The Power of Iran after the Revolution and its Role in the Region and the World by Dr. Fīrūz Roshan (English translation by Wahid Azal)
The Power of Iran after the Revolution and its Role in the Region and the World
Written by Dr. Fīrūz Roshan – Göttingen, Germany – 22 September 2025
The approach of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the Revolution in confronting imperialism had to be designed with consideration of the historical experiences of the country’s relations with the West and the operations of imperialism in the region and the world.
During the Cold War of the 1980s, relations between the two global poles were deeply shaped by the two ideologies of capitalism and socialism. Capitalism was defined and articulated through the late-capitalist neoliberalism of Reagan’s presidency and Thatcher’s leadership.
Within this political climate, the early slogan of the Revolution was: “Neither East nor West, but the Islamic Republic.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this slogan lost its logical application.
Cultural Transformation in Russia after the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Following the Soviet collapse and the return of the dissident, influential, and nationalist Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from exile, a close relationship developed between him and Vladimir Putin. The weekly dialogue between them revolved around decoding the root cause of Soviet backwardness and collapse—namely, the replacement of Russia’s traditional and national culture with the foreign ideology of communism.
The outcome of this close relationship was the symbolic support of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church during Putin’s first inauguration in Moscow in 2000. This church leads about 70% of Russian Christians. Out of this cultural-political process, on December 1, 2001, the “United Russia” party was formed from the unification of nationalist political currents under Putin’s leadership. Since then, spirituality rooted in national culture in Russia, much as in China, has played a distinctive role in the political atmosphere and social life of the people.
Nonetheless, despite Putin’s settling of accounts with many oligarchs, Russia’s current system still remains an oligarchy—one apparently dominated by him—though the influence of Zionist oligarchs upon the Russian system should not be underestimated. At present, policymaking in Russia is defined by nationalism and inspiration drawn from the spirituality of the Orthodox Church.
In China, too, by pursuing capitalist growth while drawing upon the moral teachings and spiritual values of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, a form of convergence with Islamic Iran emerged.
One further reason for Western hostility toward the Islamic Republic is its strategic convergence and alignment, grounded in national independence, with countries such as Russia, China, and India—all of them official members of the Shanghai Pact. Iran is now likewise an official member of this pact, as well as of BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Union.
The West, when cooperating with other Islamic countries in the region, has shown no such sensitivity; rather, it has concentrated the full edge of its secularizing, anti-religious cultural propaganda solely upon Iran. The precise decoding of this double standard lies in the role of Shiʿi culture as a form of cultural soft power, bearing a complete politico-spiritual paradigm.
It was this cultural component that enabled the Revolution in Iran and extended the country’s political influence and strategic power in the region. This process elevated Iran’s position into that of a decisive factor in the balance of political power both regionally and globally.
The Role of Culture in Historical Transformations
It seems that every generation within history produces its own thinkers and theorists, through whom the intellectual spirit of the age is formed for intellectuals and, following them, for the masses.
The emergence of the capitalist socio-economic system for the first time in the second half of the 18th century in England was truly a decisive turning point in human history. The creative focus of Marx and Engels was naturally directed toward analyzing the core and driving forces of this new system of production. The mental reflection of this material reality in culture and economy, as the superstructure of capitalism, was at the time very limited, and its full prediction in the light of today’s scientific and technological development was not possible.
They were philosophers and thinkers with a worldview of dialectical materialism—not writers of science fiction. Given their temporal and spatial limitations, their analytic insights into the laws governing capitalism were extraordinary. Their concentration on the core of capitalist productive relations meant that their attention, in that historical moment, toward cultural factors and their role in orienting individual and social consciousness within the advance of science and technology was minimal.
Two historical events in the 20th century showed how, in two completely different contexts, culture as a superstructural element played a decisive role: in the Socialist Camp, without a single bullet fired (a “color revolution”), culture brought about its collapse; and in Iran, Shiʿi culture—justice-oriented and freedom-seeking, Husaynī in nature—served as the subjective factor in the people’s revolution under Imam Khomeini in February 1979.
