In recent weeks, as US and Israeli airstrikes have targeted residential areas across Iran, scenes have emerged from Los Angeles, Toronto, and Berlin that demand closer examination. Gatherings have taken place—some celebratory in nature—among supporters of the deposed Pahlavi monarchy, marking the bombing of Iranian cities with visible enthusiasm.
These individuals have made no secret of their position. They have openly declared their alliance with Washington and Tel Aviv, explicitly calling for military action against their own country to achieve regime change.
What does this reveal? Not strength, but weakness.
If these groups genuinely commanded popular support inside Iran, they would not need to beg foreign powers to bomb Iranian cities. Their reliance on external military intervention is, in itself, an admission of failure—a recognition that their project lacks the organic, domestic backing necessary for any legitimate political change.
From Zahhak to Trump: Those Who Forget History Are Doomed to Repeat It
For those unfamiliar with Iranian collective memory, the reflex to reject foreign intervention runs deeper than contemporary politics. It is embedded in the nation’s cultural DNA.
Iranians have walked this path once before. In ancient times, a faction within Iran invited a foreign tyrant—Zahhak—to seize power, believing they could control him for their own purposes. The result was a thousand years of tyranny. A thousand years of suffering. A thousand years etched into Persian memory as the age of darkness and national humiliation.
Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, the epic poem that serves as the cornerstone of Persian identity, immortalized this lesson for eternity: those who invite the foreigner to solve their internal disputes do not liberate their country. They destroy it.
Once the foreign power enters, it does not leave. It does not serve the interests of those who invited it. It serves only itself.
A Different Context, A Greater Danger
Today’s situation carries its own unique dangers. The United States and Israel are not speaking merely of political change within Iran’s existing framework. Their officials have explicitly spoke about the destruction of state structures, the collapse of institutions, and defeating Iran after a 2000 years of conflict.
The celebrations in Western capitals over bombings that have killed thousands of civilians including children, destroyed many schools, hospitals and over 24,000 residential units in Tehran alone—a number that climbs significantly when counting the entire country—reflect a fundamental disconnect. Those celebrating are not cheering for Iranian freedom. They are cheering for Iranian destruction, believing that only through the complete dismantling of their country can they achieve their political goals.
This is not patriotism. This is not opposition. This is collaboration with an ongoing military campaign against one’s own nation and they are simply traitors!
The Lesson Iran Is Teaching Today
But here is what the celebrants—and their foreign patrons—failed to understand.
The Iranian people have spent centuries learning the lesson of Zahhak. That history did not make them passive; it made them vigilant. It did not break them; it made them determined never again to place their fate in the hands of those who would exploit their divisions.
That awareness has shaped the Iran we see today. A nation that has built its own defense capabilities. A society that, whatever its internal differences, has repeatedly demonstrated that it will not bow to foreign military pressure. A people who understand that surrender invites not peace, but the thousand years all over again.
The recent weeks have proven what the United States and Israel did not anticipate: Iran would not break quickly. The quick victory they dreamed of has not come. And it will not come.
Because the same historical consciousness that once led Iranians to rise against Zahhak—to finally defeat the foreign tyrant after a thousand years—now drives their resistance. What is unfolding today is not merely a military confrontation. It is a nation drawing on millennia of accumulated wisdom: foreign invaders may cause destruction, but they cannot force Iranians to surrender.
The United States and Israel are learning this lesson the hard way. And the small faction celebrating from abroad? They will be remembered exactly as history remembers those who invited Zahhak—not as liberators, but as those who forgot what it means to be Iranian.
