Why ???

More than seventy years later, as American aircraft carriers slide into the Indian Ocean and missile destroyers fan out across the Middle East, those words non longer sound like  history.They sound  like commentary. 

Warships don”t drift into position by accident. They signal intent. And when fleets assemble, so do stories. “Intelligence dossiers,” “Humanitarian concerns,” Claims not to uncover truth, but to manufacture consent. 

It is in this context that Israel has handed Trump what it calls decisive evidence, alleging that Iranian authorities executed hundreds of detained protesters. 

That Tel Aviv should now present itself as a neutral humanitarian witness would be comic were the stakes not so deadly.  This is the same state that has lobbied relentlessly for war with Iran. That openly declares regime change a strategic objective. That stands to gain more than any other actor from Iranian collapse. Yet, here it is, suddenly elevated to chief prosecutor, its claims treated not as advocacy, but as fact. 

Let us be clear. Iran is in crisis. Millions have been driven into the streets, by genuine exhaustion after decades of economic strangulation. Their grievances are real. Their anger is justified. But moments like this are also the most dangerous. Because popular movements are not only vulnerable to repression, they are vulnerable to capture.
 
External powers do not need to invent discontent. They only need to steer it. We have seen this before. Brazil, 1964. Chile, 1973. Congo, 1961. Then the long bitter arc of counter-revolutions after the Arab uprisings. Different countries. Same structure. 

When movements threaten entrenched Western interests, sanctions follow. Economic crises are engineered. Divisions are inflamed. Media campaigns multiply. And if that fails: coups. Occupations. Wars,  always justified in the language of salvation. Iran does not know this pattern as theory. It knows it as trauma. 

In 1953, Mohammad Masaddegh, democratically elected, was overthrown, not for brutality, but for daring to nationalising Iran’s oil. At the time the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later BP, offered Iran just sixteen percent of the profits from its own resources. Britain responded with a blockade. Shut down Abadan. Pressured buyers. Collapsed the economy. When economic warfare failed, London persuaded Washington to act. Operation Ajax. Disinformation. Bribes. Harassment of clerics. Manufactured unrest. Mosaddegh fell, the Shah returned. 

Even the CIA now acknowledges the coup was undemocratic. That was not an episode. It was a template. And today the echoes are unmistakable. 

During Operation Ajax, mosques were deliberately targeted as sites of agitation. Religious divisions were inflamed to fracture cohesion. Now reports have emerged of attacks on dozens of mosques across Iran during the unrest. The same fault lines. The same methods, seventy years later. 

Israeli media figures have gone further still, openly describing what would follow regime collapse. Bombardment. Systematic dismantling. Iran reduced, as Syria was stripped of military capacity. The message is unambiguous: Regime change is not the end goal. It is the precondition. 

Since 1979, Iran has endured one of the longest sanctions regimes in modern history. What began as asset freezes became a total siege: finance, energy, trade, technology, daily life. Lifted briefly. Then re-imposed under Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure.“And in 2025, European powers triggered snapback sanctions once again, extending them into 2026. 

Sanctions are sold as a peaceful alternative to war. In reality,  they are war by other means. They collapse currencies. They hollow out societies. Radicalise politics. And they ensure that ordinary people absorb the pain. 

Britain used this weapon against Iran in 1951. The US has refined it ever since. Washington’s interest is not morality. It is hegemony. Iran’s oil is not just wealth, it is leverage in the global contest with China. 

By 2025, Iran was supplying over a million barrels a day to Chinese buyers: a critical artery. Weaken Iran, and you weaken Beijing. 

Israel’s agenda goes further still. 
– Netanyahu has addressed Iranians directly, repeatedly, urging them into the streets. Promising help after collapse. 
– His former defence minister spoke openly of steering events “with an invisible hand.”

Israeli media has gone even further, hinting that protesters are being armed. The claim was voiced most bluntly by a diplomatic correspondent on Channel 14, the network closest to Netanyahu, who openly gloated that protesters were being supplied with live firearms. This, he suggested, explained the unusually high number of Iranian security personnel killed. 

“Everyone is free to guess who is behind it,”  he added. 

Mossad director David Barnea then issued a rare and striking declaration, assuring that Israel “will continue to be there like we have been there”, language widely read as indicating sustained covert activity inside Iran. 

