Sectarian Smokescreen: Propaganda Through Missile and Drone Strikes
The hard‑line clerical establishment in Iran knows the real danger to its survival is not Saudi Arabia or the UAE but the rationalist renaissance inside Iran. Apostasy, secularisation and the rediscovery of the ancient Zoroastrian and Yazdanist traditions seem to be gaining moral and spiritual superiority amongst the masses, creating an existential threat to the current theological social structure which is now increasingly seen as intolerant, aggressive and incompatible with modern principles of freedom and equality.
To conceal this, the hard‑line clerical establishment deploys deliberate propaganda. It casts the uprising as a sectarian war — Shia against Sunni — and punctuates that narrative with missile and drone strikes on Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi oil facilities. These attacks are not mere military operations. They are theatre, staged to divert global attention from the ex‑Muslim movement within Iran and to persuade the world that the conflict is about regional rivalry rather than an impending civilisational awakening in their own backyard.
Analysts have noted this tactic. The hard‑line clerical establishment insists unrest is foreign‑engineered or sectarian while renaissance activists on the ground — many of them ex‑Muslims — frame it as a nationwide uprising rooted in long‑standing grievances, from the denial of free speech to the suppression of religious choice and rational‑spiritual ways of life. The truth is clear in the surveys. Seventy to eighty per cent of Iranians oppose the Islamic Republic, mosques stand empty and the youth embrace secular or pre‑Islamic identities (GAMAAN).
Iran’s external aggression is therefore not strength but fear. The missile and drone attacks are propaganda — a smokescreen to hide that the true revolution is being driven by ordinary citizens, rationalist in spirit and unstoppable in momentum.
The Rationalist Renaissance in Iran
We must look at Iran not only through geopolitics — not simply as USA versus Iran, Israel versus Hezbollah, Saudi versus Shia — but through a deep understanding of its ideology. What is unfolding is a civilisational correction: a society rediscovering reason against dogma. It is a rare moment in history when a course correction moves towards a more fulfilling rationalist future, sometimes embedded in spiritual bliss and a broader respect for humanity.
Independent surveys confirm this shift. In 2020, GAMAAN polled more than 50,000 Iranians: only 32% identified as Shia Muslim while nearly half described themselves as non‑religious or atheist (GAMAAN 2020; The Guardian, 2023). By 2025, another GAMAAN survey of 77,000 respondents found that only 20% supported the Islamic Republic while 70–80% opposed the theocratic system, favouring secular democracy or regime change. Other reports put dissatisfaction even higher — 92% of Iranians unhappy with how the country is governed (Iran News Update, 2024). Even officials admit the collapse of faith, with tens of thousands of mosques standing empty (Iran Wire, 2025; Al Jazeera, 2026). Leaving Islam in Iran carries severe penalties, yet thousands continue to risk it. Apostasy here is not merely rejection of dogma. It is the rediscovery of reason.
Echoes of Martyrs of Reason
Protesters in Iran face beatings, detentions and executions under charges of “enmity against Allah” (Amnesty International; HRANA, 2025–26). Yet they embody something timeless: the human desire for truth.
History reminds us of this lineage. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exposed the Soviet labour camp system in The Gulag Archipelago (1973–75), piercing the lies of totalitarianism (Britannica). Galileo Galilei defended heliocentrism against the Roman Inquisition in 1633, enduring trial and lifelong house arrest for science (History.com). Giordano Bruno proclaimed an infinite universe filled with countless worlds and was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600 for refusing to recant (Britannica). Socrates, accused of impiety and corrupting the youth, chose to drink hemlock in 399 BC rather than betray philosophy (Britannica).
Iran’s protesters stand in this tradition. Their courage is not for bread alone but for the freedom to think, to question and to live by conscience and reason.
Stories of Suffering and Defiance
In Tehran’s Labbafi‑Nejad Hospital, January 2026, a young doctor pleaded to save a protester’s eye. Security forces ordered it removed. The patient — a 22‑year‑old student shot with pellets while chanting for freedom — screamed in agony. His family was later compelled to falsify his death certificate as a “Basij loyalist” just to reclaim his body (PBS Frontline, Jan 2026; HRANA, Feb 2026).
