Many Folds of the Persian Carpet

Iranian dissidents—who once defied the Shah and then the clerics—have united against foreign attacks and have called for a new vision of freedom and unity

- Iftikhar Gilani

In the narrow alleys of Alibeyköy district in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul, 78-year-old exiled Iranian, Hassan Moradi, sits silently on a worn wooden stool, gazing at the city's skyline.

His eyes, once bright with the fervour of the Iranian Revolution, now carry the dullness of disappointment. “I blinked with hope in 1979,” he says, his voice heavy with memory. “But that hope... it has long since dried up.”

As Israeli missiles rained down on Iran, many exiled Iranian dissidents like Moradi—victims of the Islamic Republic’s repression—now find themselves gripped by fear and sorrow. Though they have spent years denouncing the regime, they are now raising their voices against what they see as a new threat: foreign military intervention that could devastate the nation they dream of reclaiming.

Recalling the hopes that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini generated back in 1979, Moradi said he was among the millions who poured onto the streets of Iran's cities that fateful winter, demanding an end to the tyranny of the Shah.

Like countless others, he believed that Iran stood on the brink of freedom. “We wanted dignity, justice, and independence. Instead, we inherited another period of ruthlessness—only this time draped in the robes of religion.”

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was no ordinary political transition. It was a seismic upheaval that overthrew the Pahlavi monarchy—a dynasty backed unwaveringly by the US and other Western powers. For decades, those powers had treated Third World nations as little more than chess pieces, supporting strongmen like Mohammad Reza Shah, who served their geopolitical interests, regardless of what ordinary people wanted.

The Shah’s dreaded intelligence service, SAVAK, was the brutal enforcer of this system. “It was savage,” Moradi recalls. “People would vanish into its dungeons. Torture was routine.” The cruelty of SAVAK helped fuel the anger that boiled over in 1979.