go on forever because at some point I will have to say, ‘I don’t have any idea where this material is,’” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said.
“This cannot go on like this for a long time without me having to declare them in non-compliance.”
Grossi said he was exercising diplomatic restraint but stressed that Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not have the option to pick and choose which obligations to meet.
Iran said in December last year it will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June.
Grossi also acknowledged parallel diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions between Iran and the United States, saying he hoped they would avert renewed military confrontation.
The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.
Iran International 21st Jan 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601205064
The Mirage of the Enemy: Deconstructing Contemporary Media Bias
Following the “12-Day War” strikes in June 2025, which targeted Iranian facilities at Natanz and Fordow, the narrative shifted from “containment” to “inevitable conflict.” By painting the Iranian leadership as “Mad Mullahs” who cannot be deterred, the West creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where diplomacy is framed as cowardice and bombardment as “safety.”
20 January 2026 David Tyler , Australian Independent Media
In the opening weeks of 2026, the Western media’s portrait of Iran has reached a fever pitch of distortion. We are told, with the practised urgency of a countdown, that we are witnessing the final days of a “mad” regime, a nuclear-armed chaos factory that must be dismantled for the safety of the world. Yet, if we pull back the curtain on this narrative, we find a much more complex and tragic story, one where Iran is not merely a rogue actor, but a civilisation trapped between the hammer of domestic repression, and the anvil of imperial design whilst being wickedly misreported by a mainstream media, at the service of a power elite.
To understand Iran today, we must first dismantle two colliding fictions that monopolise our screens: the myth of the “irrational” religious state and the “imminent” nuclear menace. Blend in blame the victim in the guise of Coalition Islamophobia such Tony Abbott’s jibe that Islam “has a massive problem”.
The Original Sin: A Democracy Interrupted
The “anti-Western” sentiment so often cited by CNN or the ABC as proof of Iranian fanaticism did not emerge from a theological vacuum. It was set up in 1953. When Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a secular nationalist, dared to nationalise Iran’s oil to benefit his own people, the CIA and MI6 responded with Operation Ajax. By toppling a democratically elected leader to reinstate the Shah, the West sent a clear message: Iranian sovereignty is secondary to the flow of crude.
Historical amnesia is the bedrock of modern disinformation. We are taught to see the 1979 Revolution as a sudden burst of “madness,” ignoring a quarter-century of torture by the Shah’s SAVAK secret police that preceded it. The West did not lose a “friend” in 1979; it lost a compliant oil warden, and it has never forgiven the Iranian people for the replacement.
The Nuclear Paradox: A Richly Hypocritical Charge
The most potent weapon in the media’s arsenal is the “Nuclear Menace.” For over two decades, we have been told Iran is “months away” from a bomb. It’s a claim that persists despite IAEA confirmations of compliance and US intelligence assessments that Tehran has not, in fact, decided to weaponise.
There is a profound irony in watching nuclear-armed powers; including Israel, with its uninspected arsenal of hundreds of warheads; lecture a nation under total siege about the “danger of annihilation.” This is the collision of the Whipping Boy and the Existential Threat: Iran must be small enough to be bullied by sanctions, yet large enough to justify the $100 billion arms deals the U.S. signs with its regional rivals.
Following the “12-Day War” strikes in June 2025, which targeted Iranian facilities at Natanz and Fordow, the narrative shifted from “containment” to “inevitable conflict.” By painting the Iranian leadership as “Mad Mullahs” who cannot be deterred, the West creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where diplomacy is framed as cowardice and bombardment as “safety.”
The Starlink Catastrophe: A Digital Trojan Horse
Nowhere is the gap between Western “solidarity” and tactical reality more glaring than in the recent Starlink disaster. Throughout late 2025, Western pundits celebrated a “digital liberation” as thousands of Starlink internet terminals were reportedly smuggled into Iran to bypass government blackouts. It was framed as a gift from the tech elite “billionaire-Bros” to the brave dissidents in the streets of Tehran.
Were the dissidents ranks swollen by foreign agents? Certainly. It was Israel who prevailed upon “Help is on its way” Trump not to proceed because so many “assets” had been lost. We will never know the true figures. But we do know that rebels were trapped. In reality, it was a digital Trojan Horse. By January 2026, it was clear that the “liberation” had been turned into a mass-surveillance dragnet. The Iranian Cyber Police (FATA) and the IRGC’s intelligence wing had not been outsmarted; they had been waiting.
The Trap: Because Starlink terminals require a clear line of sight to the sky, activists were forced to place them on rooftops and in open squares.
The Triangulation: Using signal-intercept technology and GPS-tracking beacons embedded in intercepted shipments, the Iranian police were able to map the exact coordinates of every active terminal.
The Fallout: In a series of ruthless raids across Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashhad, thousands of individuals, believing they were using “secure” Western tech, unwittingly broadcast their locations to the state.
This catastrophe reveals a dark truth: Western “help” often functions more as a tool for intelligence gathering than for any liberation. The thousands of young Iranians and “helpers” now in custody are the human cost of a “regime change” fantasy that prioritises high-tech optics over the safety of the people on the ground.
Sanctions as Slow-Motion War
We are told that sanctions target “the regime,” (never the government) but the reality is collective punishment. By severing Iran from the SWIFT banking system, the West has triggered 70% food inflation and chronic shortages of life-saving medicines. This is the Shock Doctrine in action: hollow out the middle class, starve the vulnerable, and wait for the “inevitable” uprising.
As the 2026 protests continue, fuelled by both genuine grievance and economic desperation, we must be wary of “selective outrage.” The same outlets that decry Iranian repression remain silent on Saudi beheadings or the UAE’s labour- camps. This hypocrisy suggests that the West is not interested in Iranian freedom, but in Iranian subservience.
Myths vs. Realities of 2026
| The Myth | The Ground Reality | The Strategic Goal |
| “Irrational Actors” | Iran’s strategy is a defensive response to 70 years of encirclement. | Justify pre-emptive strikes. |
| “Tech Liberation” | Tools like Starlink were compromised, leading to 2,400+ arrests. | Co-opt domestic dissent for foreign Intel. |
| “Targeted Sanctions” | 85 million people are suffering from medicine and food shortages. | Destabilise for regime change. |
This guide deconstructs the mechanisms of “perception management” used by mainstream Western media as we navigate the crises of 2026. It highlights the stark contrast between the breathless coverage of Iran’s internal strife and the calculated silence or obfuscation regarding the “old news” of a post-Assad Syria and the enduring genocide in Gaza.
1. Selective Credibility: The Death Toll Gap
One of the most potent tools of manipulation is the Hierarchy of Proof. In 2026, we see a radical divergence in how Western outlets verify human loss.
In Iran: Media outlets like CBS and the ABC frequently lead with headlines such as “Over 12,000 feared dead,” citing “anonymous sources” or single activists with a VPN. These figures are treated as objective truth to manufacture a sense of immediate, catastrophic urgency that demands foreign intervention.
In Gaza: Despite the “first live-streamed genocide” producing mountains of forensic video evidence, Western media continues to use the “Gaza Health Ministry” caveat to cast doubt on Palestinian death tolls. Even as the count surpassed 70,000 in late 2025, it was framed as “disputed” or “unverifiable,” a technique designed to stall public empathy and political action.
2. The Starlink Catastrophe: A Case Study in Techno-Orientalism
The recent tragedy involving Starlink terminals in Iran serves as a masterclass in how Western media markets “liberation” while obscuring tactical reality. In late 2025, a narrative was sold to the Western public: Silicon Valley would “break the mullahs’ internet” by smuggling thousands of terminals into the country.
The catastrophe unfolded in three distinct phases of media manipulation:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://theaimn.net/the-mirage-of-the-enemy-deconstructing-contemporary-media-bias/
Betrayed: How Liberals Supported Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and Turned Against the Progressive Shah.
COMMENT. This is a terrific article, much needed, and the original is richly illustrated.
It does set the record straight on the Shah, who basically ran a pretty decent system, and liberated women.
One thing to mention. The USA helped with manipulation to put the Shah into power, but later decided he wasn’t compliant enough. When he wanted to get nuclear power, that was the last straw, and the USA helped manipulate him out again
The Left’s Lethal Miscalculation Still Goes On!
SL Kanthan, Jan 19, 2026, https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/betrayed-how-liberals-supported-islamic?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=844398&post_id=184864947&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
History repeats itself and rhymes in uncanny ways. And there are profound contradictions in political ideologies. The partnership of liberals and right-wing fundamentalist Islam is one of those phenomenon that would leave any objective thinker immensely confused.
Let’s look at the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, where liberals and communists joined forces with religious leader Khomeini to overthrow the progressive but authoritarian Shah, under whom Iran made astonishing progress in terms of economy, modernization and social justice. Of course, immediately after coming to power, Ayatollah Khomeini crushed the Marxists and anyone remotely considered liberal.
Fast forward to 2026, Western liberals are generally very pro-Iran, and many of them are staunchly supporting the current theocratic government that is putting down the nationwide protests with brute force. Khamenei has admitted that “thousands” of protesters have been killed, but he blames the victims for sedition.
The photos and videos of body bags of dead Iranian protesters left to rot on the ground have not changed the opinion of liberal social media influencers.
Western liberals now are driven by the same motive as the Iranian liberals in the 1970s — that is, anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism. Anti-Zionism is also a major factor now.
However, such blind ideology leads to a situation where the cure is much worse than the disease. Let’s dive in.
