By Vince Phillips
In #3, I laid out the Islamic Republic’s body count, tens of thousands executed, thousands more tortured and raped in its prisons, and its export of terror across the Middle East. In the column before this one, I tried to walk in the shoes of ordinary Iranians – the young women burning hijabs, the conscripted young men, the exhausted middle class, the fearful minorities. The regime is evil. But evil alone doesn’t explain why it has lasted 47 years. To understand that, you also have to see the other side of the coin: the clerics, political leaders, and military insiders who keep the regime alive despite the growing resistance from their own people. This is why the theocracy still stands even as millions quietly despise it.insiders locked in.
The world is a messy place. Talking heads far from danger, safe in their studios and university offices, assume that the regime’s survival proves widespread support among the Iranian people. They point to the lack of total collapse and declare the theocracy must have deeper roots than we admit.
The reality is far more complicated. Fear, self-interest, and the complete absence of any safe exit keep the insiders locked in a death grip on power. For them, losing control does not mean retirement or a quiet transition, it means trials, ruin, and very likely a gruesome end for themselves and their families.
This is not broad popular consent. It is a toxic combination of coercion, privilege, and raw survival instinct that props up an evil system long after most ordinary Iranians have grown to despise it.
Now put yourself in their shoes. Here is what they see, fear, and feel:
- The new ayatollah (Mojtaba Khamenei)
Imagine you are Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader and son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. You were badly injured in the bombing a few months ago during the opening strikes of the war. Your face and body were left disfigured, and Iranians have not seen you in public since. You are not married and have no children of your own. You have been groomed for power, and believe you are God’s representative on earth. Billions in stolen cash, nuclear ambitions, and proxy armies are now in your hands. If the regime falls, you know you will be the first dragged before the people for trials over decades of executions and stolen wealth. This is the only world you have ever known. - High-level clerics
You are a senior mullah in your 60s or 70s who studied under Khomeini. You control mosques, courts, and vast religious endowments worth hundreds of millions. Your wife and children live in guarded luxury. You have signed fatwas that sent protesters to the gallows. The revolution is your life’s work and the only world you and your sons have ever known. If it ends, the same crowds you condemned will drag you and your family into the streets for the crimes you justified in God’s name. Faith, fortune, and family survival are now the same thing; you cling to all three with everything you have. - Top political leaders
You sit at the highest levels of government – president, Guardian Council member, or key advisor. You are in your 50s or 60s, vetted for absolute loyalty. You travel on regime passports, send your children to foreign universities, and skim from the oil money and state contracts. Your wife and children enjoy privileges most Iranians can only dream of. Publicly you denounce America and Israel. Privately you know the economy is in ruins. But admitting weakness would destroy your career and endanger your family overnight. This system of power is the only one you have ever known. - Middle-level political leaders
You are a mid-level official, parliamentarian, or provincial governor in your 40s. You owe your position to the Guardian Council. You have a comfortable apartment, a state car, and enough extra income to live far better than most. Your wife and children benefit directly from your status. You enforce the morality police rules and censor the internet. You know the regime is hated, but stepping out of line means losing everything for yourself and your children. This is the only reality and the only path to status you have ever experienced. The local people know you. There is nowhere you can hide. - Top military leaders
You are a brigadier general or IRGC commander in your late 50s. You fought in the Iran-Iraq War and built the Revolutionary Guard into an economic empire controlling oil, telecoms, and smuggling. Your family’s wealth and safety depend completely on the regime. International arrest warrants already await you. If the theocracy collapses, your empire vanishes and your wife and children will face justice alongside you for the blood on your hands. You have known nothing except this system of power and privilege. - Middle-level military
You are a mid-level IRGC or Basij commander in your 30s or 40s. The regime gave you a salary, a motorcycle, respect, and a place in the hierarchy. Your family eats better than most and gains status from your position. You break up demonstrations and guard the prisons. You tell yourself the protesters are foreign agents. If the regime falls, the people you terrorized will come for you and your family. Loyalty is the only insurance you have in the only world you have ever known. - Lifetime military
You are a career soldier or veteran enforcer in your 50s or 60s who has spent decades in the IRGC or Basij. You fought in the Iran-Iraq War or Syria. The state calls you a hero and pays your family a pension. Your entire identity, income, and sense of purpose – and that of your grown children – are tied to the Islamic Republic. To turn against it now would mean admitting your whole life was for a lie and endangering your family. You defend the regime fiercely because this is the only world you have ever known. - Current conscripts
You are 19, freshly drafted into the army or IRGC. You hate the orders to beat women at protests or guard the gallows. Refusal means torture or execution. The regime has already made you complicit. Your family back home depends on the small pay you send them. If the regime falls, will the new government call you a collaborator? You keep your head down and follow orders, praying for survival. For you this system of fear and forced loyalty is the only Iran you have ever known.
The contrast with other tyrannies is striking. The German Third Reich lasted only twelve years. Most Germans alive in 1945 still remembered life before the Nazis. In Iran, forty-seven years have passed since the 1979 revolution. Most of these insiders have known nothing except the Islamic Republic their entire lives. They have fused religion, money, guns, and family into one unbreakable knot. They are not cartoon villains. They are men who have convinced themselves that their survival, their wealth, their faith, and their children’s future all depend on keeping the Islamic Republic alive.power.
Look at the fates of other Middle Eastern leaders who lost power: Muammar Qaddafi once hobnobbed with Hollywood elites and Western governments until his own people dragged him from a drainpipe, sodomized him with a bayonet, and killed him. Saddam Hussein went from palaces of gold to the gallows. These men had no soft landing.
The Iranian insiders watch those examples every day. What are they supposed to do? Support the revolution and likely be killed for their crimes along with their families? Quietly step aside and face the same justice they have dished out for decades? Many Americans do not understand why the top Iranians keep fighting so desperately. The answer is simple: they have little choice but death or brutal vengeance if they lose.
Is it worth ensuring the country’s future by guaranteeing safe exile for those convicted of criminal behavior? Or must justice be served no matter the cost in blood? And even if exile is offered to the senior leaders, how can this be done fairly when millions of Iranians have been forced into some level of complicity — conscripts who guarded the gallows, bureaucrats who enforced the rules, families who lived on regime pensions? Do the top clerics and commanders get a pass while the mid-level enforcers and ordinary collaborators face trials?
Empathy is putting yourself in their shoes.
It does not excuse the evil. It simply explains why the clerics, commanders, and insiders are fighting to the death. The Islamic Republic’s greatest weapon is not just the fear it drills into ordinary Iranians. It is the total lack of any safe exit for the men who run it and their families.
Until that equation changes, the theocracy will stagger on, bleeding its own citizens dry while exporting terror abroad.
Politicians and human rights organizations around the world are long on talk about the horrors of the Iranian regime.
They issue strongly worded statements, hold hearings, and condemn the executions, the rapes in prison, and the crushing of basic freedoms. Yet once real action is required, once there are costs, risks, losses, or the need for difficult choices, their resolve quickly wilts. Bold rhetoric costs them nothing.
Meaningful pressure that might actually help the Iranian people topple this theocracy is another matter entirely.
Yet the courage of the young women and men on the streets keeps exposing the regime’s fragility. The insiders know it too – that is why the crackdowns grow more savage. Standing in their shoes does not make their choices any less monstrous. It simply shows why they will not let go without a fight to the death.
The Iranian people are not faceless supporters of terror. They are vulnerable individuals – on both sides of the divide – trapped between a murderous regime and an uncertain future. Empathizing with all of them sharpens our understanding of the evil they face.
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