A popular uprising is underway in Iran against the theocratic regime that seized power in 1979. The uprising is the result, on the one hand, of the regime’s economic and sociopolitical policies and the widespread corruption that over a long period has severely deteriorated people’s living conditions, and, on the other hand, of the sanctions imposed on the country by the United States and other Western nations, which stem from the Islamic Republic’s conflicts with Israel.

The United States is now threatening to attack Iran in order to “protect demonstrators” and guarantee their “human rights.” It is difficult to imagine a more spurious and reality-detached justification for military intervention than this, as such an action in fact aims to serve US economic and geopolitical interests.

US interventions in Iran—aimed at destroying democracy, suppressing anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, and replacing them with puppet regimes such as the one led by the former shah, Mohammad Reza Shah—are well documented. When US and British economic and political interests were threatened by the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadeq, who nationalized Iran’s oil in 1951, they orchestrated and carried out a bloody military coup in 1953. The purpose was to crush Iranian democracy and eliminate nationalist and left-wing forces. This brutal coup was part of a long series of military coups around the world, led or supported by the United States, whose overarching goal was to secure its socioeconomic and political interests and to win the Cold War—regardless of the human suffering caused by these coup regimes and their subsequent dictatorship.

In Iran, the shah’s dictatorship between 1953 and 1979 did not target religious groups and leaders to the same extent as it targeted left-wing organizations. Leftist activists were subjected to systematic persecution, torture, long prison sentences, and systematic executions. At the same time, religious groups were able to organize relatively freely, run religious educational centres, publish religious journals, and strengthen their social and economic influence in the country. With financial support from the shah’s regime, they built a well-established network through the construction of new mosques. This was a direct consequence of US anti-communist policy during the Cold War, in which left-wing groups and nationalists were viewed as potential allies of the Soviet Union and thus as enemies of the so-called “free world.” While leftist and liberal nationalist groups were arrested, imprisoned, or........

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