Shah, the Progressive Leader
The Shah of Iran – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – would be considered a leftist role model these days!
He did things that would make Mao Zedong cheer — for example, the Shah ended feudalism, took lands away from the landlord, and distributed the land to 1.5 million farmers. That helped about 9 million Iranians, a third of the population.
The Shah of Iran emancipated girls and women and did admirable things. Consider these:
- By 1979, 33% of the university students in Iran were women. That’s an astonishing number in the Middle East.
- There were 22 female ministers in the Iranian parliament.
- Iranian women were doctors, judges, professors and so on.
- How did the Shah achieve it? It was not easy. Here’s how he did it:
- The Shah made education free and compulsory for all Iranian girls (and boys) — up to the age of 14. Also, poor children were provided a free meal in schools.
- Reza Pahlavi built thousands of schools all over Iran, especially in rural areas.
- He abolished child marriage and raised the age to 18.
- He gave Iranian women the right to vote in 1963 — eight years ahead of Switzerland!
- Reza Pahlavi cracked down on Sharia law that limited women’s potential. His father, the first Shah, had already banned chador, the Iranian version of burqa.
- He gave Iranian women equal rights in marriage, divorce and custody. The Islamic laws were quite misogynistic.
In 1962, the Shah of Iran came to the US with his wife and met with President JFK.
The two really clicked, and the Shah was impressed by Kennedy’s Peace Corps. So, the Shah went back home and created a Literacy Corps and Health Corps to have young well-educated Iranians volunteer as teachers and doctors in rural Iran. It was also a bit like Mao’s “barefoot doctors,” but more modern and sophisticated.
Modernization of Iran Under Pahlavi Dynasty — “White Revolution”
Under the Shah and his father (the first king of the Pahlavi Dynasty), Iran made astonishing progress.
- Iran’s GDP grew a stunning 700-fold between 1925 and 1975! The per-capita income grew 200 times!
- Between 1960 and 1976, the real GDP — adjusted for inflation — grew an astonishing 5-fold.
- Between 1948 and 1978, the constant PPP GDP-per-capita grew from $250 to nearly $10,000.
Iran used to be a poor and an illiterate country divided by ethnic and religious identities. In 1925, a quarter of the population was nomadic. Infrastructure was terrible, manufacturing was negligible (except for artisans like those making Persian rugs) and there was no real military.
Under the two visionary Shahs (1925-1941 and 1941-1978), Iran underwent massive modernization. Initially, the private sector did not have enough money or the rich Iranians were not interested in factories, since they could make easy money from imports. Thus, Reza Pahlavi’s government encouraged public-private partnerships, co-invested in numerous factories, raised tariffs on imports, and made Iran self-sufficient in many areas.
Father and the son Shahs electrified villages and built massive infrastructure to connect various parts of Iran — like the Trans-Iranian railway, which is still an engineering marvel in some regions. The Shah helped create joint ventures for auto manufacturing and Iranian cars (like “Paykan”) for the first time. Iran Air was flying (often non-stop) to global hot spots like New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo!
- Under the Shah, a vast majority (60%) of the oil revenue was spent on improving Iran’s transportation, infrastructure and industrialization.
- Iran had no military before the Pahlavi Dynasty. However, by the 1970s, Iran had the most powerful military in the Middle East.
Iran under the Shah also had smart and pragmatic foreign policy. The Shah was greatly liked by the US and the West. Yes, it was geopolitics of the Cold War, but Iranians benefited from the US-Iran relations.
In 1962, the Shah of Iran visited the US and had an amazing ticker-tape parade on Broadway Street in Manhattan, New York City.
“CIA Puppet and SAVAK”
Two of the criticisms about the Shah are that “he was installed by the CIA after the 1953 coup” and that his secret intelligence group SAVAK was brutal and cruel. Let’s explore:
- The CIA coup in 1953 did NOT install the Shah, who came to power in 1941. Yes, his father went into exile when the Brits and the Russians invaded Iran; and he was placed on the throne at the age of 21.
- Fast forward to 1953, Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh — who had become too powerful — had nationalized the oil sector two years earlier. Powerful Western oil interests and deep state (MI6/CIA) colluded to get rid of Mossadegh. The Shah had fled the country for only 3-4 days.
- This is just a matter of survival in politics and geopolitics. It was a partnership of shared values, although the US definitely and obviously was the more powerful one in the relationship. The Shah eventually became so independent that the US/West secretly supported Khomeini. Recently declassified US diplomatic cables show that the Carter administration had extensive contacts with Khomeini, and basically told the Iranian military to stand down.
- As for SAVAK, it was created in 1957 by the Shah with the help of the British and American intelligence to prevent further coups or the rise of extremists like communists and religious terrorist groups. Remember that the USSR was meddling a lot in the Iranian affairs. And SAVAK did operate outside the law, engaged in spying, arrests, torture etc.
- But guess what happened after the Islamic Revolution? SAVAK was not dismantled, but simply renamed as SAVAMA! In fact, the deputy chief of SAVAK – General Hossein Fardoust – became the head of SAVAMA. All the infrastructure, files, intelligence, torture methods, along with most intel agents continued under Khomeini.
So What Underpinned the 1979 Revolution?
If the Shah was so great, as I have argued, why did was he overthrown in the 1979 revolution?
Well, a whole slew of incompatible radicals and disgruntled groups got together in a strange alliance. The common excuse is that the Shah was authoritarian. However, if the Shah had been as tyrannical as the current government, he would have survived. But let’s take a look at the opposition:
- Islamic clergy — The mullahs were the #1 instigator, since they had lost a lot of their power and wealth in a secular society. Their hatred for the Shah and his father was intense. Some of the Shiite extremist groups like Fadayan-e Islam even assassinated Iranian Prime Ministers (four, to be precise!)
Socialists and Communists — The leftists were a small group in Iran since the 1920s. But when the USSR and the British joined to attack and defeat Iran in 1941, communism spread quickly. A communist political party known as Tudeh was founded in 1941. (Ironically, it was crushed by Khomeini! More on that later). The Soviet Union secretly funded the communists; and openly spread anti-Shah propaganda through newspapers and radio stations (operated out of Azerbaijan). Tudeh had a vast following, especially in trade unions; and quite a few military officers secretly belonged to the party. The communists kept demanding higher wages, even though the Shah passed laws for industrial workers to get 20% of corporate profits. These extremists wanted a communist Iran, and nothing else would satisfy them.
College Students — Khomeini really hated them! These spoiled kids were the clueless and idealistic group, which dreamed of democracy and freedom from imperialism, although they were very Westernized. Not much different from the current liberals, who live in the US but spend all day demonizing the US.
All these people had underestimated the religious fundamentalists. Some naively thought a religious person would never lie! And they all thought the religious poor were too harmless or incompetent to take over the leadership. In the desperation to beat the Shah, none of these groups used their brain. They missed all the red flags and projected their fantasy into Khomeini, who despised them.
How Ayatollah Khomeini Back-stabbed Communists, Liberals & Women
Consider the timeline:
Jan 16: The Shah of Iran leaves Iran, unwilling to push the country into a civil war.
Feb 1: Khomeini comes to Iran after exile. He had spent the last few weeks in France
Feb 11: Khomeini becomes the new leader of Iran.
March 7: Mandatory hijab law gets passed.
March 8: Liberal women stage a massive protest, but their new “friend” turned out to be far more totalitarian than the Shah.
What did Khomeini do to women?
- He systematically reversed much of the Shah’s contribution to women’s liberation.
- Khomeini introduced Sharia laws, made hijab mandatory, segregated public places (men v. women), reduced marriage for girls from 18 to 9 (!), banned women from being judges and other key roles, banned women from sports stadiums, banned women from singing or dancing and so on.
- Remember how the Shah raised marriage of girls to 18? The “Supreme Leader” of Iran reduced the age to 9. Nine!
Khomeini and his followers were brutal in enforcement. Women who did not wear a hijab or “dress modestly” were beaten, stoned, and sometimes attacked with acid that would disfigure their face. The Iranian parliament passed a law that women without hijab could face 72 lashes.
The obsession with hijab still goes on, although in the last 3-4 years, the government has relaxed a bit in Tehran. In 2016, Iran’s top chess player – Dorsa Derakhshani – left Iran because she was banned from the national team for not wearing a hijab or wearing “tight jeans.” There have also been many cases of men throwing acid on women’s faces for not dressing properly — like Marziyeh Ebrahimi in the photo below [on original]
Khamenei’s morality police have harassed, beaten up and arrested countless women for not dressing properly. Young Iranians are arrested for singing or dancing on Instagram or other social media. Last year, a woman (Parastoo Ahmadi) was arrested for live streaming her singing. It was a beautiful and classy performance but women cannot sing in public under Islamic laws! See below: [on original]
How did Khomeini attack the students?
Khomeini shut down the universities for nearly three years, starting from 1980! He fired or arrested all the leftist professors and student leaders. Some were even executed. All the leftist newspapers on campuses were shut down — by brute violence. The entire college curriculum was rewritten to be Islamic. Courses in music and other topics were banned. Soon, Western movies were banned and movie theaters were closed. Alcohol was banned, needless to say.
How did Khomeini attack the communists?
Tudeh, the communist party, had survived 38 years under Shah, even though he was harsh on them, since they were more pro-Soviet than pro-Iran. However, the party did not even last five years under the Islamic Republic. In 1984, the leader of the communist party – Noureddin Kianouri – was tortured and forced into confession, broadcast on TV.
