What to Read About Iran Today
And how to hold multiple truths at once.
The US and Israel have attacked Iran, killing the Supreme Leader and sending the entire region into chaos. American and Israeli forces have dropped bombs on at least nine Iranian cities. In response, Iran has fired missiles into Israel and attacked several US military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait. The Dubai airport has grounded all flights. Tehran is in chaos. A strike on a girls’ school killed dozens, mostly children. “When we are finished, take over your government,” Trump said in a video directed at the Iranian population. “It will be yours to take.”
The Iranian regime is brutal and oppressive. Just last month they massacred thousands of protesters. While some Iranians are grieving the Supreme Leader, many are taking to the streets in exuberant celebration. It is awful to live under the thumb of a repressive misogynist theocracy. Many Iranians, in Iran and abroad, are cautiously optimistic, hoping this is a catalyst for freedom.
I sincerely hope that their wishes come true — I hope that this war goes better than I suspect it will. I fear we are looking into a vast power vacuum in an increasingly lawless world where might makes right; I know that this war is being carried out by an Israeli leader who seems willing to do anything to avoid prison and an American one who loves a spectacle, wants to amass support before the midterm elections, and has surrounded himself by people who have no idea what they’re doing and will always tell him yes. There does not seem to be much of a plan for democratic transition; there is simply a bombing campaign, and then a directive for the Iranian people to rise up, whatever that looks like. This war was not authorized by Congress. It is being waged by a feckless, self-interested autocrat who has no ideological commitment to democracy or human flourishing or even human life itself.
This is the most corrupt presidency in our nation’s history, and I think we’re going to very quickly see this war turn into a competition of profiteering and self-dealing that is more about who can get rich off of it rather than democratization or what the Iranian people need or want. Already, people have made millions in the betting markets — people who, it seems, have ties to the administration. A war run by corrupt imbeciles does not bode well for the country upon which that war is being waged. But I would be thrilled to be badly and spectacularly wrong.
I am of the strong personal opinion that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a profoundly evil person who presided over a profoundly evil regime. And I am also of the strong personal opinion that states should not go around killing the leaders of other states, even if those leaders are very bad. The list of despots and dictators who have slaughtered civilians is long and ugly. Some 300,000 people have been killed in Sudan, with another half-million dying of hunger and other related causes. An estimated half-million people have died in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Israel killed upwards of 75,000 in Gaza, more than half of them women, children, and the elderly. I am happy to see American dollars and support going to those fighting to defend their land, their freedom, and their lives, and happier still to see US dollars supporting humanitarian and development aid (I wish very much that we were doing more to support Ukrainian self-defense, for example, and believe we have an unmet obligation to support the rebuilding of Gaza and an independent Palestinian state). But I am quite sure that the American military shouldn’t be committing war crimes, and should no more take out a foreign leader for their despotic rule than an enemy of America’s should bomb the White House or Mar-a-Lago. Absent necessary self-defense in the face of an imminent and significant threat, it is a very very bad idea to facilitate regime change by murdering heads of state.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari, who is of Iranian descent, released a statement that I found quite useful:
Khamenei was the epitome of evil. For decades, he oversaw the torture, imprisonment, and murder of countless Iranians who dared to demand freedom. American blood is on his hands as well. No one should mourn him and his death is a relief.
But removing one man does not dismantle a brutal regime. Military force alone will not secure a democratic future for the Iranian people, and it risks putting U.S. troops in further danger if there is no serious plan for what comes next. An action of this magnitude demands strategy, clarity, and a credible path forward.
I want nothing more than a free Iran and safety and security for innocent Iranians. That requires more than force. It requires seriousness, accountability, and a real plan to support the Iranian people in determining their own future.
And so this is what I’m thinking in this moment:
We have to expect our government to behave legally and sanely. We have to demand excellence at the highest levels, and when it comes to making war, that means abiding by international and US law, listening to experienced and knowledgable people, always attempting diplomacy, using force as an absolute last resort, minimizing civilian casualties, having a day-after plan, and generally wielding state power with the care and gravity such power demands.
We also must hear Iranians out, understand there is no singular Iranian voice, and fall back on our principles rather than our partisan politics. Many Iranians surely did not want this. But many did — especially the more liberal Iranians who want a path out of theocracy and toward democracy. That may be a complicated truth for anti-Trump anti-war liberals to hold in tandem with our own opposition to this war, but we can hold it. And remember that, as is the case anywhere and everywhere, there is no single story, no single thing that is universally desired.
We can grapple with the reality that this administration has bombed Iran, killed the Supreme Leader, and created enormous chaos — and push, given the circumstances, for responsible stewardship of a nation whose future we’ve just thrown into question. We have obligations now to the nation whose leader we just deposed and whose people we’ve promised freedom. I do not mean that we should occupy Iran. I do mean that we have an obligation to aid in a democratic transition — and not an installation of a US- and Israel-friendly autocrat.
We can also spend this time breaking away from the doom scroll and to actually read, think, and learn. A few recommendations:
You can listen to New Yorker editor David Remnick interview policy analyst and Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour. You can read Foreign Affairs deputy editor Kanishk Tharoor interview Sadjapour here. And here’s a piece by Sadjadpour himself, and here’s another one.
I think the Free Press is largely full of shit but this piece by Roya Hakanian is a useful insight into what some diaspora Iranians — largely those whose families fled the revolution — feel in this moment. I don’t share this to endorse all of its author’s views, just to say it’s helpful to try to understand them. Hakanian’s book, Journey from the Land of No: A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran about living through the Islamic revolution is similarly worth a read.
I can very strongly recommend Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by journalist Laura Secor. I read this book several years ago, and I am picking it back up today.
Iran: A Modern History is about as comprehensive as it gets. And All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is quite helpful in understanding this particular moment.
Would love to hear about what you’re reading and thinking in the comments. And for any readers with loved ones in Iran, or any readers in the region — I am sending you good thoughts, and my sincerest hope that none of my fears are realized and this is, however improbably, the dawn of better days.
xx Jill
Yes, there are great complexities and many points of view to consider. That said, and with apologies for what may be a reductionist simplification, from a pro-democracy American's point of view, the cruel reality here is that any real success Trump has in bringing democracy to Iran would very likely come at the cost of bringing dictatorship to America.
With all respect due to the fate of Iranians, should Trump succeed and be bathed in that glow, his power will grow beyond all resistance, and Iran and America would effectively switch places on the dictatorship-democracy spectrum. I don't feel we have the luxury of wishing the Iranian people well at the expense of our own.
In Great Neck, NY and Westhampton Beach, NY, we became friends with many Iranian (Persian, as they say) families who escaped just before or after the Revolution and rebuilt their lives in the US. Many are Mashadi - from the same city as the late Ayatollah Khameini.
One very worthwhile memoir from a dear past congregant is "Concealed" by Esther Amini.
In general, what you wrote resonated. The people of Iran deserve to see the end of the regime, which has caused untold suffering there for decades. The region deserves the see the end of the regime, which has inspired, bankrolled, and supported death and destruction on a wide scale. But I have absolutely no confidence in the people who are doing this.