By Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org
February 12, 2026
The massacre that Iranians have endured and the threat of foreign bombing have plunged them into anger and fear. But this massacre did not unfold at all as Western media portray it, and a potential bombing would only add to their suffering.
Since December 28, 2025, the international press has been calling for the bombing of Iran to bring down the "mullahs' regime." In five weeks, it has convinced us that the Iranian authorities deliberately killed 40,000 of their citizens. This massacre, it is claimed, justifies another.
Who are these journalists who grant themselves the right of life and death over Iranians ? In whose service of dark interests do they place their media outlets ? Ultimately, who wants to massacre Iranians, again and again?
Since the anti-imperialist revolution of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, Westerners - and especially the British, Americans and Israelis - after having organized the flight of the Shah and the return of his opponent, have harbored a deadly hatred, not for this "regime", but for this country.
A clerical conception of religion
I say no to this "regime" because it has changed several times in forty-seven years. Its only constant is the power wielded by the Shiite clergy, regardless of their political competence. Paradoxically, while Ayatollah Khomeini was considered a heretic by his peers before his return, he is now deified by those who rejected him.
Iran, which has never experienced religious wars or a separation of church and state, remains culturally subjugated by clerical power. Iranians, who demonstrate exemplary faith, venerate religious scholars. Whether these scholars themselves share faith or not is irrelevant; they are treated as representatives of God on earth.
On the contrary, the men surrounding Khomeini were not idolaters of the Quran. They tested Muslim practices to determine for themselves which ones seemed useful and which ones were not. Their leader was the sociologist 'Ali Shari'ati, assassinated by the SAVAK (the dictatorship's political police) just before the revolution.
Sharî'atî was a personal friend of Franz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre. He was the one who led figures like Michel Foucault to enthusiastically support the nascent Iranian revolution.
A Platonic conception of power, which does not work
Sharia and Khomeini were aware that the Iranian people were mired in an oppressive ideology that taught them they had to sacrifice themselves like the Prophet Ali. They explained that, on the contrary, Ali had rebelled for justice and that true Muslims were upright men. Sacrifice only has meaning if it is dedicated to justice.
Both steeped in Platonic writings, and especially in The Republic, they conceived of entrusting the State to a "wise man". These were the concepts of "Supreme Guide" and Velayat-e faqih.
While Sharia and Khomeini awakened the Iranian people, we see today that their concepts of "Supreme Leader" and Velayat-e faqih have proven as disastrous as Blanqui and Marx's concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." In practice, Iranians have retained, from their ideology of oppression, a cult of their clergy. It is still enough to memorize the Quran and recite it like a tape recorder to be admired and entrusted with power.
The Islamic Revolution has constantly evolved. Only Presidents Mohammad Ali Rajai (1981) and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) lived up to its anti-imperialist ambitions. All the others-except Abolassan Bani Sadr (1981), who was a special case-merely seized power for the benefit of the clergy. Ebrahim Raisi (2021-2024) was nothing more than a fanatic, obsessed with the physical elimination of his opposition. Massoud Pezekhian (2024-2026) is much more open.
The main members of the Ahmadinejad administration were imprisoned. They wanted to free women from the Islamic veil and men from the mandatory wearing of beards. His first vice president, Hamid Baghaie, is still being held incommunicado. This exceptional man was tried and sentenced behind closed doors on undisclosed charges. He was likely crushed by this regime of moral order to 15 years in prison for an extramarital affair [1].
A bank failure that ruined entire families
In October 2025, the Islamic judiciary brought charges against Ayandeh Bank. The bank had built the Iran Mall, a luxurious shopping and leisure complex that showcased the ruling class's opulence and its superiority over the people, who were struggling with famine. On October 23, the bank was declared bankrupt, suddenly leaving it with losses of 5.5 quadrillion rials (5 billion euros); a disaster attributable to widespread fraud and corruption. Although the state attempted to conceal the extent of the bank's collapse, its customers were suddenly ruined. They protested and burned down its headquarters in Tehran. This marked the beginning of the uprising.
The whole country quickly erupted in protest. The issue wasn't "regime change," but rather recovering their meager savings. The propertied class, feeling threatened, reacted as it always had: with violence.