Another Marxist-Leninist group was the OIPFG, a violent underground guerrilla organization that worked against the Shah and supported the Islamic revolution. These clowns were also ruthlessly crushed by Khomeini.
Khomeini eliminated all opposition groups, including the National Front, which was founded by Mossadegh, the man who nationalized the Iranian oil industry in 1951 and is still idolized by Western liberals.
The regimes of Khomeini and Khamenei have continued to be unrepentantly repressive for 47 years.
In 1988, for example, up to 30,000 political prisoners — all of whom once helped overthrow the Shah — were executed over a period of three months. These belonged to the MEK, Tudeh and Fedayeen, who were all deemed to be guilty of “crimes against Allah.”
End of the Shah
The Shah left Iran on Jan 16, 1978, partly because he was already sick with cancer, and partly because he didn’t want to plunge the nation into a bitter civil war. The US didn’t even the decency to let him at first. So, he went to Morocco, Panama, the Bahamas etc. Eventually, he was admitted into a hospital at Cornell in late 1978. A few months later, he died in exile in Egypt.
Hostile and Irrational Foreign Policy of the Islamic Republic
There is a golden mean between being a total puppet of the USA and being an uncompromising enemy of the USA. However, the rabid religious in Iran lack such a nuanced approach that arises out of geopolitical maturity.
In 1979, the Shah went to the US for cancer treatment. Rather than focusing on governance of the new nation, the Islamists wanted to kill the Shah, and demanded the US to send him back to Iran. When the US refused this barbaric demand, Khomeini’s radical students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 52 American civilians hostage for 444 days. During this time, the Americans were tortured and humiliated in shocking ways.
This needless and uncivilized action by Khomeini set the US and Iran on a collision path. Obviously, the country that has suffered more in this conflict is Iran.
Furthermore, the delusional Ayatollahs wanted to spread their “revolution” and expand their sphere of influence. Thus, they armed and funded Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq etc. Then, the Iranian government cries about US interference or attempts to do a regime change in Iran.
Conclusion
History is written by winners… and sometimes by losers. In Iran’s case, the US didn’t want to admit that it made a mistake, so Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah was demonized. “We let the bad guy fall, so don’t feel too bad.”
And Western liberals have a strange affinity for right-wing Islamic fundamentalism. Perhaps it comes out of guilt about imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, and endless wars in the Middle East. Not to mention political correctness, which disrupts critical thinking.
90 million Iranians are suffering because of the religious hardliners, for whom compromise is a dirty word. Even after the death of thousands of protesters over the last decade, the government has not agreed to change one policy. The people don’t have many basic political, economic, social or personal freedoms.
One of the Shah’s son hopes to be return to Iran and restore the old glory along with democracy. It really depends on the US/EU since the Iranian people themselves cannot fight back or change the status quo.
Anyways, hope you found this article useful and interesting. There are no simple truths in geopolitics, but it’s good to have different perspectives .
The Regime Change Machine Is Turning on Iran Again
the strategy shifts from direct confrontation to destabilization from within, through sabotage, information warfare, and regime-change pressure. That is why unrest inside Iran is being treated as an opening to exploit. That has been the official US and Israeli strategy for decades. And Israeli officials are already framing this like a Syria scenario.
This is all built to shape diaspora perception — and then feed Western headlines. Israel and the United States aren’t operating separately; they operate as an ecosystem. Israel drives the information war: narrative shaping, psychological operations, and online influence. The U.S. provides the infrastructure layer: funding pipelines, Persian-language media influence, pro-democracy NGO networks, and diaspora-facing institutions that convert narrative momentum into political pressure.
Even if Iranians overthrew their government today, that does not mean Iran’s future would suddenly be decided freely. Because the moment a state collapses, a vacuum opens. Washington and Tel Aviv will fill that vacuum. They will intervene politically, economically, and through media and proxy networks to shape the outcome.
January 16th, 2026, Mnar Adley, https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-israel-iran-protests-regime-change/290644/
Make no mistake: the U.S. and Israel are ready to seize this moment in Iran’s mass protests to drive a regime change operation. And it’s not even subtle.
Trump has openly threatened airstrikes against Iran — and he’s told protesters to keep going, promising: “Help is on the way.”
And Israeli security analysts are already gaming out a collapse scenario — suggesting the Israeli military could hit Iran’s strategic infrastructure and government targets if the state begins to crumble — to weaken the Islamic government and shape the outcome towards regime change with a plan to install Reza Pahlavi, the son of the brutal dictator, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
And the timing matters. Iran sits at the heart of the Axis of Resistance, and Israel has been hit with many political and regional losses from resistance in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. With its global reputation destroyed after the genocide in Gaza and stalled normalization plans with Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Israel’s default issue is to attack Iran, as the Islamic Republic is the number one target of the apartheid state.
This is why Israel is seizing this moment now. Its own intelligence agency posted on its Farsi-language account urging Iranians to join the protests, even claiming that Mossad was with them “in the field.”
What began as legitimate protests over the collapsing rial, rising prices, economic hardship and calls for real political reforms is now bwwwwwweing hijacked by pro-monarchy rioters waving Shah-era flags, openly calling on Israel and the United States to help overthrow the government.
Reports indicate these rioters who are openly backed by Israel have burned down over 30 mosques, and committed attacks and killings against civilians and pro-government demonstrators, using military-style weapons, hunting rifles, knives, axes, and blades, while targeting police and state institutions.
MintPress has documented how Israeli intelligence covertly transfer weapons into Iran through its eastern border and often times through Israeli-tied Cargo Ships that travel past Yemen through the Red Sea. A MintPress investigation revealed that Zodiac Maritime, operator of the Mercer Street, has deep ties to the IDF and Mossad — using commercial ships to move arms and operatives for covert operations, including assassination missions inside Iran.
Phony Human Rights Groups
Despite these facts, Western corporate media are pushing out bogus casualty and mass arrest numbers that are being shared by diaspora Iranians in the push for regime change. But we at MintPress News traced these numbers back to one source: the Human Rights Activist News Agency – an arm of the Human Rights Agency in Iran (HRAI).
A new MintPress investigation found that this agency and its news arm are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout organization.
They’ve become the go-to source for some of the most inflammatory claims and shockingly high casualty figures reported in the press. In the past week alone, their numbers have been repeated across outlets like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, ABC News, Sky News, and The New York Post, among others.
Even mainstream liberal commentators repeat these claims as settled fact. One example of this is Owen Jones, who wrote in The Guardian that Human Rights Iran is a “respected” group, and that their death toll claims are “probably significant underestimates.”
But what these reports almost never disclose is the funding pipeline connecting it directly to the CIA. Human Rights Activists in Iran presents itself as independent, but it’s based in Fairfax, Virginia — right inside the Washington intelligence ecosystem of the CIA. On its website, it describes itself as “non-political,” and even claims it does not accept financial aid from political groups or governments. Yet in the same paragraph, it admits its major donor is from the National Endowment for Democracy, a group created by the CIA to covertly do what the CIA once did openly.
And Human Rights Iran isn’t the only “human rights” NGO being signal-boosted into Western headlines. Another organization widely cited in coverage of Iran is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, led by Roya Boroumand — cited by outlets including The Washington Post, PBS, and ABC News.
And again, the proximity to the U.S. foreign policy apparatus is rarely mentioned.
Although the Boroumand Center does not prominently advertise it in its funding disclaimer, it has been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy. A 2024 NED press release described the center as a “partner” organization — and the NED awarded Boroumand its 2024 Goler T. Butcher medal for democracy promotion.
At that ceremony, NED officials openly praised the Boroumand Center’s work as an “indispensable resource” and said the NED was “proud to support” their advocacy toward what it called a “democratic future for Iran.”
And sitting on the center’s board is Francis Fukuyama — a former NED board member, and an editor of the NED’s own publication, the Journal of Democracy.
So when Western corporate media presents these organizations as neutral, independent referees while using them to justify escalations, sanctions narratives, and regime change pressure, understand what’s happening.
Propaganda Onslaught
These messages are being reinforced digitally on social media through coordinated media messaging, diaspora amplification, and bot-driven campaigns traced back to hubs including Tel Aviv, Virginia and LA, boosting hashtags calling for the downfall of the Islamic government.
Of course, Iranians have the right to self-determination But what is happening now is unfolding inside a long-standing U.S.-Israeli framework built around sanctions, information warfare, and “democracy promotion” pipelines, including CIA-linked front structures like the National Endowment for Democracy, designed to steer unrest and manipulate Iranian diaspora toward regime change.
We have to remember: Israel has spent decades pushing the nuclear red-herring — the claim Iran is always “months away” from an atom bomb — to justify sanctions, sabotage, and escalation.
This summer, Israel and its allies tried to pull the U.S. into direct strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. But instead of a clean victory, Israel took a major blow when Iran retaliated, hitting military targets and causing damage reportedly worth billions, including in and around Tel Aviv.
Israel can’t win a full-scale war with Iran on its own.
So the strategy shifts from direct confrontation to destabilization from within, through sabotage, information warfare, and regime-change pressure. That is why unrest inside Iran is being treated as an opening to exploit. That has been the official US and Israeli strategy for decades. And Israeli officials are already framing this like a Syria scenario.