From my perspective as an eyewitness in Europe at the time, the main factor behind this temporary victory of imperialism against Russia was the West’s massive media propaganda, amplified by advances in information technology. External factors exert influence only through the inner dynamism of phenomena. A fuller discussion of the decisive internal factors behind the collapse lies beyond the scope of this brief article.
Intellectual Approaches: West and Iran
In developed industrial societies, the intellectuals’ approach, through precise and updated definitions of “science” and “scientism,” is a critical and rational thought applied in service of their national interests.
Intellectuals in developing countries, by contrast, often borrowed superficially from Western or Eastern theorists without a scientific grasp of their philosophical substance, lacking the comprehensive tools to historically situate these complex, intertwined concepts.
In Iran, since the 17th century—after the integration of philosophy and mysticism in Mullā Ṣadrā’s intellectual system—philosophical systems and thought-structures did not find further practical extension. Nevertheless, the current socio-economic conditions of Islamic Iran must be analyzed with the necessary intellectual order. Such definition and analysis are prerequisites for any serious and constructive intellectual discourse toward drafting a roadmap for the future. After nearly half a century since the Revolution, no intellectual or political current has yet offered a comprehensive analysis of this matter. Our socialist and secular intellectuals remain captive to “Babylonian” paradigms and foreign conceptual frameworks, without a proper understanding of them.
With a naïve, almost childish anti-religious stance, they have even failed to understand Marx’s famous phrase that “religion is the opium of the people.” In context, this means the oppressed masses turn to religion as solace and healing for the physical and spiritual suffering imposed by an unjust class system.
Marx and Engels also studied the emergence of Islam and the Islamic movement: Marx referred to the transformation brought by Islam as the “Islamic Revolution” (Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Soviet edition, vol. 28, p. 221). Engels called it the “Religious Revolution of Muhammad” (ibid., p. 210). Such designations are not meaningless. Engels noted that the great movements of history sometimes assume the form of religious movements. The same holds true for the rise of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity. Islam was the ideological banner for transformation from tribal structures toward a more advanced system, which some regard as slave-based and others as feudal.
As Will Durant (1885–1981), the American philosopher, historian, and writer, observed: “Human culture is built upon two pillars: language and religion.”
These misunderstandings and superficial borrowings from foreigners have always harmed the Iranian struggle for national independence. In the early 20th century, the Iranian intellectual and progressive movement was deeply shaped by the intellectual currents of northern neighbors and Europe, especially France and Germany.
From a genealogical standpoint, the class base of the affluent intellectuals (Kasravī, Ṭabarī, Kiyānurī, etc.) was petty-bourgeois, while their “caste” counterparts—the Shiʿi clerics—formed another social stratum with different class bases yet shared corporate interests. These two strata were the mental drivers for the shift from a backward traditional society toward modernity.
These cultural pioneers of modernization—figures such as Kasravī and Hedayat—despite their brilliance, fell into radical adventurism: Kasravī’s “pure religion” crusade turned against the clergy and even against the prophets of Iran’s literary and spiritual heritage, like Saʿdī, Ḥāfiẓ, and Rūmī.
Kasravī opined on everything—religion, philosophy, mysticism, literature, culture, history, economics—and insisted on imposing his views by any means, even burning sacred books like the Dīwān of Saʿdī, the works of Ḥāfiẓ, and the Mafātīḥ al-Jinān, holding public book-burning ceremonies. He was authoritarian, dogmatically clinging to his errors. The reaction to this so-called “enlightenment radicalism” was the emergence of the Fadāʾiyān-e Islam movement, Navvab Safavī, and others.
My Assessment
My assessment of this contentious story is this: social-cultural radicalism prevented our society from undergoing a normal, gradual historical transition from tradition to modernity.
Its tragic consequence appeared in the oil nationalization movement, in the rivalries and self-destructive conflicts among the Tudeh Party, the secular nationalists, and the clergy.
This legacy still burdens the intellectual movement, for even now no consensus exists among these three forces—or among the broader intelligentsia—regarding the reasons for that failure or the conditions that enabled the coup.
The Islamic Republic of Iran offers a historical opportunity: to complete, even belatedly, the natural transition from tradition to modernity.
As Gorbachev said: “Life punishes those who are late.”