On New Year’s Eve 2025 in Kuhdasht, Hessam Khodayarifard, a 28‑year‑old father of two, shielded an elderly woman with his body. A bullet tore through his chest. His sacrifice turned terror into courage, inspiring dozens to press forward (Amnesty International, 2026; Iran International, Jan 2026).
At Yazd’s ancient fire temple, a former IRGC soldier lit incense before the eternal flame. Once an enforcer of orthodoxy, he now whispered Avestan prayers rediscovered online. Around him, hundreds of ex‑Islamists stood in quiet pilgrimage, reconnecting with pre‑Islamic values of truth and responsibility (BBC Persian, Mar 2026; Catholic World Report, Feb 2026).
Each story is a spark. Alone they are fragments of pain; together they form a fire that no decree can extinguish.
A Civilisational Turning Point
This is not merely a revolt against a government. It is a contest over civilisational identity. Beneath the confrontation lies a society reassessing faith, authority and historical memory after decades of enforced uniformity.
The rediscovery of Zoroastrian ethics, Yazdanist traditions and pre‑Islamic Persian history is not nostalgia. It is civilisational memory returning, the soul of a people stirring after long suppression. As Ram Swarup foresaw, traditions silenced by dogma do not vanish; they lie latent, awaiting the hour of awakening. And as Sri Aurobindo wrote of nations, there are moments when history itself bends — when societies turn from bondage towards a higher destiny.
Iran may now be entering such a moment: a course correction towards a more fulfilling rationalist future, suffused with spiritual depth and a broader respect for humanity.
Ideologies and Their Victims
Indian historian Sitaram Goel warned that militant ideologies eventually devour the very societies they claim to defend by giving no space for free spirit and thinking. Iran illustrates this phenomenon. A regime that held monopoly over divine truth and forbade deviation from its belief system did so by silencing dissent, suffocating intellect and denying freedom. The consequence is a generation detached from its foundations, estranged from the very faith the rulers sought to enforce.
It had become so obvious that even clerics were compelled to admit the collapse. Senior cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi noted that around 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques had closed due to lack of worshippers (Iran International, 2025). The edifice of enforced belief is crumbling from within.
As Ram Swarup foresaw, suppressed traditions awaken. It is not possible to kill the human spirit of freedom, free thinking and spiritual quests forever. And as Sri Aurobindo wrote, nations turn when history itself bends. Those who endured suffocation may now become the architects of renewal. What was once proclaimed as divine guardianship is revealed as fear, and what was once enforced as orthodoxy is yielding to the deeper currents of civilisational memory.
Who Are the Real Revolutionaries?
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps calls itself the guardian of revolution. In truth it has become the shame of the word. What is revolutionary about choking free speech with brute power, about silencing dissent with prisons and bullets? Revolutions are not defined by battalions or decrees but by conscience.
The real revolutionaries are the unarmed citizens — women unveiling in public squares, students chanting in darkened streets, doctors refusing to falsify death certificates, shopkeepers striking in solidarity. These ordinary citizens embody the revolutionary impulse far more than any armed institution. They suffer persecution, yet their defiance carries the true spirit of change.
The International Ex‑Muslim Movement
Iran’s revolt is watched closely by the international ex‑Muslim movement. The Council of Ex‑Muslims of Britain reports thousands of members across Europe. In France, estimates suggest over 15,000 ex‑Muslims (CEMB, 2025). In the United States, Pew Research estimates around 100,000 Muslims renounce Islam annually (Pew, 2024). In India figures run into millions (Pew, 2025).
If Iran reclaims its civilisational identity the ripple could spread at the speed of a nuclear chain reaction. Large swathes of Europe, North America and Africa could see intensified questioning of dogma while currents are already visible in Indonesia and Malaysia where underground rationalist networks quietly expand.
Bottom‑Up Versus Top‑Down Change
In our lifetime we have witnessed three ruptures:
- The collapse of the Soviet Union where ideology imploded under its own contradictions.
- The modernisation policies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE loosening restrictions through palace decrees.
- And now Iran — where change rises from the streets not the palace.