In the last year alone, Israel has been deploying an AI enabled operation on X targeting Iranians in the diaspora — using fake bot accounts, AI-generated personas, fabricated crisis content, and synchronized posting to push regime change messaging — pushing the idea that Iran must be de-Islamicized, that the Islamic Republic must fall, and that the “solution” is a secular, Western-aligned order. Ironic, of course, considering it is being pushed by an ethnic-Jewish state.
And when they say “de-Islamicize Iran,” Israel means destroy its revolutionary spirit from its roots. Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew a US and British backed Monarchy is rooted in Islamic history and stories of Imam Hussain and Karbala, standing against a tyrannical system of exploitation, class warfare and oppression no matter the cost even if it means to stand alone.
That story is the moral backbone of Iran’s resistance identity, including why it backs Palestinian liberation, working class movements, independence and rejects U.S. and Israeli imperialism in the region and is part of a resistance movement for liberation.
Therefore, weakening that Islamic identity weakens resistance, targeting not just Iran, but Hezbollah, Yemen, and Gaza. That is why secularization is being sold as “liberation,” even though Iran is a majority-Muslim country.
This AI signal boosting promoting secularism, the monarchy, and regime change to the diaspora is not new. During previous unrest, hashtags like #WomenLifeFreedom and #IraniansDetestSoleimani were aggressively signal-boosted by bot networks — with MintPress analyses showing major traffic patterns tied not to Iran, but to hubs in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, and even MAGA-linked account clusters pushing the messaging. In some cases, over 80% of the traffic tied to these hashtags was coming from outside of Iran, according to X activity patterns and Google Analytics.
Read more: The Regime Change Machine Is Turning on Iran AgainThis is all built to shape diaspora perception — and then feed Western headlines. Israel and the United States aren’t operating separately; they operate as an ecosystem. Israel drives the information war: narrative shaping, psychological operations, and online influence. The U.S. provides the infrastructure layer: funding pipelines, Persian-language media influence, pro-democracy NGO networks, and diaspora-facing institutions that convert narrative momentum into political pressure.
Modern regime change against Iran doesn’t start with tanks. It starts with civil society capture — shaping what people believe, what they protest for, and what outcome they’re pushed toward through “pro-democracy NGOs” that are CIA cutouts. The stated goal and policy is to covertly do what the CIA once did openly.
That pipeline runs through a network of “democracy promotion” groups tied into U.S. foreign policy that can be traced back to the CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy, and organizations in its wider orbit like Foundation for Democracy in Iran, United for Iran, Tavaana, NUFDI, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and Farashgard. Different branding — same function: media narratives, activist training, diaspora pressure campaigns, and political steering toward one destination: regime change.
One of the pressure points repeatedly weaponized is culture, especially women and the hijab, framing Islamic governance as backward, while selling “freedom” as secularization and Western capitalism as the future of freedom.
Now here’s the part most people never hear: it’s an influence architecture, where Washington-linked NGOs generate the numbers, Western outlets repeat them as fact, and the funding networks behind them stay off-screen and are represented as “independent.”
In Washington, Iran policy runs through institutions that are funded by weapons manufactures like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and pro-Israel billionaires with board members that read like a war criminal roster.
The pressure campaign is sustained by think tanks like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Atlantic Council, pushing maximum pressure, sanctions escalation, and regime change year after year.
These institutions are fueled by donor networks tied to hardline pro-Israel politics — billionaire megadonors like Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and Haim Saban — who bankroll the ecosystem that keeps Iran framed as the permanent enemy and regime change as the permanent solution.
Imperial Games
And of course, Iran sits inside a broader U.S. Cold War framework targeting Russia, China, and Iran as the core adversarial bloc. Iran’s “crime” is refusing to submit — standing independent, backing resistance, and defying U.S. and Israeli power.
So the policy becomes familiar: isolate, sanction, destabilize. And if that fails, destroy.
Israel’s strategic doctrine has long treated the region’s strongest adversarial states – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran – as targets for destabilization, because these states and alliances block Israeli dominance.
Its plan to weaken these states is documented in its Yinon Plan — the argument that Israel’s long-term security is strengthened when major states are broken into smaller sectarian and ethnic entities.
In 1996, a strategy paper written for Netanyahu’s circle called “A Clean Break” argued for reshaping Israel’s environment by weakening hostile states and rolling back adversaries. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Brookings Institute published “Which Path to Persia?” treating regime change in Iran as a standing policy option, while outlining methods from pressure campaigns to covert destabilization.
If regime change doesn’t deliver a compliant Iran, partition becomes the fallback. The plan is to carve out a Sunni statelet across western Iraq and eastern Syria — specifically to cut the land corridor that connects Iran to its allies. That corridor runs Iran → Iraq → Syria → Lebanon — the route that links Tehran to the Mediterranean and to Hezbollah. And if you break that corridor, you isolate Iran, weaken the Axis of Resistance, and sever the regional link that makes Iran such a strategic problem for Israel.
The plan has already been partially executed with the U.S. and Israel’s proxy war in Syria, the new HTS leadership, the arming of Kurdish separatists, and breaking off Kurdistan into its own state in Iraq. This is called the Sunnistan plan inked by neocon war hawk John Bolton, and it is being put into action through policy by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, AEI, and the Washington Institute.
This has been the official plan for Iran and the region to target any resistance to U.S. and Israeli imperialism. So when bystanders call for regime change under the guise of humanitarianism, they do not realize they are falling into the trap of imperialist propaganda and war planning that is fueled by a very sophisticated messaging system.
Even if Iranians overthrew their government today, that does not mean Iran’s future would suddenly be decided freely. Because the moment a state collapses, a vacuum opens. Washington and Tel Aviv will fill that vacuum. They will intervene politically, economically, and through media and proxy networks to shape the outcome.
And that’s why the replacement is being preloaded right now. If the Islamic Republic falls, the preferred answer is ready: Reza Pahlavi, a secular figurehead. A pro-West, pro-normalization with Israel, reversing the Islamic Revolution’s economic independence, and reopening Iran’s strategic industries — oil, gas, infrastructure — to Western capital and privatization. That’s the sad truth.
Iran is not a chessboard. It is 90 million human beings, with a civilization, culture, and identity far deeper than any foreign policy narrative. This is a people shaped by deep history and resilience, not a caricature in a policy playbook. And if the world truly believes in self-determination, then Iran’s future cannot be decided by think tanks in Washington or intelligence agencies in Tel Aviv.
Yet Western governments — where police state repression is increasingly the norm at home — are acting like they have the moral authority to tell Iranians to overthrow their own government.
In the United States, Trump has unleashed ICE in ways that have involved grave abuses, all while that same government lectures the world about human rights and “freedom.”
And history shows us this clearly: when the empire intervenes, it’s ordinary people who bleed first. Iran’s future belongs only to Iranians.
Iran & Israel Secretly Agreed Not To Attack Each Other Through Russian Backchannel
by Tyler Durden, Jan 15, 2026, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-israel-secretly-agreed-not-attack-each-other-through-russian-backchannel-wapo
There may have been some back-channel dealmaking and a ‘mutual understanding’ reached between Iran and Israel far behind the scenes as protests unfolded on Iran’s streets, and as President Trump began to make threats about striking Tehran.
At a moment Trump seems to have climbed down (at least for now) from the threatened drive to intervene militarily, The Washington Post has issued a Wednesday report saying Israel and Iran have been in indirect diplomatic contact via Russia as a mediator.
“Days before protests erupted in Iran in late December, Israeli officials notified the Iranian leadership via Russia that they would not launch strikes against Iran if Israel were not attacked first,” WaPo writes. “Iran responded through the Russian channel that it would also refrain from a preemptive attack, diplomats and regional officials with knowledge of the exchange said.”
Could this be because of the Iranian missiles that rained down on Tel Aviv back in June? If so, it seems the Islamic Republic has finally established deterrence.
The timeline of what was communicated when remains unclear. But this backchannel had already been revealed in Middle East media reports, for example in the following prior reporting:
Israel and Iran have recently exchanged secret, indirect messages through Russia in the midst of heightened regional tensions, according to a new report by Amwaj.media today. The exchanges were described as an effort to prevent further military escalation rather than to establish any form of ceasefire or diplomatic framework.
According to the report, the messages were conveyed through Russian President Vladimir Putin after Israel sought to pass along a signal that it was not interested in escalating military conflict at this stage. Iranian officials acknowledged the message but emphasized that their reply carried no commitment, no coordination, and no obligation on Iran’s part. An Iranian political source quoted in the report said bluntly that “there is no commitment, no coordination, and no ceasefire agreement.” The source emphasized that the contact should not be interpreted as a step toward broader understandings between the two countries, which remain bitter adversaries with no direct diplomatic ties.
The exchanges were reportedly limited in scope and intent. No guarantees were offered, no timelines were discussed, and no monitoring or enforcement mechanisms were established. One source described the communication as “a mutual announcement to a mutual friend on no new strikes,” meaning that the goal was simply to manage tensions at a specific moment rather than to lock in any lasting arrangement.
A senior Iranian political source confirmed that indirect communication with Israel had indeed taken place, identifying Russia, and specifically Putin, as the intermediary. The source reiterated that there was “no ceasefire agreement” and that the messages amounted only to parallel notifications of intent, rather than a shared understanding or deal.
The report says the Iranian side of the exchanges was handled not by the foreign ministry but by Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
It’s possible that this served as important background to Trump’s apparent decision to not strike Iran at this point. Israel is usually the country yelling loudest to hit Iran, but this time the Netanyahu government was somewhat muted.
