“In 1979, Iranians did not appreciate their freedoms,” Amirizadeh, who was arrested and imprisoned by the Iranian regime for sharing her Christian faith, told American Family News.
Back in 1979, Iranians protested the autocratic rule of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who had ruled the nation since the 1940s. When those protests forced the Shah to flee an exiled cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini, returned to Iran. He replaced the controversial, pro-Western monarchy with a militant Islam that stamped out freedom.
Iran is currently overseen by a theocratic Guardian Council, a 12-member body of Islamic clerics known as ayatollahs. The leader of the council is known as the Supreme Leader. That person is currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded the previous ayatollah in 1989.
As the protests in Iran spread, Khamenei is being watched closely. That’s because his decision – keep arresting and killer protesters, or flee to safety in Russia – will likely decide the fate of the regime and the future of Iran.
According to Fox News, meanwhile, President Donald Trump is weighing “intervention” in Iran at the same time Iran’s leaders have reached out to the Trump administration to discuss negotiations.
When the Supreme Leader rose to power in 1979, a majority of Iranians chose silence out of fear for their lives, Amirizadeh said.
“And that is why they have suffered for about five decades,” Amirizadeh, 47, and now a U.S. citizen living in Georgia, told AFN.
After three weeks of nationwide protests, video footage coming from Iran suggests the country’s ruthless ayatollahs could be witnessing the end of their 50-year reign of terror. After crushing protests in 2009 and 2022 with mass arrests and executions, the ayatollahs are watching millions of Iranians not only march in the streets but also torch municipal buildings, police buildings, and mosques.
The protesters have seemingly reached a point of no return: Either defeat the regime or die trying.
One example of that win-or-die choice is claims that protesters have killed Mahdi Rahimi, a colonel with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
Blamed for ordering the killing of 10 protesters, reports from Iran say protesters stormed Rahimi’s home and executed him in an act of revenge. Rather than deny his death, Iran’s state-run media reported he died from a gas leak in his home.
AFN previously reported the street protests happening now seem different, and much bigger, than previous protests that cruelly gave Iranians brief hope democracy would win.
Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, described a “perfect storm” for the Iranian regime because Iranians are also suffering hunger and poverty from runaway inflation of the rial, the national currency.
Citing the anger over the devalued rial, military analyst Bob Maginnis told AFN the unrest spreading across Iran could create an “insurgency” against the Iranian regime. The question, he said, is if the United States will help push Khamenei out.
“Will we fund that insurgency? I would hope that we would, directly or indirectly,” Maginnis said.
In a related op-ed for Fox News, Maginnis said the future of Iran hinges on the loyalty of the IRGC and its paramilitary arm known as the Basij.
In her interview with AFN, Amirizadeh said the current street protesters are not only denouncing the ayatollahs but also oppose the so-called “reformists” in Iran. She told AFN those opposition leaders, who promise a more permissive society if given power, are viewed by many Iranians as a political tool of the ayatollahs.
A slogan by protesting Iranians, Amirizadeh advised, is “reformists, hardliners, the game is over!”
“That means they are telling the regime that you cannot deceive us anymore,” she said.
Amirizadeh also told AFN the Iranian people want the Shah’s monarchy to return and the end of radical Islam in their homeland.
“They want to show to the world that the terrorist Islamic regime, and Islam, do not represent Iranians,” she said. “Iran is the land of the Persians that have been plundered and are being held captive by radical Islamists.”