This distinction matters. Saudi and UAE reforms were top‑down. Iran’s revolution is bottom‑up — conscience not decree. In late 2025, Iran’s youth thronged the streets in defiance of dogma: rejecting compulsory scarves and burkhas, breaking bans on music and dance and openly opposing straitjacketed ideologies. Many were ex‑Muslims and their defiance provoked fury in the Islamist clergy. The regime responded with brute force, determined to crush what had become an ex‑Muslim revolution.
By January 2026, over 600 protesters had been killed and more than 20,000 injured in this crackdown, with security forces using live ammunition, shotguns loaded with metal pellets, tear gas and beatings against largely peaceful demonstrators (Amnesty International, 2026; HRANA, 2026; Iran Human Rights, 2026).
This is the heart of the conflict: Iranian Islamists versus ex‑Muslims. And it is vital for the wider Islamic world to understand this because the data everywhere shows the stirrings of the same questioning. What is unfolding in Iran is not an isolated protest but part of a civilisational shift — a confrontation between dogma and freedom, between enforced orthodoxy and the irrepressible human spirit.
Oil Hegemony and the West’s Dilemma
The United States has long viewed Iran through oil, hegemony and dollar politics. Yet what unfolds is civilisational revival. The modern Western state has sought to confront its own historical injustices — the dispossession of Native Americans, the suppression of Aborigines, the marginalisation of African tribes, the struggles of Māori, and the long shadow of slavery over Black communities — through human rights frameworks, democratic institutions and reconciliation efforts.
But woke elements within the West now rake up these wounds in unreasonable ways, less to heal than to provoke anarchy and chaos. If civilisational revival is embraced universally, it would demand not only that Iran confront its dogma but also that the West engage its buried fires with sobriety, acknowledging its past without weaponising it for present disorder.
The Circle of History
More than a thousand years ago, after relentless persecution under the early Islamic rulers of Persia, Zoroastrians carried their sacred fire from Iran to India (Qissa‑i‑Sanjan Chronicle). In exile the Parsis became one of India’s smallest yet most influential communities — builders of steel mills, airlines, hospitals, schools and scientific institutions. Families such as the Tatas, Godrejs, Wadias, Petits, Shapoorji Pallonjis, Readymoneys and Jejeebhoys nurtured the fire of conscience in Bombay and Gujarat.
One can imagine a day when Parsi descendants from Mumbai or Navsari travel again to Yazd and Shiraz to honour their ancestors and to connect with the sufferings they endured, visiting those places for their own completion. In that moment the circle of history will close. The fire that left Persia to survive in India will return to Persia to illuminate a civilisation rediscovering itself.
A Civilisational Renaissance
Iran’s uprising may represent the early stages of a civilisational renaissance. The rational spirit and scientific temperament — the same forces that dismantled twentieth‑century ideological systems — may now be stirring again within the Persian world.
History may yet record that Iran’s deepest transformation was led not by generals or clerics but by ordinary citizens reclaiming the freedom to think, to sing and to choose. When a civilisation remembers itself, even the most rigid ideology begins to tremble.
Your latest reply raises an important disagreement but it rests on a very strong assumption — namely that a particular aggressive ideology possesses such a self‑preserving structure that it cannot weaken or transform from within. That assumption is precisely what I question.
Let me clarify first that my argument has never been that change will occur overnight nor that repression or coercion do not exist. History shows that powerful ideological systems often appear permanent while they are at their peak of coercive power. Yet permanence has repeatedly proved to be an illusion.
Your dismissal of the historical examples I cited as flimsy overlooks the reason they were invoked. They were not presented to suggest that every ideological system is identical. They were meant to illustrate a historical pattern: systems that once appeared impregnable — ecclesiastical absolutism, rigid ideological states and totalitarian political orders — eventually weakened when their legitimacy eroded in the minds of ordinary people.
This is a basic principle of historical analysis. Structures endure not merely through coercion but through belief. When belief begins to fracture the structure may continue for some time through force but the long‑term trajectory changes.
You suggest that because an ideology contains mechanisms to punish dissent and perpetuate itself it therefore cannot be weakened internally. But that conclusion does not follow logically. Many systems in history developed elaborate mechanisms of enforcement precisely because they feared erosion of belief. The presence of coercion often reveals anxiety about legitimacy rather than proof of permanence.
