It was as if the world were asleep in 1979. No one knew that the genie of political Islam and Islamic terrorism was about to emerge from the magic bottle, and that the shifting sands of the Middle East would witness the fusion of communism and political Islam — two destructive schools of thought. Two schools blended together that, in Iran, ushered in the age of killers. The danger posed by the Shiite mullah was greater than that posed by Marx and Engels. The West and the United States failed to stop the growth of Khomeinist Islamism, and later Taliban Islam, ISIS Islam, and others were also born, all of them connected to Khomeinist Islam.
Naturally, had the calamity of 1979 not occurred, the world today would have been at peace, and events such as Sept. 11 would not have happened. But a terrorist cult — or dark-minded men who believed in killing and genocide, dressed in the robes of mullahs — came to power in the disaster-stricken land of Iran, and for half a century they have promoted superstition, delusion, and stupidity in Iran, a civilized land with an ancient history. They destroyed the intellectual foundations of Iranian society and turned a historic country into a silent and desolate swamp. In the Middle East, they also created the Shiite Crescent, and under their tent, more than eleven terrorist groups formed the mafia of a transnational Islamic terrorism network.
The institution of the Shiite mullah turned a country with 5,500 to 7,000 years of history into one enormous prison. During the 12-day and 40-day attacks by the U.S. and Israel, it became clear to the entire world that Iran resembled a military garrison and an ammunition depot more than a country. All of Iran’s wealth and resources were spent on building tunnels for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, and on building networks within Hashd al Shaabi, the Houthis, and others. The mullahs’ specialty is deception and trickery.
In 1979, the train of Iranian civilization, history, and culture was driven to the bottom of a ravine. The ideology of Pahlavism — a combination of nationalism, secularism, and modernism — was replaced by Khomeinism, which is a mixture of evils such as Stalinism, Hitlerism, terrorism, charlatanism, and more. Today, in the 21st century, no path or remedy remains for the world other than regime change in Tehran, yet the world refuses to awaken from its slumber of negligence. Those who hold power in Tehran possess an apocalyptic delusion, and their mission is not merely the destruction of Iran or the spread of poverty and oppression. Relying on China and Russia, their business is hostility toward America, the civilized West, and Israel. Since 1979, the Middle East has been afflicted with the malignant cancer of political Islam, and there is no other remedy or cure. The historic danger is both the destruction of Iran and the regime’s gamble, driven by its apocalyptic delusion, to destroy the stability and peace of the Middle East and threaten the survival and existence of Israel.
One reality cannot be concealed: The Islamic caliphate system of the Shiite mullah and the religious dictatorship in Tehran is like a rotten tooth with infected roots that must simply be pulled out and thrown away. But it remains unclear whether Washington has the intention and determination to perform this surgery. Unfortunately, the White House witnessed the slaughter and genocide of Iranians in January 2026, when between 50,000 and 100,000 people lost their lives so that the country could become free, not so that, in the middle and at the height of a national uprising and the determination for regime change, Washington would suddenly develop an appetite for dialogue, diplomacy, and souvenir photographs. A grotesque, meaningless, and absurd scene was created because no one negotiates with a killer. In the world’s media, no one spoke about the partners in these crimes. No one wrote an article against Ejei, Radan, Larijani, Rezaei, Vahidi, Ghalibaf, or Pezeshkian. The competition among the hyenas and vultures intoxicated by power and blood in Iran, with their corrupt minds and their loud and shameless mouths, was about preserving the regime.
Twenty-five years after Sept. 11, the White House still has not understood that first you win the war, and then you negotiate. No one enters a war for the sake of dialogue, diplomacy, and treaties. It is a grotesque and fruitless spectacle before the eyes of the world. The Shiite mullahs deserve the highest Nobel Prizes for trickery and fraud, and neither President Donald Trump nor Vice President JD Vance had read “the mullah’s book.” Nor would it be irrelevant or exaggerated to say that they had not even read a newspaper during the past 50 years and were unaware of the dark record, filled with crimes, of Iran’s occupying rulers.
Washington has still failed to paralyze the military machine of Iran’s warmongering, crisis-producing, terrorism-breeding regime. Moreover, it has failed to shut down the source of Khomeinism’s destructive ideology. The problem becomes acute when even American think tanks and universities are under the influence of agents affiliated with the Iranian regime. Not only does the Iranian service of Voice of America become an echo of the ruling establishment in Tehran, but in Los Angeles, too, a notorious and fraudulent television network becomes a loudspeaker for Tehran’s propaganda machine. The CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and FBI, stunned, bewildered, and inactive, merely watch this sinister story unfold. And in a few days, on the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, the president of the terrorist regime will speak at the United Nations. Naturally, American media outlets are already lining up to provide a free platform to the thugs and villains of this criminal cult, while American think tanks are eager to host the criminals.
The heart of the matter is this: a worn-out, fractured, and disintegrating country, a regime brought to its knees, and a people who are disappointed, sorrowful, wounded, and grieving are awaiting civil war and chaos. Even the graves of Khomeini and Khamenei will not be safe from the anger of the Iranian people. The Shiite mullah will use mosques and basements for terrorist networks, and they will not easily surrender power and wealth. From Alamolhoda’s brothels in Mashhad to countless acts of theft, Iran has been transformed into a multipurpose commercial enterprise for Islamic criminals.
Iranian society will become clear-thinking and realistic when this labor pain finally ends, when it sheds its old skin, and when it frees itself forever from the sinister institution of the Shiite mullah. The regime’s nightmare in Iran is a nationwide uprising by the Iranian nation. Iran is waiting for a spark, and present-day Iran is like a boiling cauldron. No one can stop the anger of the Iranian people.
And perhaps the world will awaken from its slumber and realize that no one reaches happiness, peace, and democracy with the mullahs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Therefore, the road to democracy in Iran is rocky, winding, and difficult. Yet the thinking of Iranians is clear, and the Iranian path is a return to their own historical order and thought: Zoroaster and the Iranian monarchy.
IRAN’S SHADOW WAR IS ALREADY ON US SOIL — AND THE FBI CAN’T WAIT FOR ANOTHER 9/11
Time and again throughout Iranian history, national sovereignty was lost, but the people returned to their path. And in Iranian culture, the shah is the guardian of the country’s law and culture. Yet Washington still does not understand that instead of wasting time and energy, it should meet with the true representative and popular figure of the Iranian people, Prince Reza Pahlavi, while everyone still seeks photographs with the criminal regime. The other participants in the upheaval of 1979, or the fake opposition, such as the Islamic Marxism of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, have no chance and have committed no fewer crimes than the Shiite mullah regime.
Alongside the regime, they celebrated Sept. 11. But perhaps, on the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11, Washington will hear the voice of the Iranian nation and will not sit down for another pointless and ridiculous dialogue with one of the principal pillars of the Axis of Evil.
Erfan Fard is a counterterrorism analyst and Middle East studies researcher based in Washington, with a particular focus on Iran, Islamic terrorism, and ethnic conflicts in the region.