To borrow Dickens’ phrase, we are living in the worst of times and perhaps the best of times. “There is lots of upheaval under the sun,” Chairman Mao said, “and things are ideal for a revolution. Humanity is living in a time when imperialism is running amok. From the brazen genocide inflicted upon Palestine to the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, its next target is beleaguered Iran. Under crippling US sanctions for decades and a victim of multiple aggressions, Iran has firmly dug in its feet and refuses to be the underling of imperial domination.
Over the last few days, Iran has been gripped by social unrest. Nothing is strange about this. The world is in recession, and the latest sanctions imposed by the US through the UN have resulted in the meltdown of Iran’s economy. Peaceful protests have turned into violent ones. One needs to be scrupulously meticulous before hurriedly stamping a seal on the nature of violence. The violence of the oppressor is always different from the violence of the oppressed. In the case of Iran, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to discern the source of violence.
The governments of the global South have experienced this paradoxical violence not from state agencies, but from oppositions backed by imperialism-an imponderable, but, as A.J.P. Taylor says, imponderables are what we get from history.
The overthrow of Saddam, Yanukovych, Gaddafi, and Assad was the result of the violence brought upon the state by the opposition backed by imperialism. The violence perpetrated by the apartheid entity of Israel against the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and several other countries is an example of direct imperialist violence. The slogans of democracy, freedom and liberation have become not only abstractions but the antithesis of their original claims; hence, imperialism has given up the cosmetic slogans.
As the Venezuelan interim president has alluded to the fingerprints of Zionism in the abduction of President Maduro, one can see the continuation of the decapitation strategy here. The US hasn’t finished with Venezuela yet– and probably will never be able to do so– when riots suddenly erupted in Iran. Nothing happens by chance. Economics plays a major role in uprisings, internal strife or wars. The latest sanctions, not mentioned by Western media, have crippled the Iranian economy, already in doldrums. The massive fall in its currency vis-à-vis the US dollar exhausted the patience of what Samir Amin calls the members of the bazaar economy. The protests were started by traders, later joined by students, and other strata of society. Soon, they became violent. The mosques were incinerated, buildings were set on fire, and the police were attacked and killed.
The overthrow of Saddam, Yanukovych, Gaddafi, and Assad was the result of the violence brought upon the state by the opposition backed by imperialism.
This shows the class composition of the protestors, dominated by traders, the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpen proletariat; it highlights the reactionary stratum of Iranian society. Those protesting for their rights don’t burn public property. The infiltration of foreign elements, especially Mossad, has been proudly acknowledged not only by the former CIA chief Mike Pompeo-the former Attorney General and Secretary of State- but also reported by the Jerusalem Post and by “Israel’s heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu, who shamelessly told Israel Hayom, “Our operatives are on the ground. We have a hand in this.”
Recently, Alastair Warren Crooke-a former British diplomat and the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West- has revealed important insights into the US-Israeli role instrumental in manipulating affairs to topple the Iranian government. In an interview with Cradle (15 January 2026), he told how Israel convinced Trump to manipulate the currency situation to dislodge the Iranian government through a decapitation process. Currency chaos was created by the US-Israeli nexus, which purchased and hoarded Rials in Dubai to create an artificial shortage. The Iranian Rial lost 30% of its value overnight, leading to protests in Iran. Led by the bazaris/traders, it was joined by the students and the lumpen elements of society. That happened exactly what Trump and Netanyahu expected during their Mar-a-Lago meeting: chaos and the decapitation of the Iranian government.
According to Crook, Israelis sent Kurdish insurgents from Iraq and Mujahedin-e-Khalq trained in Albania by the US to infiltrate the peaceful protestors, with the sole purpose of stabbing, bludgeoning and shooting to kill the protestors and the policemen to create chaos. Musk’s Starlink-40,000 in numbers- provided the rioters with sensitive information. Women insurgents gave the orders, and the men carried them out. Once the Iranian state suspended the internet service linking the saboteurs with their masters, they immediately became powerless, because the source of information dried up. That was when the state struck. The foreigners and a handful of local saboteurs were arrested, hence the act of sabotage was immediately stopped.
The grievances of the protesting classes are genuine. Iran is dominated by theocracy, but one must not forget that capitalism and religion are not antagonists. Marx, alluding to the integral role of religion in the cathedral of capitalism, writes. “In the United States people do not believe that a man without religion could be an honest man.” Such is the influence of religion in a capitalist society. Iran is a bourgeois republic, no different from the US or any European country, with all the evils-corruption, class divisions, and dominant interests of the bourgeoisie-embedded in it, which are an integral part of an exchange society-a society rigged against the masses.
(To Be Concluded)
The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. His Latest Work, “God’s Republic Making & Unmaking of Israel & Pakistan”, is available in Pakistan & on Amazon.com. He can be reached at saulatnagi @hotmail.com/saulatnagi’s Substack.