It is also important to recognise that repetition in argument is not a weakness. If the central point of disagreement concerns the possibility of internal ideological erosion then returning to the same historical principle is inevitable. One cannot manufacture new facts simply to satisfy a demand for novelty. Historical reasoning often rests on demonstrating a consistent pattern through multiple examples.
There is also a psychological dimension to such debates. The historian and thinker Sitaram Goel once described a phenomenon he called the internalisation of terror. By this he meant a stage at which societies, after long exposure to aggressive ideological pressure, begin to assume that the ideology confronting them is historically invincible. When that psychological threshold is crossed even tentative signs of internal dissent or ideological fatigue are dismissed as illusions.
Psychologists have observed a related phenomenon in extreme situations known as Stockholm syndrome where prolonged exposure to a threatening power can sometimes produce an unconscious tendency to rationalise its permanence or authority. I mention this only as an analytical analogy not as a personal characterisation. I certainly do not believe in hurting people by casually attaching such labels. But history shows that societies sometimes fall into such psychological patterns without realising it.
Recognising cracks in a system should therefore not be confused with denial of its dangers. It is simply part of analysing how ideological power evolves and sometimes erodes over time.
The debate therefore is not about optimism versus pessimism. It is about whether we treat historical systems as dynamic or as permanently fixed. History suggests that no ideology — however coercive — remains immune forever to the gradual erosion of belief. Observing such processes should not be described as hallucination or escapism. It is simply an attempt to analyse historical change without assuming that any structure of power is eternally secure.
Your response is noted. Yet the language you chose — calling my reflections “hallucinations” and dismissing them in a hurtful way — weakens your own case. Civilisational debate demands intellect not insult. Strong words may sting but they cannot substitute for reason.
You claim is that Islam is a self‑perpetuating system from which no society can escape. History itself refutes this. The Soviet Union collapsed under its own contradictions and dogma cannot imprison the human spirit forever. Iran today shows the same cracks: independent surveys confirm that 70–80 per cent of Iranians oppose the theocracy, mosques stand empty and youth embrace secular or pre‑Islamic identities. This is not fantasy, it is data.
Your examples — Turkey, Spain, Indonesia — miss the distinction. Atatürk’s reforms in Turkey were top‑down yet even today large sections of Turkish society openly defy Islamist codes of dress, frequent pubs and live secular lifestyles that are anathema to strict Islamism. That is not escapism, it is lived reality. Iran’s awakening is even more profound: it is bottom‑up, driven by ordinary citizens rediscovering civilisational memory. Spain’s Reconquista was violent, Iran’s renaissance is cultural. Indonesia is also not the right comparison. There the reform currents are about moderating Islam from within, softening rules and promoting tolerance while still remaining inside an Islamic identity. Iran’s movement is different. It is not about moderating Islam but about reclaiming something older and deeper — the pre‑Islamic Persian heritage of Zoroastrian ethics and rationalist traditions. This is not conversion to another faith, it is the rediscovery of their own civilisational roots.
Since you have perhaps not read my article in full, let me list out the civilisational shifts for your convenience. In Saudi Arabia and the UAE palace decrees have loosened restrictions on women, music and public life. In Turkey secular lifestyles thrive despite political Islam. In Indonesia and Malaysia underground rationalist networks quietly expand. In Iran the change is bottom‑up, driven by ordinary citizens rediscovering Zoroastrian ethics and pre‑Islamic civilisational memory.
Beyond the Islamic world the international ex‑Muslim movement is gaining strength. In Europe the Council of Ex‑Muslims of Britain reports thousands of members and France alone counts over 15,000 ex‑Muslims. In North America Pew Research estimates around 100,000 Muslims renounce Islam annually in the United States. In India figures run into millions. These are not hallucinations, they are documented realities.
Zoroastrian ethics and Persian rationalism are not illusions. They are historical currents suppressed but never extinguished. As Ram Swarup foresaw, suppressed traditions awaken. The great spiritualist, Sri Aurobindo wrote, nations turn when history itself bends. Iran is living that bend today.
