An article by the Tunisian writer Soumaya Ghannoushi examines US moves against Iran and the state of military mobilisation across the Middle East.
Writing in the British outlet Middle East Eye, the author argues that “the state that has relentlessly pushed for war with Tehran, openly declares regime change in Iran as a strategic objective, and stands to gain more from Iran’s collapse than any other party, is suddenly presented as a neutral humanitarian witness. Tel Aviv thus becomes the chief prosecutor, and its claims are treated not as political propaganda but as absolute truths”.
She adds that “these moments are also the most fragile for popular movements in Iran, not only in the face of repression, but also in the face of hijacking and redirection. External powers do not need to invent internal anger; it is enough to redirect it to serve their own agendas”.
Below is the full text of the article:
“We shall not accept coercion, whether from foreign governments or from international authorities.”
This was how former Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh warned the UN Security Council in 1951.
More than seven decades later, as a US aircraft carrier group enters the Indian Ocean and guided missile destroyers spread across the Middle East, Mossadegh’s warning no longer feels like a historical footnote. It reads instead like a direct commentary on the present moment.
Warships do not move by chance. Their movements signal intent. Intelligence files, likewise, are rarely compiled to reveal truth. They are shaped to manufacture public consent for military action, forming the preparatory architecture for interventions that have often already begun.
In this context, Israel presented US President Donald Trump with what it described as “conclusive evidence” that Iranian authorities had executed hundreds of detained protesters during the latest nationwide crackdown. That Tel Aviv now positions itself as a credible source of evidence against Iran would be almost farcical, were the stakes not so grave.
The state that has relentlessly pushed for war with Tehran, openly frames regime change in Iran as a strategic objective, and stands to gain more than any other actor from Iran’s collapse, is suddenly portrayed as a neutral humanitarian witness. Tel Aviv becomes the principal prosecutor, and its allegations are treated not as political messaging but as unquestionable facts.
This does not mean Iran is not in crisis. It is. Decades of economic strangulation have driven vast numbers of Iranians into the streets out of genuine exhaustion. Their grievances are real, and their anger cannot be denied.
Yet these moments are also the most vulnerable for popular movements, not only to repression, but to capture and manipulation. External powers do not need to fabricate internal discontent. Redirecting it to serve their agendas is sufficient.
A familiar structure
This pattern is long established. Brazil witnessed a coup in 1964 against Joao Goulart. Chile saw the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973. Before that came the 1961 Congo coup in which Patrice Lumumba was deposed and killed. Then followed the long and murky history of counterrevolutionary coups after the Arab Spring.
These cases are not identical, but they share a structure familiar enough to serve as a warning.
Since the Second World War, when popular movements threaten entrenched Western interests, sanctions are imposed, economic crises are engineered, internal divisions are inflamed, media campaigns expand, and counterrevolutions are funded.
If these measures fail, coups are organised, occupations launched, or wars justified in the language of salvation.
Iran knows this pattern not as theory, but as lived experience. In 1953, the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a US British coup, not because he ruled brutally, but because he nationalised Iranian oil. At the time, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company, later known as BP, granted Iran just 16 percent of the net profits from its own resources.
Britain responded with a blockade. The Abadan refinery was shut down. Foreign buyers were pressured to reject Iranian oil. The economy was deliberately pushed into crisis.
When economic warfare proved insufficient, London persuaded Washington to intervene by invoking Cold War fears. Operation Ajax, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, flooded Iran with disinformation, bribed politicians, harassed clerics, organised unrest, and ultimately removed Mossadegh, restoring the Shah to power. The CIA itself now officially acknowledges that the coup was undemocratic.
That event did not only alter Iran’s political trajectory. It established a playbook. The same tools are visible again today. Reports of attacks on dozens of mosques across Iran raise unavoidable questions about external efforts to ignite internal conflict along the same fault lines exploited seven decades ago.
This is not limited to covert destabilisation. Israeli media figures have spoken openly about what would follow regime collapse, stating that once Iran falls it would face extensive bombing across its territory, similar to what occurred in Syria when its military capabilities were systematically dismantled after the removal of Bashar al Assad.
The message is unambiguous. Regime change is not the end goal. It is the prerequisite for comprehensive dismantling.
A slow siege
Since 1979, Iran has faced one of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions regimes in modern history. What began with asset freezes and oil bans evolved into a system targeting finance, energy, trade, technology, and daily life.
Sanctions intensified in the 1990s, expanded multilaterally after 2006, were partially lifted under the 2015 nuclear agreement, then fully reimposed under Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign in 2018.
Last year, European powers activated the so called snapback mechanism, automatically restoring UN sanctions under the banner of non compliance and human rights violations.