The Role of Culture in Current U.S. Politics
With the advance of science and technology, culture’s impact on the transformation of human societies has gained special importance. Technology changes culture. Cultural evolution follows principles entirely different from those of biological evolution in the animal world.
Humans can borrow capacities from other humans or other cultures and spread them elsewhere—in this sense, cultural transformation resembles contagion. In biology, by contrast, no species can appropriate the traits of another. Biological evolution is a process of increasing diversity, while cultural evolution is a process of accumulation.
The study of social evolution differs from the study of natural laws. The social sciences should not be mistaken for the natural sciences, whose laws are universal, testable, and provable by empirical methods. This is the critique of positivism. Thinkers of the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory have elaborated this at length, and such attention is essential for intellectuals in the humanities.
Cultural evolution, accelerated by technology, increasingly shapes political and social development—though not necessarily positively.
The media industry, within the context of technological advance, can alter human behavior and nature, alienate people from themselves, and direct, manage, and control them according to its designs. In Antonio Gramsci’s reading, hegemony means cultural supremacy.
Today, the class identity of workers, as defined by the old criteria of labor-capital conflict, is no longer sufficient. Social classes no longer retain their old forms. With automation and robotics, the number of workers in production is sharply reduced, producing unemployment. Monopolies have replaced the old capitalist class and monopolize the media as well—even sponsoring certain “yellow press” outlets in Islamic Iran under the guise of press freedom.
In today’s global conditions, the concept of social classes as conceived under “historical materialism” no longer exists. In the indeterminate future, advanced societies may see the disappearance of the labor-capital contradiction through a “social fusion” of productive and intellectual labor.
The rise of Trump by the “deep state” of global oligarchy, with the help of media monopolies, reflected the deepening crisis of global economic and political management amid technological revolution.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, crises in the region and the Western world accelerated with breathless geopolitical, political, and cultural intensity. Netanyahu’s radical-Zionist government’s crimes and genocides produced deep social rifts within Israel. The 12-day war with the Islamic Republic of Iran further activated those rifts. In Iran, by contrast, the war’s effect was opposite: it produced greater cohesion and national unity against imperialism and Zionism.
In this military-political deadlock, Netanyahu sought to push the United States into a full-scale war with Iran. Yet the deterrent and destructive power of the Islamic Republic, and the support of its allies—China, Russia, India, the regional Resistance Axis, and Latin America—have made such a risk impossible in current conditions.
This political limbo has fractured the European Union, Israel, and the United States. Public opinion in the region and worldwide has turned rapidly against Israel and its supporting parties in Europe and America. It seems the utilitarian societies of the West, particularly their younger generation, are now returning to themselves, reviving Christian spiritual values amid this cultural-political limbo.
In the United States, the camp of Evangelical Christian Zionists and AIPAC is now split three ways:
- Liberal Jews
- Conservative Jews backing Netanyahu
- Conservatives opposed to Netanyahu
The assassination of Charlie Kirk in America must probably be added to the list of Zionist assassinations intended as warnings to Trump’s delay in following their programs.
Fūʾād Īzadī wrote on Twitter:
“Among Trump’s supporters, there are those who strongly oppose a U.S. military attack on Iran. Charlie Kirk was one of the most prominent of them. Before the war he said: ‘It is better for Iran to have the nuclear bomb than for America to enter another war.’ This assassination was likely the work of Mossad.”
In Phoenix, Arizona, in a hall packed with people, Trump’s officials and leading figures of the “Make America Great Again” movement gathered to honor the late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. His wife, Erika Kirk, and Donald Trump, along with many of his cabinet, gave speeches blending politics with conservative evangelical Christianity. The U.S. president told the crowd: “We must bring religion back to America.” Vice President J.D. Vance added: “I was always uncomfortable speaking about my faith in public. Yet in the past two weeks I have spoken more about Jesus Christ than in my entire public life.”
The memorial for Charlie Kirk merged political rally and religious revival, as mourners pledged to spread the MAGA message. Vance emphasized that Charlie Kirk’s Christian faith must remain at the center. Erika Kirk, his widow, said she forgave the man accused of the killing.
Meanwhile, Western-oriented elements inside Iran continue to demand a change in the Islamic Republic’s politico-religious paradigm.
End.
