Original article: https://zonaestrategia.net/iran-en-revolucion-decadas-de-lucha-hacia-el-momento-de-la-liberacion/
Translation:
Iran in Revolution: Decades of Struggle Toward the Moment of Liberation
by
Hossein Zoghi
| JAN 23, 2026 | WORLD
After nearly five years of killings, torture, and lies, the idea of theocratic rule has come to an end.
Iran is now in a full-fledged revolutionary situation.
It all began on December 28, 2025, when a spark in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar — triggered by the total collapse of livelihoods and an absolute political deadlock — quickly turned into a nationwide uprising determined to overthrow the mullahs’ regime once and for all. As I write these lines, in mid-January 2026, direct clashes are taking place between the people and the regime’s repressive forces in more than 110 cities. Despite a terrifying death toll that includes countless children and teenagers, and despite waves of mass arrests, the fire refuses to die out. In just one small city, 100 students were detained by security forces.
We are hearing the names of towns and cities that many of us did not even know existed. Some of these small places have become living symbols of the revolution. Abdanan, a tiny town in Iran’s Kurdish province, is one of them: the people rose up with such ferocity that they completely expelled the regime. Almost every day I learn, for the first time, the name of another Iranian town and try to memorize it.
Let me be absolutely clear: this is no longer simply an economic protest. It is a collective demand to end a religious autocracy that has suffocated the Iranian people in every imaginable way for 47 years.
I have lived through all the major waves of protest from within since the 1999 student uprising, when the Basij militias linked to the Revolutionary Guard and the police stormed university dormitories. I have followed every movement very closely. What we are witnessing now is completely different, both in scale and in determination.
The circle of protesters has widened each time.
In 1999, it was only students, outraged by the closure of newspapers. Their movement was crushed with mass arrests and state-sponsored killings. In 2009, millions took to the streets against stolen elections; the demands were still largely political. Then, at the end of 2017, something new erupted. Vida Movahed, an unknown young woman, climbed onto a utility box on Revolution Street, removed her veil, tied it to a stick, and waved it like a flag. It was no longer just about politics; it was a cry for bodily autonomy, for dignity, for womanhood. Dozens of other women repeated the gesture in the following days. That same week I was in Palermo for the presentation of my wife Mahsa Mohebali’s novel Don’t Worry, a book about a devastating earthquake in Tehran that triggers a youth uprising. Life and fiction collided in the strangest way. We already knew that a real sociopolitical earthquake was inevitable.
The 2017–2018 protests were crushed within days, but only two years later the ground truly exploded. November 2019: gasoline prices tripled overnight, cities erupted like long-buried embers, and for the first time people directly pointed at the Supreme Leader. The regime shut down the Internet nationwide and, in a week soaked in blood, killed more than 1,500 people, according to human rights organizations. This happened just months after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and the economy began its final free fall.
Two months later, in January 2020, the Revolutionary Guard fired two missiles at a Ukrainian passenger plane that had just taken off from Tehran, killing 176 people, most of them Iranian-Canadians. Those two events, separated by only sixty days, broke the last thread that still connected the people to the regime. The belief in reform died forever. The seed of total revolution was planted.
Then COVID gave the regime some time. But when the pandemic receded, people returned angrier than ever, outraged not only by decades of misery but also by the deliberate delay in importing vaccines on Khamenei’s orders. And then came the spark that ignited the largest fire yet.
Mahsa (Jina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman visiting Tehran, was detained by the morality police for “improper hijab.” She was beaten into a coma and died in custody. The slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” was born, women led the front lines, and for months the entire world watched Iran with restrained admiration and horror. Many of us truly believed that this was the regime’s final chapter. It was not… not yet. The uprising was drowned in blood, but the rage only deepened.
A year before Mahsa’s killing, my wife Mahsa Mohebali and I had been arrested by the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence services, sentenced to two years of forced labor in a state orphanage, and banned from leaving the country, simply for being writers who refused to remain silent. During the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, we would hide in the bathroom, turn the tap on full to neutralize the microphones, and whisper to each other while brave youth shouted our dreams in the streets.
The regime survived that phase as well, but at a terrible cost: it lost the last remnants of legitimacy. A massive wave of emigration began, the largest since 1979. From that moment on, people clearly distinguished between “Iran” and “the Islamic Republic.” When Israel attacked Iran in the “Twelve-Day War,” many Iranians felt, in a heartbreaking paradox, a flicker of hope. That is what 47 years of ayatollahs have done to us.
And now the fire is roaring again.
The trigger was economic: the sudden collapse of the rial
It began again with an economic trigger: the sudden collapse of the rial, as the dollar and euro soared. Tehran’s bazaar shut down for two days. It was enough. Within ten days, protests spread from the smallest villages to the largest cities — the biggest street movement in all these 47 years. The Supreme Leader responded in the only language he knows: more repression. The head of the judiciary openly threatened “severe punishments”; everyone knows that means a new wave of executions. He is a leader who still mutters about the imminent collapse of Europe and America and the annihilation of Israel while his own country burns.
Within the power structure, institutions are turning against one another. But the people have chosen their path with absolute clarity: they want this regime gone. The slogans echoing in the streets are unequivocal:
“This year will be the year of blood; Seyyed Ali will fall.”
“As long as the mullahs are not shrouded, this land will never be ours.”
“Death to Khamenei.”
This time even many celebrities who once remained silent or even supported the regime are raising their voices. The regime’s supporters, for the most part, have fallen silent.
We are very close to the breaking point. Yet the opposition abroad remains confused and divided: largely republican (some unitary, others federalist) versus a strong monarchist current that refuses to unite. Their only attempt at unity during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising ended in failure. Today, in the streets, the name most frequently heard is that of Reza Pahlavi. In the absence of unified republican leadership, the monarchists have managed to fill the vacuum and gain significant public sympathy.
For now, the Iranian people do not care about the details of the next system. Their demand is simple and unanimous: the fall of the Islamic Republic. After 47 years of killings, torture, and lies, the idea of theocratic rule has come to an end.
As I write these lines from a quiet village in Catalonia — where we finally managed to escape thanks to Artists at Risk and the solidarity of Catalan friends — the Internet has once again been cut off in Iran. My wife Mahsa and I are far away, safe, yet the same anxiety and terror grip us: what will happen to those who are inside? I pray with all my heart that this time they achieve their goal, that they succeed in overthrowing this regime and choose the system they desire in a peaceful and democratic transition, whether a republic, a constitutional monarchy, or a federal system. But I also know that even if the revolution succeeds, the real work will only begin then. Iranian intellectuals, artists, and political forces will bear the immense responsibility of educating, organizing, and healing a nation wounded for half a century.
As an artist who has spent years banned from working, creating in basements and turning noise into meaning, I keep asking myself: how does an artist walk alongside a revolution without becoming just another ideologue? How do we remain free while fully committing ourselves to freedom?
Iran needs real political parties — immediately. Like-minded people must unite, define programs, and offer clear paths forward, both for the revolution and for the day after. For now, all eyes are on the streets. The regime has once again cut off the Internet to silence voices. We wait, hearts in our throats, to see whether this time the brave people of Iran — shouting “Woman, Life, Freedom” with their entire being — will finally succeed in liberating Iran from the suffocating grip of the Islamic Republic.
The answer will come in the next few days.
Hossein Zoghi
Iranian journalist, theater director, and actor.