Sanctions are often described as a peaceful alternative to war. In reality, they function as a slow siege. They hollow out economies, drain societies of their foundations, fuel political extremism, and ensure ordinary people bear the cost of geopolitical conflict.
Britain used this method against Iran in 1951. The United States has since refined it. It is no coincidence that calls for regime change so often accompany demands for harsher sanctions. Advocates understand precisely who absorbs the pain.
Washington’s interest in Iran rests on a logic of dominance. Iranian oil is not merely an economic asset. It is a strategic lever in the global contest with China.
Today, China is the primary buyer of Iranian crude. Weakening Iran therefore strikes at a vital energy artery supplying Beijing. In 2025, Iran accounted for roughly 13 percent of China’s seaborne oil imports, around 1.38 million barrels per day directed to Chinese buyers.
Israel’s agenda extends far beyond this. Over the past two years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly addressed the Iranian public directly, urging them to take to the streets, portraying Israeli military action as a path to freedom, and promising support once the regime falls.
Former defence minister Yoav Gallant was more explicit. He spoke of steering events by an “invisible hand”, emphasising the centrality of mass mobilisation while remaining officially in the background.
“We are with you”
This rhetoric has increasingly been accompanied by overt media signals. Israeli outlets have openly suggested that foreign actors are arming protesters. The claim was stated most bluntly by a diplomatic correspondent on Channel 14, the network closest to Netanyahu, who boasted that protesters were being supplied with live firearms, “which explains the killing of hundreds of regime elements. Everyone can guess who stands behind this”, he said.
Such statements are not isolated slips. They are part of a broader Israeli media ecosystem that has begun to say openly what was once left implied.
These media signals sit alongside formal intelligence messaging. After the war last June, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, issued a rare public statement affirming that Israel would continue “to be there, as we have been there”, language widely interpreted as preparing the ground for sustained covert activity inside Iran.
Last month, a Persian language account on X, formerly Twitter, linked to the Mossad, called on Iranians to join protests, declaring: “Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not only from afar and with words. We are with you on the ground”.
Although Israeli officials formally denied any connection to the account, intelligence services have long relied on deniable fronts for such purposes.
Nor is this confined to covert messaging. Israeli flags have become a conspicuous presence at anti regime demonstrations outside Iran, alongside a coordinated social media campaign amplifying specific narratives and promoting preferred political outcomes.
An analysis conducted by Al Jazeera showed how accounts linked to Israel systematically shaped global perceptions of the protests by promoting Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s last Shah, as the sole political alternative. Pahlavi himself engaged with the campaign, which Israeli linked accounts rapidly amplified to present him as the “face of an alternative Iran”.
These interventions are not isolated. They align with a broader strategic vision increasingly articulated in Israeli political and intellectual circles, centred on weakening Iran to the point of eventual fragmentation.
Israeli editorials and policy papers have openly advocated dividing Iran and encouraging ethnic separatism. Others have called for arming minorities to destabilise the state from within. This is not fringe discourse. It appears in mainstream media and public political debate.
Colonial coordination
The promotion of Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s “alternative” must be understood in this context. Despite claiming to defend Iran’s territorial unity, he has called for US military strikes against his own country and supported intensified sanctions that devastated Iranian society.
His trajectory mirrors his father’s with near ritual precision. Mohammad Reza Shah was installed in power in 1941 by Britain and the Soviet Union after his father was forced to abdicate, then reinstalled in 1953 after the CIA and British intelligence coup against Mossadegh.
Today, the son seeks installation once again, this time by the United States and Israel, repeating the same colonial coordination under a different flag. Like his father, he would rule with external sponsorship, not internal legitimacy.
His father ruled through SAVAK, a security apparatus created with CIA and Mossad assistance, notorious for torture and repression. One senior SAVAK official, who spent decades in hiding in the United States, now faces major civil lawsuits there over the agency’s past crimes.
The past is not merely recalled. It is reenacted.
None of this absolves Iranian authorities of responsibility for repression or violence. It does, however, expose the hollowness of external moral posturing.
Those who economically starved Iran for nearly half a century, backed a devastating proxy war in the 1980s, now speak openly of partition, while their hands are stained with contemporary regional crimes, are the least credible advocates of Iranian freedom.
There is nothing accidental about the timing of the current escalation. The first of February marks the anniversary of Ruhollah Khomeini’s return to Tehran in 1979, the day an externally imposed monarchy finally collapsed and Iran reclaimed its political independence.
That preparations for a new US assault accelerate around this date is not coincidence. It is continuity.
It reveals a truth that has held for more than seven decades. What Iran asserted in the early 1950s, and again in 1979, sovereignty, independence, and the right to self determination, is precisely what external powers have never accepted, never forgiven, and never ceased trying to undermine.
