FASTER, PLEASE: The fall of the Islamic Republic is nigh.

In the eyes of Iranians, the Islamic Republic has long-since lost whatever virtue it might once have claimed to have. They have had to suffer basic shortages of electricity and water, while the regime pumps billions into promoting a genocidal war with Israel. And when they have tried to take back some measure of freedom – to dress how they please, to express a democratic view – they have been violently and lethally suppressed. All in the name of Islamic values.

This explains a telling paradox. The most ambitious theological experiment of the 20th century, this testament to Islamism, is now home to the most secular populace in the Middle East. In the heart of the Islamic Republic, un-belief is flourishing like nowhere else. So much so that in 2023, high-ranking Iranian cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi revealed that two-thirds of Iran’s mosques – 50,000 out of 75,000 – have been closed due to declining attendance.

Whatever happens after this awful war concludes, the Islamic Republic will fall. Not, as Islamists around the world will insist, because of Western force, be it economic or military. But because of this reactionary project’s own internal contradictions and pathologies. It talks of liberation, while demanding submission to ‘no other deity but Allah’. It commits a nation’s resources to fighting the evil of Westernisation and Zionism, while being unable to provide Iranians with even the most basic necessities of life. And in the name of revolutionary Islam, it murders its own people.

Like fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, the Islamic Republic was born of a very modern, counter-Enlightenment ideology. Let’s hope it too is soon consigned to the dustbin of history.

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