An article titled “The ruthless conclusion Ayatollah drew from the Shah period” has been published in the American magazine “The New Yorker.”
The author of the article is the magazine’s editor David Remnick.
According to Medianews.az, the article begins with the address of the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the people in November 1978. At that time, amidst mass protests, the Shah sent a message of reconciliation to the people, admitted mistakes, promised to release political prisoners, hold elections, and investigate cases of corruption.
The article in “The New Yorker” states that this address was perceived by society as a sign of the regime’s weakness and deadlock: “At that time, although Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was in exile, he rejected compromise and said that the Shah regime was in its last breath. Indeed, two months later the Shah fled the country, and the monarchy collapsed.”
David Remnick writes that the current supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, knows this history very well: “The conclusion he and those around him have drawn from that date is this: the Shah lost because he made concessions. In this respect, faced with the current protests, Khamenei chooses bloodshed rather than the path of reconciliation.”
According to experts quoted in the article, Khamenei believes that the only way to save the regime is through harsh force. For example, writer Scott Anderson thinks that the bloody lesson Khamenei learned is: if the army had acted more ruthlessly, maybe the Shah would have remained in power.”
So, is the Iranian army and security forces now ready to use violence without retreating? The article emphasizes that this is the main question for the current theocratic regime.
The article also recalls another historical event that shaped Khamenei’s way of thinking: the reforms of the last leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev relaxed censorship, declared democratic reforms, tried to normalize relations with the West, which ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
David Remnick believes that Khamenei also took this process as a cautionary lesson: “He has openly stated that the US wants to destroy Iran from within just like the Soviet Union. Therefore, the regime considers any reform a danger to its existence.”
The article notes that there have been wide protest actions in the Islamic Republic of Iran before: student protests in 1999, the “Green Movement” in 2009, the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022...
However, the author believes that the situation is now more dangerous for the regime. This time the main trigger is not ideology or the issue of hijab, but general economic disaster: “While the majority of the population is impoverished, the responsible officials of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are becoming wealthier day by day. They control the main sectors of the economy and are considered a ‘militarized mafia.’ This social injustice has caused great anger among the people.
Along with economic problems, the regime’s regional and military influence has also been seriously damaged. Iran’s main proxies abroad – Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis – have lost power. The Iranian people increasingly question: why, while the population lives in poverty, is huge money spent on wars abroad?
Additionally, the article highlights that during the 12-day war in the summer of 2025, strikes by Israel and the United States on Iran’s nuclear sites, the killing of several high-ranking Iranians, and Khamenei being forced to go into hiding have also shattered the regime’s myth.”
According to the article’s author, a key difference from the Shah’s period is that the current Iranian elite has no place to run: “Those around the Shah had studied in the West and were able to easily build new lives abroad after the monarchy was overthrown. The current elite is isolated and backed into a corner. Their psychology, in the words of experts, is based on the logic ‘either you kill or you die.’”
At the end of the article, it is emphasized that making an accurate forecast about Iran’s future is impossible: “History has repeatedly shown that even the scenarios analysts consider most likely may not materialize – just like in 1979.”
