By John J. Metzler, April 22, 2026
A hundred days have passed since the carnage.
Those dark days in early January when a rolling crescendo of massive pro-democracy demonstrations took to the streets of Teheran and Iranian cities to demand not only political freedoms, but the most basic choice of social and economic freedoms too.
And the option not to be run by a geriatric theocracy whose bearded young thugs and Revolutionary Guard regime enforcers stand as the guardians of a hated but still powerful State.
Nearly sixty days has passed since American and Israeli warplanes have pounded and vaporized thousands of military targets across the breadth of Iran in the Operation Epic Fury. The Mission aimed at stopping the regime to fully pursue a nuclear threat. Attacks largely decimated the Islamic Republic’s ruling class but did not yet collapse the hated edifice of its control.
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In Iran, this sublimely rich culture and glorious civilization, we see those Revolutionary Guard enforcers, along with the paramilitary street thugs the Basij desecrating Persia’s name.[/caption]
What may tip the scales on Teheran is widened inflation, rising unemployment, and a crippled civilian economy. Inflation which stood at 50% in December at the start of the protests has reached nearly 110%. The economy is in free fall.
The world has rightfully focused on Iran’s illegal closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital international waterway through which twenty percent of global oil exports from not only Iran, but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Emirates and Qatar flows. By blocking free navigation, and in effect taking the merchant ships hostage, the Iranian rulers have in the view of some, seized the asymmetrical warfare advantage, over the powerful air Forces and navies aligned against them. The U.S. Central Command has countered the Iranian blockade threat with a counter blockade of its own, effectively suffocating Iran’s own shipping lane.
Hormuz must reopen to the free flow of commerce.
But let’s return to the January carnage which killed thousands of unarmed Iranian demonstrators. Their own people. Their own kith and kin. Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi stated:
“In confronting an inhuman evil, Iranians displayed superhuman courage. More than 40,000 gave their lives.”
Nor was this terror unique to the Islamic Republic who used killings, disappearances and religious harassment as State policy since the 1979 Revolution. According to the Iran Human Rights organization, some 1,639 people were executed in the country during 2025, largely before the protests; methods include hanging, crucifixion and stoning. This state sanctioned mass murder has few parallels in modern memory. The infamous 8888 Burmese military regime killings of thousands of Buddhist monks and students in August 1988 being one. And what about Tiananmen Square where in the heart of Beijing, the security forces of the People’s Republic of China killed perhaps 10,000 of its own people, during those early June days in 1989? Who remembers Tiananmen Square, airbrushed out of history by Beijing’s ruling communists? And in Iran, this sublimely rich culture and glorious civilization, we see those Revolutionary Guard enforcers, along with the paramilitary street thugs the Basij desecrating Persia’s name. Naturally, the repression exists in darkness. Iran’s regime shut down the Internet since February at the start of the recent conflict. Radio Farda whose overseas digital news broadcasts send free information from the Czech Republic to Iran has gone back to using its standby tried and true shortwave transmitters to circumvent the media blackout. As Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states, Iran’s dismal media freedoms rank the Islamic Republic at 176 out of 180 countries globally! Many Americans and Europeans have questioned the war with Iran, a conflict simmering to various degrees for 47 years. Was it necessary? Would a nuclear Iran dare to use its weapons? Here’s a fair point to consider. A simple question should be posed to the Islamic regime who has not hesitated to shoot, kill, maim and imprison its own people. Those citizens of Iran whose blood stains the streets and runs in the gutters of Teheran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz only to be washed away by the tears of the mothers, the parents and the spouses of the fallen.|
And what about Tiananmen Square where in the heart of Beijing, the security forces of the People’s Republic of China killed perhaps 10,000 of its own people, during those early June days in 1989? Who remembers Tiananmen Square, airbrushed out of history by Beijing’s ruling communists? |