By all accounts, Iran’s streets have pretty much gone quiet by now, after a crescendo of violence this week left hundreds dead, including many police and security personnel.
Revealed: The CIA-Backed Think Tanks Fueling The Iran Protests
Reading between the lines, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is attempting to build up a widespread network of media outlets, NGOs, activists, intellectuals, student leaders and politicians who will all sing from the same hymn sheet, that of “transitioning” from “authoritarianism” (i.e., the current system of government” to “democracy,” (i.e., a U.S.-picked government). In other words: regime change.
Mint Press News, January 15th, 2026. Alan Macleod
As waves of deadly demonstrations and counter-demonstrations hit Iran, MintPress examines the CIA-backed NGOs helping to stir the outrage and foment more violence.
One of these groups is Human Rights Activists In Iran, frequently referred to as HRA or HRAI in the media. The group, and its media arm, the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) have become the go-to group of experts for Western media, and are the source of many of the most inflammatory claims and shockingly high casualty figures reported in the press. In the past week alone, their assertions have provided much of the basis for stories in CNN, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, ABC News, Sky News, and The New York Post, among others. And in a passionate plea for leftists to support the protests, Owen Jones wrote in The Guardian Tuesday that HRAI are a “respected” group whose death toll proclamations are “probably significant underestimates.”
Yet what none of these reports mention is that Human Rights Activists In Iran is bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency, through its cutout organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
“Independent” NGOs, Brought to You By the CIA
Established in 2006, Human Rights Activists in Iran is based in Fairfax, Virginia, just a stone’s throw away from CIA headquarters in Langley. It describes itself as a “non-political” association of activists dedicated to advancing freedom and rights in Iran. On its website, it notes that, “because the organization seeks to remain independent, it doesn’t accept financial aid from neither political groups nor governments.” Yet, in the same paragraph, it notes that “HRAI has also been accepting donations from National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit, non-governmental organization in the United States of America.” The level of NED investment into HRAI has been substantial, to say the least; journalist Michael Tracey found that, in 2024 alone, the NED had apportioned well over $900,000 towards the organization.
Another NGO widely cited in recent media reports on the protests is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran (ABCHRI). The group has been quoted widely, including by The Washington Post, PBS, and ABC News. Like with the HRAI, these reports also fail to disclose the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center’s proximity to the U.S. national security state.
Although it does not mention it in its funding disclaimer, the center is supported by the NED. Last year, the NED described the center as a “partner” organization, and awarded its director, Roya Boroumand, their 2024 Goler T. Butcher medal for democracy promotion.
“Roya and her organization have worked rigorously and objectively to document human rights violations committed by the regime in Iran,” said Amira Maaty, senior director for NED’s Middle East and North Africa programs. “The work of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center is an indispensable resource for victims to seek justice and hold perpetrators accountable under international law. NED is proud to support Roya and the center in their advocacy for human rights and tireless pursuit of a democratic future for Iran.”
In addition to this, sitting on the center’s board of directors is controversial academic, Francis Fukuyama, a former NED board member and an editor of its “Journal of Democracy” publication.
If anything, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has gone further than HRAI or the ABCHRI. Widely cited across Western media (e.g., The New York Times, The Guardian, USA Today), the CHRI has been the source of many of the goriest and most lurid stories coming out of Iran. A Monday article in The Washington Post, for example, leaned on the CHRI’s expertise to report that Iranian hospitals were being overwhelmed and had even run out of blood to treat the victims of government repression. “A massacre is unfolding. The world must act now to prevent further loss of life,” a CHRI spokesperson said. Given President Trump’s recent threats about U.S. military attacks on Iran, the implications of the statement were clear.
And yet, like with the other NGOs profiled, none of the corporate media outlets citing the Center for Human Rights in Iran noted its close connections to the U.S. national security state. The CHRI – an Iranian human rights group based in New York City and Washington, D.C. – was identified by the government of China as directly funded by the NED.
The claim is far from outlandish, given that CHRI board member, Mehrangiz Kar, is a former Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the NED. And in 2002 at a star-studded gala on Capitol Hill, First Lady Laura Bush and future president Joe Biden presented Kar with the NED’s annual Democracy Award.
A History of Regime Change Ops
The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 by the Reagan administration, after a series of scandals had seriously damaged the image and reputation of the CIA. The Church Committee – a 1975 U.S. Senate investigation into CIA activities – found that the agency had masterminded the assassination of several foreign heads of state, was involved in a massive domestic surveillance campaign against progressive groups, had infiltrated and placed agents in hundreds of U.S. media outlets, and was carrying out shocking mind control experiments on unwilling American participants.
Technically a private entity, although receiving virtually all its funding from the federal government and being staffed by ex-spooks, the NED was created as a way to outsource many of the agency’s most controversial activities, especially overseas regime change operations. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Carl Gershman, the NED’s longtime president, said in 1986. NED co-founder Allen Weinstein agreed: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” he told The Washington Post.
Part of the CIA’s mission was to create a worldwide network of media outlets and NGOs that would parrot CIA talking points, passing it off as credible news. As former CIA taskforce leader John Stockwell admitted, “I had propagandists all over the world.” Stockwell went on to describe how he helped flood the world with fake news demonizing Cuba:
We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country… We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”
Mike Pompeo, former CIA director, alluded this being active CIA policy. At a 2019 talk at Texas A&M University, he said, “When I was a cadet, what’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses [on] it!”
One of the NED’s greatest successes came in 1996, when it successfully swung elections in Russia, spending vast amounts of money to ensure U.S. puppet ruler Boris Yeltsin would remain in power. Yeltsin, who came to power in a 1993 coup that dissolved parliament, was deeply unpopular, and it appeared that the Russian public were ready to vote for a return to Communism. The NED and other American agencies flooded Russia with money and propaganda, ensuring their man remained in power. The story was cataloged in a famous edition of Time magazine, whose title page was emblazoned with the words, “Yanks To The Rescue: the Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win.”
Six years later, the NED provided both the finances and the brains for a briefly successful coup d’état against Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The NED spent hundreds of thousands of dollars flying coup leaders (such as Marina Corina Machado) back and forth to Washington, D.C. After the coup was overturned and the plot was exposed, NED funding to Machado and her allies actually increased, and the organization has continued to fund her and her political organizations.
The NED would have more luck in Ukraine, playing a key role in the successful 2014 Maidan Revolution that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych and replaced him with a pro-U.S. successor. The Maidan affair followed a tried-and-tested formula, with large numbers of people coming out to protest, and a hardcore of trained paramilitaries carrying out acts of violence aimed at destabilizing the government and provoking a military response.
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (and future NED board member) Victoria Nuland flew to Kiev to signal the U.S. government’s full support of the movement to oust Yanukovych, even handing out cookies to protestors in the city’s main square. A leaked telephone call showed that the new Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was directly chosen by Nuland. “Yats is the guy,” she can be heard telling U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, citing his experience and friendliness with Washington as key factors. The 2014 Maidan Revolution and its aftermath would lead to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine eight years later.
Just across the border in Belarus, the NED planned similar actions to overthrow President Alexander Lukashenko. At the time of the attempt (2020-2021), the NED was pursuing 40 active projects inside the country.
On a Zoom call infiltrated and covertly recorded by activists, the NED’s senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that the groups leading the nationwide demonstrations against Lukashenko were trained by her organization. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that the NED had made a “significant contribution” to the protests.
On the same call, NED President Gershman noted that “we support many, many groups, and we have a very, very active program throughout the country, and many of the groups obviously have their partners in exile,” boasting that the Belarusian government was powerless to stop them. “We’re not like Freedom House or NDI [the National Democratic Institute] and the IRI [International Republican Institute]; we don’t have offices. So if we’re not there, they can’t kick us out,” he said, comparing the NED to other U.S. regime change organizations.
The attempted Color Revolution did not succeed, however, as demonstrators were met with large counter-demonstrations, and Lukashenko remains in power to this day. The NED’s actions were a key factor in Lukashenko’s decision to abandon his relationship with the West, and ally Belarus with Russia.
Just months after their failure in Belarus, the NED fomented another regime change attempt, this time in Cuba. The agency spent millions of dollars infiltrating and buying off pliant musical artists, especially in the hip hop community, in an attempt to turn local popular culture against its revolution. Led by Cuban rappers, the U.S. attempted to rally the people into the streets, flooding social media with calls from celebrities and politicians alike to topple the government. This did not translate into boots on the ground, however, and the fiasco was written off sarcastically as the U.S.’ “Bay of Tweets.”
So many of the most visible protest movements the world over have been quietly masterminded by the NED. This includes the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, wherein the agency funnelled millions to the movement’s leaders to keep people in the streets as long as possible. The NED continues to work with Uyghur and Tibetan separatist groups, in the hope of destabilizing China. Other known NED meddling projects include interfering with elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Poland.
It is precisely for these reasons, therefore, that accepting funding from the NED should be unthinkable for any serious NGO or human rights organization, as so many that do have been front groups for American power and clandestine regime change operations. It is also why the public should be extremely wary about any claims made by organizations on the payroll of a CIA cutout organization, especially those that attempt to hide the fact. Journalists, too, have a duty to scrutinize any statements made by these groups, and inform their readers and viewers about their inherent conflicts of interests.
Targeting Iran
Apart from funding the three U.S.-based human rights NGOs profiled here, the NED is spearheading a myriad of operations targeting the Islamic Republic. According to its 2025 grant listings, there are currently 18 active NED projects for Iran, although the agency does not divulge any of the groups they are working with.
