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. In keeping with estimates offered 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 fashionable state within the seventeenth century, political legitimacy has come to relaxation on a social contract, by which the federal government gives safety and sustenance in alternate 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 spiritual fever dream of a person, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who seen 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 spiritual penalties for fornicating with animals, but no insights on the way to run a contemporary financial system. “Economics,” he as soon as stated, “is for donkeys.”
You can be dominated for 4 many years by his successor, Khamenei, whose views will stay fastened irrespective of how a lot the world, and Iranian society, adjustments. He’ll preach resistance and faux he’s a pious man who eschews worldly wealth. However an entity referred to as Setad—a shadowy monetary empire underneath his private management—has amassed property valued at greater than $95 billion in 2013 and doubtlessly exceeding $200 billion right this moment, a lot of it confiscated from Iranians who fled political and spiritual persecution.
We, the owner, will micromanage your private life. Whom you like, the films you watch, the music you take heed to, what you drink—all will probably be topic to our approval. Underneath our Sharia-based legal guidelines, ladies will probably be stoned for adultery, whereas males are permitted to take a number of wives.
You can be subjected to routine energy outages, although 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 forex loses greater than 99 p.c of its worth towards the U.S. greenback because the revolution.
We’ll so profoundly mismanage the environment–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 will probably be “Dying to America” and “Dying to Israel,” by no means “Lengthy Stay 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 are going to 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 courtroom will probably be price half that of a person’s, and your inheritance will probably be half that of your brother’s. We’ll make a chunk of material—the hijab—the first image of our state’s authority, and we are going to beat you to loss of life in detention facilities for carrying it “improperly.”
Though we are going to rule from an ethical pedestal, we are going to lie with out reserve. Because the longtime Khamenei adviser Mohammad-Javad Larijani likes to say, “With the ability to maintain a secret even when you must mislead is taken into account an indication of maturity. It’s Persian knowledge. We don’t should be very best individuals. Everyone lies. Let’s be good liars.”
Our best 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 depart yearly, at a price that even our personal officers have conceded may quantity to about $150 billion yearly.
Relatively than recruit the brightest minds from our diaspora again to Iran to contribute to our nation, we are going to take them hostage and promote them for ransom to america and European nations. We’ll take visiting overseas lecturers hostage and commerce them for convicted terrorists.
Although we are going to boast about our independence, 90 p.c 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 objective 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 area.
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 preserving 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 p.c of the nationwide financial system, together with telecommunications, ports, and building. You’ll stand in line for backed bread whereas our elites smuggle iPhones and luxurious automobiles by way of 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 precise to make use of you as human shields. After we worry an assault, we could refuse to shut civilian airspace, shoot down a passenger aircraft filled with our personal residents, lie about it for 3 days, after which torment the households of the victims.
Should you protest our corruption or incompetence, you may be referred to as a terrorist and charged with “waging battle towards God” or “corruption on earth.” We’ll execute you with out due course of, sustaining the world’s highest execution fee 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 skin world, whereas our officers publish 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 crucial mass of Iranians, together with inside the regime, have realized that the construction is condemned. They know that breaking the lease will probably be pricey and terrifying, particularly with out overseas assist. However in addition they know that residing underneath its phrases is at greatest a useless finish, and at worst a loss of life sentence. They don’t search to renegotiate the contract. They search to evict the owner.