Hope of change by my fellow Iranians has turned to horror – our pain was primed for Israel’s exploitation
“When are the Americans coming to save us from these mullahs?” my fellow Iranians would ask when I started my journalism career in Tehran some 22 years ago.
That was just before the Middle East was transformed by the US’s reverse Midas touch.
Within a few years Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya had been reduced to rubble and ruin at the hands of US intervention.
So salvation from the clerics shrank to two options: reform from within or revolt. Iran’s hardline conservatives in charge would not abide either.
Just as the Green Movement’s promises of rights and rapprochement with the West seemed within reach, they were predictably extinguished, along with every ember of dissent that has come before and after.
The closest Iranians came to change was three years ago, when the country erupted into mass protests sparked by the morality police’s killing of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini.
It was the biggest uprising since the 1979 revolution. The regime had never appeared so vulnerable, or so aware of its frailty, as revealed by an internal missive meant for IRGC top brass but leaked to the world by hackers.
The short bulletin revealed a flailing apparatus with a micromanaging Supreme Leader at the helm, disdainful of timorous officials.
It concluded that with three quarters of the population supporting the protests, the country was in a state of revolution.
This unprecedented situation demanded an unprecedented response: protesters were blinded, arrested, raped, tortured, and executed in a brutal wave of violence that has not ended.
It was no surprise, then, that the first couple of days after Israel’s unexpected attack were met with as much optimism as trepidation – as well as humour.
One meme showed IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami alongside a picture of his namesake sausage with the heading “Salami becomes salami”. Messages of thanks to ‘Dear Bibi’ were posted on social media.
But as the death toll rose – hundreds of civilians have been killed so far, and thousands injured – hope turned to terror.
I’ve spent the last two decades covering the Middle East, and the last 20 months investigating Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and its increasing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