It also refuses to divulge any hard details about these projects, beyond rather bland descriptions that include:
Empowering” a network of “frontline and exiled activists” inside Iran;
“Promoting independent journalism,” and “Establishing media platforms to influence the public;”
“Monitoring and promoting human rights;”
“Training student leaders inside Iran;”
“Advancing policy analysis, debate, and collective actions on democracy,” and;
“Foster[ing] collaboration between Iranian civil society and political activists on a democratic vision and raise awareness on civic rights within the legal community, the organization will facilitate debate on transition models from authoritarianism to democracy.”
Reading between the lines, the NED is attempting to build up a widespread network of media outlets, NGOs, activists, intellectuals, student leaders and politicians who will all sing from the same hymn sheet, that of “transitioning” from “authoritarianism” (i.e., the current system of government” to “democracy,” (i.e., a U.S.-picked government). In other words: regime change.
Iran, of course, has been in American crosshairs ever since the removal of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. Pahlavi himself had been kept in place by the CIA, who engineered a coup against the democratically-elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh (1952-53). Mossadegh, a secular liberal reformer, had angered Washington by nationalizing the country’s oil industry, carrying out land reform, and refusing to crush the communist Tudeh Party.
The CIA (the NED’s parent organization), infiltrated Iranian media, paying them to run hysterical anti-Mossadegh content, carried out terror attacks inside Iran, bribed officials to turn against the president, cultivated ties with reactionary elements within the military, and paid protestors to flood the streets at anti-Mossadegh rallies.
The shah reigned for 26 bloody years between 1953 and 1979, until he was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution.
The U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, who almost immediately invaded Iran, leading to a bitter, eight-year long conflict that killed at least half a million people. Washington supplied Hussein with a wide range of weapons, including components for chemical weapons used on Iranians, as well as other weapons of mass destruction.
Since 1979, Iran has also been under restrictive American economic sanctions, measures that have severely hindered the country’s development. During his first term, Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal and turned up the economic pressure. The result was a collapse in the value of the Iranian rial, mass unemployment, soaring rents and a doubling of the price of food. Ordinary people lost both their savings and their long-term security.
Throughout this, Trump has constantly threatened Iran with attack, finally following through in June, bombing a host of infrastructure projects inside the country.
A Legitimate Protest
The current demonstrations began on December 28 as a protest against rising prices. Yet they quickly ballooned into something much bigger, with thousands calling for an overthrow of the government, and even the reinstatement of the monarchy under the son of the shah, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
They were quickly supported and signal boosted by the U.S. and Israeli national security states. “The Iranian regime is in trouble,” Pompeo announced. “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…” he added. Israeli media are openly reporting that “foreign elements” (i.e., Israeli) are “arming the protesters in Iran with live weapons, and this is the reason for the hundreds of dead among the regime’s people.”
The Israeli intelligence services confirmed Pompeo’s not-so-cryptic assertion. “Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the spying agency’s official social media accounts instructed Iranians: “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”
Trump echoed those words. “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” he roared, adding that American “help is on the way.”
Any debate about what Trump meant by “American help” was ended on Monday, when he stated that “If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue… We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” He also attempted to place an all-out economic blockade, announcing that any country trading with Tehran would face an additional 25% tariff.
All of this, added to the increasing violence of the protests, makes it much harder for Iranians to express themselves politically. What started as a demonstration about the cost of living has spiralled into a huge, openly insurrectionist movement, backed and fomented by the U.S. and Israel. Iranians, of course, have every right to protest, but a wealth of factors have raised the very real possibility that much of the anti-government movement is an inorganic, U.S.-orchestrated attempt at regime change. While Iranians can argue about how they wish to express themselves and what sort of government they want, what is undebatable is that so many of the think tanks and NGOs called upon to provide supposed expert evidence and commentary about these protests are tools of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. He completed his PhD in 2017 and has since authored two acclaimed books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams. Follow Alan on Twitter for more of his work and commentary:
On the Eve of Destruction: Has His Majesty’s Madness for War Led His Loyal Supporters Astray?
15 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/on-the-eve-of-destruction-has-his-majestys-madness-for-war-led-his-loyal-supporters-astray/
The Persian Gulf is no longer a tinderbox; it is an inferno. Just this morning, President Trump of the USA and Venezuela, as he now styles himself, has effectively issued a declaration of intent, telling Iranian protesters that “help is on its way.” Is that a threat or a promise? Survivors remember US help last time. But as B-2 bombers warm their engines and squadrons of Israeli Adir, as they call their versions of F35s, stealth fighter jets, sit fuelled on the tarmac, we must pull back the curtain on the “spontaneous” uprising that serves as the pretext for this looming catastrophe.
The Hand of the Provocateur
The economic misery of Iran’s people is raw and real; the rial has lost around four-fifths of its value since the June 2025 war; inflation is crippling. But the timing of this chaos cannot be ignored. Tehran is right to point to the meddling of foreigners. When former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, tweeted a “New Year” greeting to “every Mossad agent walking beside” the protesters, the mask wasn’t just slipping; it was discarded.
History repeats as farce: just as the CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup in Tehran by paying mobs to riot, today’s agents provocateurs are reportedly steering protesters toward IRGC outposts and banks. Iranian state media has showcased confessions from alleged Mossad agents, while reports of 40,000 Starlink terminals smuggled into the country by the CIA and Mossad lend credence to Tehran’s narrative; even as the protests’ roots in economic despair remain undeniable.
The CIA may have wasted its time with the Starlink. Iran has successfully disrupted 80% of Starlink service using military-grade GPS jamming; the first regime to effectively cripple what was thought to be “unjammable” satellite internet
Iran accuses the CIA of creating a level of “state-directed” “massacre” that provides the moral high ground for a “Humanitarian Strike.” The irony could not be any darker. The US mission is to save lives. Even if their agents have to shoot every protester themselves to create the pretext for a US-Israeli attack.
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi claims Trump’s warning of military intervention motivated “terrorists” to target protesters and security forces to encourage foreign intervention. Translation: he’s alleging provocateurs are shooting people deliberately to justify Trump’s promised intervention.
“Protesters are speculating” – CNN reports: “protesters are speculating whether the violence is being fuelled by the Iranian regime itself, or by foreign powers.” In the digital blackout, any atrocity can be committed and blamed on anybody. Qatari state broadcaster, Al Jazeera, is giving serious airtime to Tehran’s claim that terrorist groups are shooting people.
When Al Jazeera gives prominent airtime to Iran’s “armed terrorist groups shot people” narrative, that’s not neutral journalism – it’s Doha signaling to Tehran that they’re sympathetic to their version while trying to keep communication channels open
Classic Gulf realpolitik: publicly neutral, privately picking sides based on gas pipelines and base leases.
The Napoleonic Blunder: Two Fronts, Zero Carriers
But US forces may struggle. In his hubris, the President has committed the ultimate strategic error: the creation of a war on two opposing fronts. On January 3, US Special Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, and the USS Gerald R. Ford; the Navy’s most advanced carrier, is now anchored in the Caribbean, not the Persian Gulf. This has left a catastrophic “Carrier Gap” in the Middle East. For the first time in years, there is no US aircraft carrier in the 5th Fleet’s area of responsibility.
To launch a war against a sophisticated adversary like Iran, while the Navy is playing colonial administrator in the Caribbean, is more than a mistake; it is a Napoleonic blunder of historic proportions. Or it’s Thiel and Miller’s idea of a military 4D Chess gambit.
The “Grey Figures” and the Fascist Blueprint
The common refrain that Trump “appoints the worst” is only half-true. As Robert Reich has pointed out, the real danger lies in the “grey figures” who are terrifyingly competent. Figures such as Peter Thiel, whose Palantir systems are now the “eyes” of the US military, and Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s most ruthless nationalist policies, are not bumbling sycophants. They are “highly capable fascists” who view the destruction of the Iranian regime as a necessary “disruption” to the global order.
Thiel’s Palantir isn’t just watching the war; it’s scripting it. The company’s AI platforms, honed in Ukraine and Gaza, are now the “eyes” of the US military, turning battlefield data into kill chains. The same AI that monitored Iran’s nuclear porgram, identified strike targets in June 2025. It now processes protest data, social media and Starlink traffic. It predicts “threats using predictive policing algorithms. This is “creative destruction” as geopolitical doctrine, with Thiel and Miller as its high priests.
Their criterion for service is not just sycophancy, but a shared disdain for the “old world” of diplomacy. They have led the President’s loyal supporters astray by rebranding a traditional regime-change war as a “populist rescue,” while simultaneously building the digital surveillance infrastructure to ensure that “liberty” abroad looks a lot like “control” at home.
Just to recap. When 12,000 Iranians die in two nights with the internet dark, and Palantir’s AI is processing every data point – who decided they were threats? An algorithm trained on Israeli battlefield data? A predictive model that flags “rioters” the same way it flagged Gaza civilians as “militants”?
Thiel’s company doesn’t just see the war – it authors it. And it’s making billions doing so.
The Retaliation Forecast: A Doomsday Scenario
If the “Iron Strike” protocols are triggered this week, the response will be a regional fireball:
Targeting the “Fixed” Assets: Without carriers, the US must fly from land bases like Al Udeid (Qatar) and NSA Bahrain. These are static targets. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ghalibaf, has already warned that these bases will be “totally obliterated” by ballistic missile swarms the moment the first US bomb falls.