Dismissal is easy. But history is not written by cynics, it is written by those who dare to see beyond the present cage. If you believe Iran’s youth are hallucinating then you must also believe Galileo, Bruno, Solzhenitsyn and Socrates were hallucinating when they defied dogma. I stand with those martyrs of reason and I will continue to argue that Iran’s awakening is real, rational and unstoppable.
Hello Mayank, I very much appreciate that as the author of this article, you gave your time and effort to go through my comments and respond with details. Thank you.
I was hoping you will not take my categorization of your assertions as pertaining to you personally, but rather to the nature of your assertions in the particular context of discussion (and confined to this context only.). Now, a hallucination is “a false perception of objects or events which seem real, but they’re not”. In this socio-cultural discussion, the context is not you as a person or your mental characteristics and capabilities medically, rather it’s about the socio-cultural picture and the filters and blocks you present. Secondly, you say I was “dismissing them in a hurtful way”, but you probably mean by it my use of the word “hellucination”, because I took effort to build my thesis in my comments so as not to summarily dismiss your assertions without fuller explanation. No offense or insult intended. But it is unfortunate you virtually glossed over the effects of Mohammadanism’s high self-gravitation.
About Iran, Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi’s claims and the GAMAAN’s non-transparent reports (that have not been verified) you claim say
i) that 70-80 percent oppose the current theocratic dispensation: This has not enough information regarding apostasy or its expression.
ii) that (around 70%) mosque stand empty: It shows the unpopularity of the tight integration of the current theocratic regime with mosque administration, and indicates a sustainable limited expression of revolt by masses not about apostasy or its expression as such.
iii) that youth embrace secular or pre‑Islamic identities – this is where my comments were directed to. A corollary is that majority Iranians, Indonesians, etc. will not be able to revert to their ancestral religions.
Turkey’s Atatürk rule was not a top down phenomenon in it’s foundation, though his top down implementation of Roman script and other changes were the hallmark of a strong leader of a public revolution. Ex-muslim growth in Europe, US is miniscule (and many of them not openly), compared to their Islamic growth (including higher birth rate). Your other examples and celebtity names are just repetitive, nothing to do with the nature of Islam I pointed out.
Mohammadanism in Iran cannot be moved away from it’s controlling position endogenously. And all open conversions away from Islam are severely punishable even by death. If the fantastic number of 70-80% of Iranians as apostates are true, they seem to be poweless to be openly non-Muslim, or to make Iran non-Islamic, even when top leadership is gone. To think that these purported 70-80% would declare a Zoroasterian country is insane. For a clearer vision (unless you want to be in denial), contrast this with a situation where 70-80% are Muslims – the remaining 20-30% would have a hard time protecting themselves, forget controlling the Muslims! “Secularism” like in Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia,, Lebanon, etc., or less restrictions in Saudi Arabia , means only one thing: When say a Hindu/Jain/Yazidi/Zoroastrian/Christian marries a Muslim, his/her progeny are invariably Muslims. If this is the “secularism” that you are willing to live with, Bharat is already on a path to the doom of its civilization. It is already happening. Just wait for Mohammadan population count to reach 40% for more accelerated fireworks!
If that same sceptical logic were spoken to history’s martyrs of Reason, it would have sounded like this:
– To Socrates: “Athens will never abandon its gods. Philosophy cannot overturn tradition.”
– To Galileo: “The Church is too strong. Your heliocentrism will not survive.”
– To Giordano Bruno: “The infinite universe is fantasy. Dogma cannot be broken.”
– To Martin Luther: “Catholic monopoly is permanent. Your protest will fade.”
– To Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “The Soviet Union is immovable. The gulag system cannot be undone.”
– To Václav Havel: “Communism in Czechoslovakia is too entrenched. Dissent is powerless.”
– To Nelson Mandela: “Apartheid is permanent. Resistance will fail.”
– To Rosa Parks: “Segregation is unshakable. Refusing to move seats will change nothing.”
