Ali Safavi
A recent article gets the measure of one of Iran’s resistance groups all wrong. As Iran’s streets fill with blood and fire, an essay recently published in The National Interest, titled “What’s Wrong with Iran’s Opposition?” appeared amid one of the most sustained uprisings in the Islamic Republic’s history. For more than three weeks, protests swept over 400 cities and towns. Thousands of protesters were killed, tens of thousands wounded, and as many as 50,000 detained as the regime deployed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Special anti-riot units, the Basij paramilitary, and plainclothes militias against unarmed civilians. Any serious assessment of Iran’s political future must begin with this reality.
Yet, the article’s core message is unmistakable: that no credible alternative to the ruling system exists, and that realism therefore requires looking inward, to factions within the same theocratic structure, for change. These claims warrant scrutiny because serious analysis requires distinguishing historical evidence from inherited accusations. By that standard, the article offers less a reassessment than a recycling of narratives shaped by earlier policy assumptions—many of them rooted in failed strategies of engagement with Tehran.
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