The Strait Chokehold: Expect the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, which will send oil prices, already spiked by the Venezuela crisis, into territory that could collapse the global economy.
The “Shadow Fleet” Conflict: The recent US seizure of the Marinera (the renamed Bella 1) shows that the “Shadow War” has already turned kinetic.
With no carriers in the Gulf and US bases in Qatar and Bahrain sitting ducks for Iranian missiles, the “Humanitarian Strike” could quickly become a humanitarian catastrophe. The two-front trap is set; and the empire may have walked right into it.
The Periphery as a Laboratory: The “Donroe Doctrine”
Joseph Schumpeter spoke of “Creative Destruction” as the essential fact of capitalism, the incessant revolutionizing of the economic structure from within by destroying the old one.
In 2026, the Trump administration has applied this to geopolitics.
Under what independent commentators are calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” the administration is treating the global periphery – Venezuela in the West and Iran in the East – as obsolete structures to be liquidated.
The Venezuelan Template: The January 3rd abduction of Maduro wasn’t just about drugs; it was about the “destruction” of a non-compliant energy node to make way for a US-managed resource monopoly.
The Iranian Bait: Al-Jazeera’s recent reporting highlights that while Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi pleads for dialogue, the “Grey Figures” in Washington; the Thiels and Millers, are busy ensuring the “creative” part of the destruction. By baiting the regime into the January 8th massacre via agents provocateurs, they have created the “moral” vacuum necessary to install a new, techno-dependent order.
The Symbiosis: Sycophants vs. The “Highly Capable”
Trump is very useful to his key staffers; they need the distraction of his madness. The real power dynamic is not found in the sycophancy of a Pete Hegseth, but in the calculated brilliance of the ideologues.
The Architect: Stephen Miller has successfully pivoted from domestic nativism to a “Brute Strength” foreign policy. He isn’t just a sycophant; he is a practitioner of realpolitik who views the two-front war (Venezuela/Iran) as a necessary “stress test” for American hegemony.
The Engineer: Peter Thiel’s involvement represents the ultimate Schumpeterian shift. Through Palantir’s integration into the “Iron Strike” protocols, the war is being fought as an algorithmic liquidation. This is the symbiosis: Trump provides the populist gale, while the “Grey Figures” provide the silicon-grade precision to ensure the “destruction” is permanent.
The Australian Connection: The Mirror of Suppression
As we look at the suppression of speech in Australia, the parallels are chilling. The “Public Assembly Restriction Declarations” (PARD) in Sydney, ostensibly to “ensure safety” after the Bondi tragedy, are being used to silence those protesting the US attack on Venezuela.
In Canberra, the “Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill” is a masterclass in Orwellian doublespeak. Ostensibly targeting hate, its sweeping powers could just as easily silence critics of US wars or Israeli apartheid. And with a loophole for religious scripture, it may even protect the very extremists it claims to combat.
The Schumpeterian Irony: In the drive to “creatively destroy” foreign adversaries, the administration and its allies are destroying the very liberal-democratic structures they claim to defend.
Strategic Assessment: The Two-Front Trap
Despite the “capable fascists” at the helm, the Napoleonic blunder remains. With the USS Gerald R. Ford anchored in the Caribbean, the US is vulnerable. Iran knows this. Their “Arc of Fire” retaliation plan doesn’t target carriers; it targets the static, land-based infrastructure of the “Grey Figures’” digital war.
Next Update: I am currently tracking the flow of “emergency” data-sharing agreements between Canberra and Washington. It appears the suppression of the Sydney protests is being used as a training set for the very “Human Geography” mapping Thiel is deploying in Tehran.
In the next instalment, we’ll examine how the “Donroe Doctrine” is reshaping the global order, and why the “help” that is “on its way” may be the very thing that finishes us.
President Trump Urges Iran Protests To Continue, Says ‘Help Is on Its Way’
The president also said he cut off contact with Iranian officials
by Dave DeCamp | January 13, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/13/president-trump-urges-iran-protests-to-continue-says-help-is-on-its-way/
President Trump on Tuesday called for the protests in Iran to continue and said “help is on its way,” suggesting he was making another threat of military intervention.
“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
The president also said he cut off contact with Iranian officials, a comment that came after he suggested he was open to diplomacy with Tehran. “I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!” Trump added.
“MIGA” refers to “Make Iran Great Again,” a slogan Trump used during the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran back in June 2025 when he floated the idea of regime change in the country. He also recently posed with a “Make Iran Great Again Hat” alongside Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has said the president is ready to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, responded to Trump’s post, saying the “names of the main killers of the people of Iran” were the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Also on Tuesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed it disrupted “Israeli-linked terror teams” and seized US-made weapons.
Iranian officials have warned that the US would face a severe response to any attack. “Come and see what will happen to American ships and military bases in the region,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said at a pro-government rally over the weekend.
“Come and burn in the fire of the Iranian nation so severely that it becomes a lasting lesson in history for all oppressive US rulers. Come and find out what will happen to you and to the region,” he added.
Caitlin Johnstone: You Know They’re Lying About Iran
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 15, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/you-know-theyre-lying-about-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=184538794&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
You’ve seen this all before. They run the same script over and over again. You know all the beats. The formula never changes.
“Oh no, the people in the targeted nation are being oppressed! They need freedom and democracy!”
“Hey, I bet we could use our powerful military to help them get the freedom and democracy! Wouldn’t that be swell?”
“Oh gosh, there are some people who don’t think we should use our powerful military to help the people in the targeted nation get freedom and democracy! They must have some sinister, suspicious loyalty to the Evil Regime which rules the targeted nation!”
“Look, I get that sometimes in the past we have used our powerful military in ways that were mean and unhelpful, but you need to understand that the Evil Regime is also very, very bad. Two things can be true at the same time, you know!”
“Oh no, now the Evil Regime is committing atrocities! You know it’s true because it’s in the news, and the news isn’t allowed to lie! We’ve got to DO something! We can’t just DO NOTHING!”
Don’t fall for it.
Don’t fall for the propaganda.
Don’t fall for the imperial concern trolling about human rights.
Don’t fall for the nuance policing and both-sidesing of the empire’s operatives and useful idiots.
Don’t let the empire apologists shout you down and shut you up.
Stand your ground. This is exactly what it looks like. You are right, and they are wrong.
They’re not doing anything new. They’re using the same old script. Hell, they’re even using a lot of the same actors. This is the same bullshit as always.
Once you’ve seen enough Hollywood movies, you get familiar with the formula. Boy meets girl, but he’s got some kind of secret or character flaw that will be discovered by the girl about three-quarters of the way through the film, it will seem as though all is lost, but he wins her back in the end. They churn out variations of this movie year after year, following the same formula every time.
This is like that. You’ve seen enough of these to know the formula by now.
Trust your gut. Have confidence in your own inner vision. You’ve got this.
There’s probably going to be a whole lot of narrative distortion dumped into the information ecosystem in the coming days, but they’re not going to make a sucker out of you.
You’re seeing things much too clearly now.
Reza Pahlavi vows to recognise Israel, end nuclear programme if he led Iran.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s deposed Shah, set out key policies he would put in place if he ever returned to rule the country. Pahlavi said he would recognise Israel and end Iran’s nuclear programme. Pahlavi, who lives in the US, has backed calls to overthrow Iran’s leaders.
Report: Military Tells Trump It Needs More Time to Prepare for War With Iran.
Military commanders in the Middle East want more time to prepare for Iranian counterattacks
by Kyle Anzalone | January 11, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/11/report-military-tells-trump-it-needs-more-time-to-prepare-for-war-with-iran/
Senior Department of War officials have told President Donald Trump they need more time to consolidate American troops deployed to the Middle East before the US launches an attack on Iran.
According to The Telegraph, “Trump has been warned that the US military needs more time to prepare for strikes against Iran.” Military commanders in the Middle East stated they need to “consolidate US military positions and prepare defences” in anticipation of an Iranian retaliatory attack.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said that if it attacks Iran, the Islamic Republic will strike Israel and US bases in the Middle East/
Trump has threatened Iran several times in recent weeks. “If Iran [shoots] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump said earlier this month.
Demonstrations began in Iran two weeks ago, and some protests have escalated into riots. Some groups report that 200 people have been killed during the demonstrations, including over 40 members of Iranian security forces.
Iranian authorities have reportedly used live ammunition to break up protests, and Tehran has cut off internet service in an attempt to quell the movement.
Israel Hayom spoke with American officials who said the White House is preparing a range of actions against Iran, including using Starlink to provide protesters with internet access, a cyber attack, new sanctions, and kinetic military action.
The Telegraph reports that potential targets of US strikes include non-military targets in Tehran and Iranian security forces.
At the end of last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the US to lobby Trump to restart the war with Iran. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran that ignited a 12-day war.
During the conflict, Trump ordered American bombers to strike three Iranian nuclear sites. The Islamic Republic responded by striking a US military base in Qatar. The Iranian response was viewed as symbolic, and a ceasefire between the US, Israel, and Iran was reached shortly after.
You Can’t Cheer For Regime Change In Iran Without Also Cheering For The US Empire.
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 11, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/you-cant-cheer-for-regime-change?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=184201179&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The western press are reporting that Trump is considering another attack on Iran as protests heat up amid a government crackdown and internet blackout. The president had previously announced that he will intervene militarily if the Iranian government starts killing protesters.
