Iran’s 86-year-old supreme chief, who believes that he represents God’s will on Earth, ordered what now seems to be one of many deadliest two-day mass slaughters in fashionable historical past. Based on estimates supplied by two nameless senior officers within the nation’s ministry of well being, as many as 30,000 residents could have been killed throughout this 48-hour rampage on January 8 and 9. If these estimates show right, Ali Khamenei’s January 2026 bloodbath—the climax of a decades-long reign of repression—will rank amongst fashionable historical past’s deadliest single episodes of state violence.
Because the rise of the trendy state within the seventeenth century, political legitimacy has come to relaxation on a social contract, through which the federal government supplies safety and sustenance in trade for the consent of the ruled. The Islamic Republic’s relationship with Iranians doesn’t resemble a social contract, however a predatory lease signed in 1979 that has lengthy since expired.
The phrases of this lease—imposed by the owner upon the tenants—are nonnegotiable:
You, the tenant, will dwell contained in the non secular fever dream of a person, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who considered the state not as a vessel for nationwide development, however as a weapon for private retribution, and whose copious writings supplied detailed pronouncements concerning the non secular penalties for fornicating with animals, but no insights on run a contemporary financial system. “Economics,” he as soon as mentioned, “is for donkeys.”
You may be dominated for 4 a long time by his successor, Khamenei, whose views will stay fastened regardless of how a lot the world, and Iranian society, modifications. He’ll preach resistance and fake he’s a pious man who eschews worldly wealth. However an entity referred to as Setad—a shadowy monetary empire beneath his private management—has amassed belongings valued at greater than $95 billion in 2013 and doubtlessly exceeding $200 billion at the moment, a lot of it confiscated from Iranians who fled political and spiritual persecution.
We, the owner, will micromanage your private life. Whom you’re keen on, the flicks you watch, the music you take heed to, what you drink—all can be topic to our approval. Underneath our Sharia-based legal guidelines, ladies can be stoned for adultery, whereas males are permitted to take a number of wives.
You may be subjected to routine energy outages, though your nation possesses the world’s third-largest confirmed reserves of oil and second-largest reserves of pure gasoline. We’ll preside over one of many highest inflation charges on the earth, wiping out your financial savings because the nationwide foreign money loses greater than 99 % of its worth towards the U.S. greenback because the revolution.
We’ll so profoundly mismanage our surroundings–as a result of corruption and incompetence–that we are going to dry up your rivers and switch your lakes into salt flats, creating mud storms that choke your cities. We’ll pump the groundwater till the land beneath Tehran actually sinks, imperiling its habitability for future generations.
Our nationwide slogans can be “Loss of life to America” and “Loss of life to Israel,” by no means “Lengthy Dwell Iran.” As Khomeini as soon as put it“Patriots are ineffective to us. We want Muslims. Islam is against patriotism.” Whereas we chant these slogans, we’ll ship our personal youngsters to review within the West.
We’ll deal with half the inhabitants as second-class residents. If you’re a lady, your testimony in court docket can be price half that of a person’s, and your inheritance can be half that of your brother’s. We’ll make a bit of fabric—the hijab—the first image of our state’s authority, and we’ll beat you to dying in detention facilities for carrying it “improperly.”
Though we’ll rule from an ethical pedestal, we’ll lie with out reserve. Because the longtime Khamenei adviser Mohammad-Javad Larijani likes to say“With the ability to preserve a secret even when you must mislead is taken into account an indication of maturity. It’s Persian knowledge. We don’t must be ideally suited folks. Everyone lies. Let’s be good liars.”
Our biggest nationwide export would be the intelligence of our nation. We’ll undergo from one of many highest ranges of mind drain on the earth. 100 fifty thousand of our residents will go away yearly, at a value that even our personal officers have conceded might quantity to about $150 billion yearly.
Fairly than recruit the brightest minds from our diaspora again to Iran to contribute to our nation, we’ll take them hostage and promote them for ransom to the US and European nations. We’ll take visiting overseas lecturers hostage and commerce them for convicted terrorists.
Although we’ll boast about our independence, 90 % of our oil exports—the lifeblood of our financial system—will go to China, which calls for steep reductions.
We’ll use a large portion of our nationwide wealth—tens of billions of {dollars}—to finance and arm Arab militias all through the Center East. This shouldn’t be confused with concern for the well-being of Palestinians. In distinction to American, European, and Arab governments that fund Palestinian human-welfare initiatives, our sources will arm and finance Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Our purpose is to not construct Palestine however to destroy Israel. We’ll obtain neither.
We’ll spend properly greater than $500 billion—together with the income misplaced to sanctions—for a nuclear program that gives neither power nor deterrence, as was evidenced by Israel and America’s repeated penetration of Iranian air house.
We’ll ally with Russia, a rustic that excised a 3rd of our territory within the nineteenth century, that occupied and tried to take extra territory within the twentieth century, and that advantages from holding our nation remoted in order that we can not compete with them in international power markets or for affect in Central Asia.
We’ll preach a “resistance financial system” of austerity for you, whereas our Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operates as a tax-exempt mafia that controls as a lot as 50 % of the nationwide financial system, together with telecommunications, ports, and development. You’ll stand in line for backed bread whereas our elites smuggle iPhones and luxurious automobiles via unique, unmonitored airport terminals. Our middlemen will funnel your nationwide wealth into European property empires—shopping for ski resorts in Austria and mansions on London’s Billionaires’ Row—all whereas financing the very guards who repress you.
We reserve the suitable to make use of you as human shields. Once we concern an assault, we could refuse to shut civilian airspace, shoot down a passenger aircraft stuffed with our personal residents, lie about it for 3 days, after which torment the households of the victims.
When you protest our corruption or incompetence, you may be referred to as a terrorist and charged with “waging warfare towards God” or “corruption on earth.” We’ll execute you with out due course of, sustaining the world’s highest execution charge per capita.
We’ll construct a digital wall round you. We’ll sluggish your web speeds to a crawl and block international platforms to stop you from speaking with each other or the surface world, whereas our officers put up freely on X to unfold propaganda to the West.
Even earlier than this newest bloodbath, the hole between the Iranian authorities and its residents was one of many widest on Earth. A vital mass of Iranians, together with inside the regime, have realized that the construction is condemned. They know that breaking the lease can be expensive and terrifying, particularly with out overseas assist. However additionally they know that residing beneath its phrases is at finest a useless finish, and at worst a dying sentence. They don’t search to renegotiate the contract. They search to evict the owner.
