Iran, a National Reconquest: What Left Media Does Not Want To Show

What is unfolding in Iran today is neither obscure nor ambiguous; it is visible, audible, and documented across the country, yet much of the Western media landscape treats it as though it were happening behind a fog. The reason is not lack of access, nor insufficient evidence—it is ideological resistance. Iran is witnessing a national reconquest, a moment in which a society openly rejects an entire ruling order and reclaims itself as a unified political nation. That reality collides directly with the interpretive habits of Western left-leaning media, which for nearly half a century have framed Iran through categories that no longer apply.

Over recent days, Iran has witnessed the largest nationwide protests since 2022, spreading across most of its provinces. These demonstrations go far beyond economic grievances or reformist demands. They reflect a broad and increasingly explicit rejection of the Islamic Republic as a governing system. The message emerging from the streets is clear: large segments of Iranian society are calling for an end to the Islamic republic. Reports from inside the country indicate that on December 8, demonstrations in Tehran and Mashhad were among the largest seen since 2009, with families present, including parents marching with children in strollers, a powerful sign of national confidence and unity rather than episodic unrest.

Across Iran, protests are taking place openly and persistently; videos circulate daily from Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Yazd, and dozens of smaller cities. Crowds chant “Death to the dictator,” tear down regime symbols, and most strikingly, invoke a political alternative by name. For the first time since 1979, the Shah is being invoked nationwide, more precisely, the Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi. Slogans such as “This the last battle, Pahlavi will return” and “Javid Shah” (Long live the King) are no longer marginal gestures; they are geographically widespread, socially diverse, and repeated with consistency. Omitting this reality is not an oversight; it fundamentally distorts what is happening on the ground.

A striking and unprecedented feature of the current protests is the emergence of a unifying political reference point. The demonstrations followed Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s first official call to the Iranian people after forty-five years. In cities across the country and among diverse social groups, the overwhelming majority of demonstrators are openly chanting in his support, calling on him to lead the transition and to return. 

A movement does not require a formal party structure to express leadership. Political direction is articulated through symbols, memory, and continuity, and in Iran today that articulation is unusually coherent. The repeated claim in Western coverage that the movement is ‘leaderless’ functions less as analysis and more as a protective mechanism, allowing observers to avoid acknowledging a political reality that contradicts long-held assumptions and narratives.

The contrast between media hesitation and political clarity in Washington is revealing. While left-leaning outlets hedge and relativize, parts of the American political establishment have been unusually direct. President Trump has repeatedly expressed support for the Iranian people and warned that a regime murdering its own citizens would face consequences, stating in recent days that should the regime revert to mass killing of demonstrators, the United States would be locked and loaded. On January 9, the Iranian Crown Prince publicly asked for President Trump’s support on X, openly linking the internal national uprising to an external strategic ally.

This clarity, however, triggers resistance in Western leftist media for reasons largely unrelated to Iran itself. Coverage is filtered through domestic Western politics, where reflexive opposition to Trump often overrides factual assessment. Support for Iranians is treated not as a moral imperative but as a political inconvenience. When Trump supports Iranians against the regime, the instinct is not to reassess Iran honestly but to oppose the position because it comes from him. This dynamic has reached the point where even chants heard inside Iran become uncomfortable. In at least one demonstration, protesters openly declared “Pahlavi is our king and Trump our ally,” a sentence that collapses several pillars of left-leaning orthodoxy at once.

The silence of Western activist circles reveals the same ideological fault line. Many of the same activists who mobilized instantly for Gaza, who framed Hamas explicitly as a resistance movement, who flooded campuses and streets with moral certainty, are now conspicuously silent. When Islamists present themselves as anti-Western, they are romanticized. When a nation rises against Islamo-leftism itself, when Iranians confront the ideological system that has governed them through clerical authoritarianism and revolutionary socialism, the response is indifference, hesitation, or outright censorship. The issue is not violence; it is direction. Islamist violence against the West is framed as resistance; Iranian resistance against Islamism is ignored.

Understanding this silence requires confronting a deeper reality: the political left as an organizing force is finished in Iran. For decades, Western progressive narratives approached Iran through familiar lenses: women’s struggle, ethnic marginalization, sexual minority persecution, and economic injustice, carefully detached from national sovereignty and state legitimacy. These categories allowed foreign commentators to speak about Iranians without recognizing them as a unified political nation. That framework has collapsed.

The uprising underway is not a feminist revolt alone, nor an ethnic fragmentation movement, nor an identity-based revolution, nor a Marxist or postcolonial struggle. It is explicitly national, centralized, and patriotic. Protesters chant for Iran as a country, not as a collection of grievances. They invoke history, constitutional monarchy, culture, and collective memory as sources of legitimacy, standing openly against Islamism. This terrifies Western leftist outlets because it breaks the narrative maintained for forty-seven years, the narrative of the Islamic Republic as a flawed but authentic anti-imperialist project.

Western left-leaning outlets persist in framing the Islamic Republic as reformable or as a system experiencing cyclical unrest. This framing collapses under scrutiny. The Islamic Republic is not a malfunctioning democracy. It is an Islamist power apparatus governing through coercion while treating society as captive.

Reducing the uprising to sanctions or living costs is therefore a profound misrepresentation. Yes, the Rial has collapsed, but this is not a bread riot. Economic collapse is the accelerant, not the cause. The cause is political illegitimacy built over decades of repression.

The regime’s response confirms this reality. Security forces have opened fire on protesters. Hospitals have been raided. Medical sanctuaries have been violated. This is not crowd control; it is state terror. Any outlet still describing this as unclear is not exercising caution but avoidance.

What the Iranian people are demonstrating today is something Western leftist frameworks fundamentally struggle to interpret: a nation reclaiming itself without apology. Unity, history, culture, and national symbols are not being used as nostalgic gestures but as instruments of political coherence and legitimacy. This moment does not fit the language of permanent resistance or victimhood. It reflects instead a collective assertion of responsibility, continuity, and political agency. That is why the silence surrounding it feels so deliberate.

What is unfolding in Iran is not hidden. It is filmed, documented, and articulated openly across the country. The challenge is not evidentiary but interpretive. A movement that rejects Islamo-leftism while affirming national sovereignty forces a reassessment of narratives that have gone unchallenged for decades. Whether Western media choose to engage with this reality now or later, the events themselves speak with increasing clarity. Iran is not witnessing episodic unrest; it is experiencing a national reckoning, and it will be understood as such, regardless of how long some prefer to look elsewhere.