At this point it’s probably worth recalling that earlier this month Mike Pompeo tweeted that Mossad agents were intimately involved in the unrest, saying, “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
Pompeo was secretary of state during Trump’s first term, and was Trump’s CIA director prior to that. The claim that Mossad agents are active among the protesters has also been circulated by the Israeli press.
As secretary of state, Pompeo said during a 2020 interview that the goal of the crushing sanctions the US had imposed on Iran was not to pressure the Iranian government to change, but to pressure the Iranian people to change the government. He told former acting CIA director Mike Morrell that while he didn’t expect the sanctions to change Tehran’s behavior, he believed that “what can change is the people can change the government.”
Pompeo was confessing that Washington’s starvation sanctions were directed not at the Iranian government, but at the people of Iran. The goal has been to make them so miserable and impoverished that they turn to civil war against their government out of desperation. Economic strife is widely cited as a driving motivator for the protests.
Deliberately immiserating a population in order to cause a civil war is a profoundly evil thing to do. And it becomes all the more evil when you understand that it is only being done for power and geostrategic domination.
If you think of yourself as a leftist or an opponent of the US murder machine, there is no valid excuse for you to support regime change in Iran. It’s not okay to be a grown adult and pretend this is all happening in a vacuum like it’s somehow separate from all these foreign abuses that have been calculatingly engineered to give rise to the unrest we are seeing in Iran today, and act like this wouldn’t directly benefit the most murderous and tyrannical regime on this planet.
I find it so offensive when I see anarkiddies and NATO progressives supporting the regime change agendas of the CIA and the Pentagon like it somehow makes the world less tyrannical when yet another nation gets absorbed into the folds of the imperial blob. If they do get their wish and Tehran is toppled, all that will happen is that the US-centralized empire will gain that much more power and the worst people on earth will get big smiles on their faces. It gives the most powerful and destructive power structure on earth even more control over the fate of our species, and these infantile human livestock are clapping along with it and pretending they’re sticking it to the man.
It’s a completely nonsensical position to support the downfall of any government before the fall of the western empire, because that is the most deadly and abusive power structure in existence, and because it directly benefits whenever it succeeds in absorbing a noncompliant state into its power umbrella. If you actually oppose tyranny and support freedom, it’s absurd to desire the fall of the empire’s enemies while the empire itself remains standing, because every win for the empire makes the world less free.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in Iran, but I hope the empire fails its regime change operation. I hope the western empire gets weaker, not stronger, because it is only getting more and more despotic and deadly as the years go on, and the last thing we need is for it to shore up even more control over our planet. Humanity won’t have a shot at real freedom until that power structure has been thoroughly dismantled.
Is the U.S. preparing to install another Shah to run Iran as a U.S. puppet?
13 January 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow , West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/is-the-u-s-preparing-to-install-another-shah-to-run-iran-as-a-u-s-puppet/
Nationwide anti-government protests are wracking Iran with over 500 killed and 10,000 detained. The U.S. political establishment is ecstatic about the possibility of regime change of the hated Iranian Islamic government which in 1979 toppled the American puppet Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran) the U.S. installed in 1953.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi pounced on this statement by former US Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo that implied both the US and Israel are involved in fomenting the protest:
“The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope. Riots in dozens of cities. 47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence? Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
Araghchi responded:
“According to the US Government, Iran is ‘delusional’ for assessing that Israel and the US are fueling violent riots in our country. There is only one problem: President Trump’s own former CIA Director has openly and unashamedly highlighted what Mossad and its American enablers are really up to.”
Araghchi is well aware of historical precedence for US regime change in Iran. Seventy-three years ago the US joined Britain’s Operation TP-Ajax, the US-British coup that deposed Iran’s legitimate ruler Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Brits conceived the coup in 1952 and presented it to ‘Give ‘Em Hell’ Harry Truman, who literally told the Brits to go to hell.
A year later newbie Prez Ike greenlighted TP-AJAX to allow Britain to grab back its Iranian oil monopoly nationalized by elected Prime Minister Mosaddegh. For Ike, it was a chance to make his bones as a stanch anti-communist, due to Mosaddegh’s unwillingness to crush Iranian communist influence. Leading this first official CIA coup against a foreign leader who wouldn’t do our bidding was TR’s grandson Kermit Roosevelt Jr., following a family tradition of senseless and bellicose militarism.
Our handpicked successor was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, son of the first Pahlavi monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi. His reluctance and indecision almost wrecked Uncle Sam’s best laid plans, but our CIA Iranian operatives, masquerading as commies, shed enough blood to turn the tide against Mosaddegh. The Shah ruled Iran for another 26 years, with his CIA trained secret police killing thousands who dared speak out against his tyrannical rule.
And guess who has jumped into the current chaos in Iran… Reza Pahlavi, the US-based son of Iran’s ousted Shah whom the US installed after deposing Mosaddegh in 1953. Pahlavi praised the protests as “magnificent” and urged Iranian to plan more targeted actions “to seize and hold city centers.” He’s likely salivating at a chance to reclaim his father’s rule in Iran to once again do America’s bidding. Back then it was to protect British, US oil interests and counter communist influence in Iran. If installed today Pahlavi would complete both Israel and America’s decade’s long goal of weakening, destabilizing Iran to cement Israel’s Middle East hegemony.
Maybe the US has nothing to do with current unrest that may topple the Iranian regime. But based on US regime change history with Iran and numerous other countries, it would not surprise if the US was all in aiding it.
‘We’ll Hit Them Very Hard’: Trump Threatens Iran Again as Protest Death Toll Rises
Critics pointed out that Trump has often endorsed violence against protesters when they opposed him.
Stephen Prager, Common Dreams, Jan 08, 2026
President Donald Trump doubled down on his threats to attack Iran on Thursday in response to its government’s increasingly violent crackdown on ongoing protests.
“If they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots—they have lots of riots—if they do it, we’re going to hit them very hard,” he said.
Addressing the Iranian people, he added: “You must stand up for your right to freedom. There is nothing like freedom. You are a brave people. It’s a shame what’s happening to your country.”
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) reported on Thursday that Iranian security forces have killed at least 45 protesters since demonstrations against the regime began in late December. Wednesday was the bloodiest day yet, with 13 people reportedly killed.
On Thursday, Iranian authorities shut down internet access for the population, which has limited the flow of information in and out of the country.
The protests kicked off in response to the sudden collapse in the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, which exacerbated the country’s already spiraling cost-of-living crisis, heightening inflation and putting many basic goods out of reach for many Iranians.
This economic crisis has been shifted into hyperdrive since Trump returned to office last year and re-implemented his “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, including more severe economic sanctions and a 12-day war in June during which the US struck several Iranian nuclear sites. Over the past year, the average cost of food has increased by 70%, while the cost of medicine has increased by 50%……………………………………..
Iran has blamed the unrest on “interference in Iran’s internal affairs” by the United States. The nation’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has urged authorities to exhibit the “utmost restraint” in handling protesters. But earlier this week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini said “rioters” must be “put in their place,” while a top judge accused demonstrators of being agents of the US and Israel.
The latest swell of protests began after Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince and son of Iran’s former US-backed shah, called for demonstrators to take to the streets. On Thursday, Pahlavi, who has lived most of his life in the US after the royal family was run out of Iran during the 1979 revolution, met with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
On Thursday, Iranian authorities shut down internet access for the population, which has limited the flow of information in and out of the country.
The protests kicked off in response to the sudden collapse in the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, which exacerbated the country’s already spiraling cost-of-living crisis, heightening inflation and putting many basic goods out of reach for many Iranians.
This economic crisis has been shifted into hyperdrive since Trump returned to office last year and re-implemented his “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran, including more severe economic sanctions and a 12-day war in June during which the US struck several Iranian nuclear sites. Over the past year, the average cost of food has increased by 70%, while the cost of medicine has increased by 50%.
The rial has lost 95% of its value since 2018, when Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement with Iran, which included sanctions relief.
Last Friday, just one day before he bombed Venezuela as part of an operation to overthrow its leader Nicolás Maduro and seize the nation’s oil reserves, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “if Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
On Tuesday, US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a leading proponent of regime change, warned Iran’s leaders that “if you keep killing your people who are demanding a better life—Donald J. Trump is going to kill you.” Just days before, Graham said that Iran’s “weakened” state was thanks in part to Trump’s efforts to “economically isolate” the country.
Iran has blamed the unrest on “interference in Iran’s internal affairs” by the United States. The nation’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has urged authorities to exhibit the “utmost restraint” in handling protesters. But earlier this week, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini said “rioters” must be “put in their place,” while a top judge accused demonstrators of being agents of the US and Israel.
The latest swell of protests began after Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince and son of Iran’s former US-backed shah, called for demonstrators to take to the streets. On Thursday, Pahlavi, who has lived most of his life in the US after the royal family was run out of Iran during the 1979 revolution, met with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
Critics pointed out that Trump has often endorsed violence against protesters when they opposed him. Just a day before he issued his latest threat, he defended a federal immigration agent who fatally shot an unarmed mother in Minneapolis, while members of his administration falsely described her as a “domestic terrorist.”
He has previously advocated for the US military to be deployed to use force against protesters and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell peaceful protests, including the No Kings demonstrators who mobilized nationwide in October. https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-hit-iran-protests
1 This Month
31st January – Challenging the War Machine – a DECLASSIFIED UK SUMMIT
Website of the Week
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
-
Archives
- January 2026 (227)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (377)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
- March 2025 (319)
- February 2025 (234)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 