Days later a Persian-language X account widely believed to be linked to Mossad urged Iranians to take to the streets: “Go out together. The time has come. We are with you, not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Israeli flags have since become a conspicuous feature of anti-regime demonstrations outside Iran, amplified by coordinated social-media campaigns. 

An Al Jazeera data analysis showed how Israel-linked accounts and bots worked systematically to shape global perceptions of the protests, promoting Reza Pahlavi as the singular political alternative. 

That promotion must be understood in context. 

While claiming to defend Iran’s territorial integrity, Pahlavi has openly called for US military strikes on his own country and supported intensified sanctions that have devastated Iranian society. 

His path mirrors that of his father with almost ritual precision. 

Mohammad Reza Shah was installed in 1941 by Britain and the Soviet Union, and reinstalled in 1953 by the United States and Britain after the CIA-MI6 coup against Mosaddegh. 

Today, the son seeks installation once again, this time by Washington and Tel Aviv. The same colonial choreography. A different flag. He would rule, as his father did, through external sponsorship rather than internal legitimacy.  

His father governed through SAVAK, a security apparatus created with CIA assistance, notorious for torture and repression. One of SAVAK‘s senior figures, after decades hiding in the US, now faces major civil litigation there for crimes against humanity. 

None of this absolves Iran’s authorities of repression or violence. But it exposes the hollowness of foreign moral posturing.  Those who have starved Iran for decades, backed a devastating proxy war in the 1980s, and now speak openly of partition are the least credible custodians of Iranian freedom. 

February 1 marks the anniversary of Khomeini’s return to Tehran in 1979, the day a foreign-installed monarchy finally collapsed. That preparations for a new assault gather once again around this date is not coincidence. It is continuity. 

For more than seventy years, one truth has remained unchanged: Iran’s insistence on sovereignty, on independence, on self-determination, is precisely what external power has never accepted, never forgiven, and never stopped trying to reverse. Iran does deserves dignity, freedom, prosperity, but these will not be delivered by aircraft carriers, bombs, fabricated dossiers, sanctions, or invisible hands. 

When chaos is mistaken for liberation and foreign power for solidarity, the result is not democracy, but destruction, rehearsed once again exactly as Mosaddegh warned. 

Comments: 
middleeastey: Why won’t the West accept Iranian sovereignty? In her latest column, Soumaya Ghannoushi argues that foreign powers exploited Iran’s recent unrest — twisting protests over economic hardship into a push for regime change, echoing the 1953 Mossadegh coup. 

navidrezai123: Did Khomeini write your script?

ghazaleh.shk: At least read before you say something… if it was just for economic reasons why do they call “Jarvis Shah”??? Why are they calling for “Reza Pahlavi” They want regime change… don’t try to hide the truth
 
kasermusic: Thank you @soumaya.gk for speaking up for the iranians! Thank you being real, and telling the full story, going back to Mossadegh. So many people are forgetting this, even many of my good iranian brothers have forgotten this! The economic crisis is a direct effect of U.S sanctions on israels behalf.

blanca.ze: Who is this woman, how does she know what we are struggling for
 
ahadismohammad: As an Iranian I fully agree with you 👌
 
saraseyed: Is this AI? The language is pure ChatGPT. What’s missing is empathy and moral grounding. How dare you hijack my people’s bravery and agency by reducing it to tired historical clichés and foreign-coup narratives and basic economic grievances! Over 30000 massacred is not enough for you?
 
lostinwebspace0: I can listen to Soumaya Ghannoushi for hours

kaz_ariaee: Iranians risking their lives vs a columnist recycling 1953 to excuse late-2025/26 murders. Guess who I’m listening to

zo131418: As an Iranian, I oppose both our regime and Western intervention. However, reducing the suffering and struggle of Iranians over the past 40 years to mere Western meddling is deeply naive. We have lived under a brutal dictatorship for decades. Every attempt at reform or change has been violently suppressed, and countless people have been killed in recent uprisings. Please don’t pretend to understand Iran’s reality, you clearly have no grasp of what is happening in our country!!!

artkist2121: Sorry for you for not understanding the meaning of coup. It only happens from bottom to top, not from top to bottom.