These doubts were not malicious. They were the natural caution of people living under systems that seemed eternal. Yet history shows that what looks immovable often collapses when conscience and courage accumulate. Galileo’s science endured, Bruno’s vision of an infinite universe became mainstream, Solzhenitsyn’s words helped unravel the Soviet Union, Mandela’s defiance ended apartheid, Parks’ quiet refusal sparked a movement.
The lesson is simple. Doubt is human but so is the courage to defy it. What seemed impossible in their time became inevitable later. Iran’s youth today stand in that same lineage, carrying the same fire of conscience against what appears unbreakable…
Mayank, you just chose to gloss over in a flimsy manner the very reason I present in my comments to the article about why Mohamaddan gangsterism is fundamentally different from other types of historical gangsterisms and you just keep repeating your reasoning and historical examples without any new insights to bolster your case. But I am still grateful and have admiration for you to dialog with me. Since none of the new/repeated examples you give deal with highly self-gravitating tyrannical system like Mohammadanism, you are basically and unfortunately just engrossed in yourself talking tangentially to my case model. Sorry, it probably sounds rude to you. But no disrespect to you personally.
The high self-gravitational nature of Mohammadanism requires us to fundamentally move away from our “herbivore” constraints in this carnivore-herbivore Muslim-Hindu co-existence. Iranians have same problem too in their civilizational turning. On distress, it is quite a common tendency for a herbivore group to lull themselves into soothing distractions. Mahatma Gandhi for decades was able to have “respect”, authority, safety, security for himself and his fellow collaboraters on disarming Hindus and preventing Hindus to prepare themselves against Mohammadan terrorism and destruction.
Secondly, any “secularism” that would prevent say my Jain progenies to become Mohammadan and live “happily” within “loose” Mohammadanism amounts to basically a total obliteration of my Shraman culture. And so, I dismiss any mention of secularism and “loosening” in your article as inside deception (it may not be deliberate or conscious on your part though) – we don’t need neither more Gandhis nor more (knowing/unknowing) helluciinators if we want to preserve our civilization.
Please read “that would cause” instead of “that would prevent” in my reply.
When a population in any region becomes say 35 to 40 percent, it starts a hopeless spiral to a complete Islamization of the region. This we can observe in history throughout.
If we read Quran, associated Hadiths, Seerat, we soon realize that Mohammadanism is basically a strong self-gravitating system and chiefly consists of :
1. First and foremost absolute unquestioned submission to combatent Mohammad, constantly hunting for new victims to his scheme. His concepts of God, heaven and hell are just tied to obedience to him. He refined to an extremely graphic degree, narcissistic descriptions of punishment and pleasure as if the person eventually keeps continuation of his/her existence upon death, designed to induce extreme fear and obedience.
2. Punish and destroy people attempting to leave his system.
3. Followers to perpetuate this system as a pyramid scheme of things or face fellow followers’ wrath.
This system differs from mafia, cruel drug cartels, communist systems and other gang systems in it’s radical design in that it fixes it’s leader and loyalty test to one permanent leader and uses our metaphysical and superstitious weaknesses and fear of unknown to enforce loyalty to this leader and his instructions, and refines carnivore crouching and gaming to a higher degree.
Compare this for example with Shraman systems, Confucian and Tao systems that are in contrast focused on ethics requirements of humanity and you can see that these religions are no match in organization and enforcement to Mohammadanism. While Christ by himself is much Shramanic (in my understanding), Christianity preceded Mohammadenism trying to follow similar but weaker model and substantially hobbled by the nature and gist of Christ and his core teachings. Thus converting a Muslim country to a Christian country is never endogenous.
So to say that Iran or any region by itself can come out of the bondage of Islamism seems to me a wishful fantasy.
Turkey’s Kemal Pasha Ataturk implementing “secularism” was more of a mirage and in no way did get rid of Mohammadanism. Spain’s physically ridding of Muslims and Moriscos did work as an exogenous physical exercise but Christianity in Spain otherwise was impotent against Mohammadanism. French conversion effort in “moderate” Hinduistic Muslim Indonesia was basically impotent too. There are countless examples.
My only concern is that hellucinations of author Mayank Jain and people like him would cause more harm to us and we already are in a dire situation in our country. We will soon be hopelessly drowned in Mohammadanism if we do not abandon escapism and bravely find a solution.