adminWhat is unfolding in Iran is nothing short of a national uprising against a failing theocratic regime, and it should remind every freedom-loving American what human courage looks like. City after city erupted in protests after a crushing collapse of the rial and runaway inflation that finally broke people’s patience late in December 2025. The unrest quickly moved beyond markets into neighborhoods, universities, and the bazaars—places that for years have carried the economic weight of a shattered system.
This is not a handful of angry students; this is a nationwide movement that has reached all 31 provinces and even shut down the internet as Tehran tried to choke off information. Merchants in the Grand Bazaar walked out, workers staged strikes, and chants of political change echoed from Isfahan to Mashhad as the protests spread like wildfire. When a government resorts to cutting phones and throttling the web you know it fears the truth getting out.
Predictably, the regime answered with brutality—live ammunition, mass arrests, and a campaign to portray demonstrators as foreign-directed troublemakers. Independent reporting and eyewitness accounts describe heavy-handed crackdowns, bodies being moved from hospitals, and thousands detained as the security apparatus tries to reassert control. There is no plausible defense for shooting citizens who are hungry, scared, and demanding basic dignity.
What makes this revolt uniquely dangerous to the mullahs is that it has crossed social lines: bazaari merchants, students, teachers, and ordinary families are all in the streets, and many are even chanting for the return of a national figure like Reza Pahlavi. The exiled opposition and voices abroad have helped coordinate moments of protest, while American political leaders have rightly signaled moral support for freedom-seeking Iranians. Tehran’s clerics have angrily blamed outsiders, but blaming the west won’t fix empty store shelves or soaring prices.
For conservatives who believe in liberty, the lesson is clear: the United States must stand with the brave Iranians fighting for freedom and not bend toward appeasement or faint-hearted diplomacy that preserves tyranny. Sanctions and pressure that expose the regime’s failures helped bring Iranians to this boiling point, and we should use leverage to back political transition and protect protestors, not normalize the status quo. This is about human rights and the strategic interests of the free world—standing by silence is complicity.
Whether the clerical regime survives these shocks will depend on how fractious its security forces become and whether strikes and civil disobedience widen into a full economic breakdown of control. Reports of growing unrest inside security ranks, the spread of strikes, and sustained mass participation mean the calculus in Tehran is changing by the hour—regimes that cannot secure the streets cannot survive long-term. If the West wants a freer Middle East, now is the moment to be decisive in support of those risking everything for liberty.
America’s patriots should look at these protesters and see fellow defenders of freedom, not another foreign problem to be shelved by career diplomats. Demand that our leaders amplify the voices of Iranians, protect asylum for those who flee persecution, and make clear that support for human liberty is not negotiable. The world is watching; stand with the brave and let the mullahs know that tyranny has no safe harbor left.