On January 21, 2026, at the World Economic Forum (Davos), Scott Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, commented: "It worked because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank fail. The central bank started printing money. There's a shortage of dollars. They can't import, and that's why people took to the streets."
A pretender to the throne, an agent of the CIA and Israel
It was in this context that Israeli agents infiltrated the demonstrations, demanding, as early as January 6, 2026, the return of the Shah and the restoration of the Persian Empire. Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last Shah, now lives in exile in the United States.
In 1985, he bought a mansion for $3 million near CIA headquarters in Langley. He has since received a pension from the US government, and his portrait is prominently displayed in the CIA's Iran section, adorned with the slogan "Hope of Democracy in Iran."
In 1986, at the height of the Iran-Contra affair, the CIA interrupted Iranian national television channels and broadcast a short address by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
During the 2019 protests against the high cost of living, he filed a complaint against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the International Criminal Court. It was declared inadmissible because Iran is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.
In 2013, he published a Charter of Solidarity and Alliance for Freedom (Mahsa) [2] which was joined by several prominent figures, including Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
He was crowned Emperor of Persia in 2023 during a ceremony in Egypt, financed by the Saudi monarchy. In his public pronouncements, he consistently advocates for secularism and democracy. However, he has figures in his inner circle who leave no doubt as to his true intentions. For example, Parviz Sabeti, former second-in-command at SAVAK and a known torturer.
Emperor Reza Pahlavi attended the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration in 2023 at the invitation of Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel. He met with President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He expressed to his interlocutors his desire to restore friendly relations between the two peoples, neglecting to mention that his father, at the behest of Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles of the United States, had signed an agreement with Syria to contain Israeli expansionism.
His supporters then created the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI) in Los Angeles, where he now resides, to unite the entire Iranian opposition and publish the daily newspaper, Iran Watch. After being invited twice to the Munich Security Conference, only to have the German government rescind these invitations, he organized the "Convergence Summit" in 2025, which was attended by various groups ("New Iran," "The Revelation of Iran," "Iranian Constitutional Party/Liberal Democrats," "Republican Society Supporting Prince Reza Pahlavi," "Pan-Iranian Party," "Paternalistic Iran-Iranian," "People's Institution," "Constitutional Organization," and "Omid Institute"). At this summit, he was recognized as "leader of the national revolution and the transitional period, until the formation of the first national parliament and the beginning of democratic government through free elections."
From February 18 to 20, 2025, Reza Pahlevi was invited by the American Jewish Committee and some twenty pro-US or pro-Israel organizations to the 17th Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. There, he mingled with key figures from the CIA and Mossad: Russians Evgenia Kara-Murza and Gary Gasparov, Venezuelans Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González, and Chinese women Rahima Mahmut (Uyghur) and Namkyi (Tibetan).
[Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, lawyer Juan Branco, and journalists Annick Coljean and Caroline Fourest were invited to previous summits.]
During the Israeli bombings of June 2025, he shows no empathy for his people, but welcomes them and tells the BBC that it is an "unprecedented opportunity to overthrow the regime" [3].
A jihadist attack
As if one enemy wasn't enough, ISIS joined forces with the economic attacks of the United States and pro-Israeli monarchists. Remember, this terrorist organization was created by the Anglo-Saxons within the framework of the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski doctrine. The aim was to "reshape the Middle East" by separating populations into homogeneous ethnic or religious groups. The Pentagon had then separated Al-Qaeda, which favored the unity of Islam, from ISIS, dedicated to the destruction of non-Sunni Muslims (and therefore Iranian Shiites).
ISIS had primarily targeted religious minorities, such as the Yazidis, and ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds. US support for ISIS ceased, at least at the White House level, with Donald Trump's speech (during his first term) in Riyadh on May 21, 2017 [4]. In effect, the United States and Iran found themselves side by side in the fight against terrorist organizations. Consequently, ISIS immediately began attacking both the United States and Iran. On June 7, there was the double attack on the Iranian Parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini (17 dead and 52 wounded). On September 22, 2018, there was the Ahvaz bombing during a Revolutionary Guard parade (29 dead). On October 26, 2022, the Shah-Tcheragh mausoleum was attacked (15 dead and 40 wounded). On January 3, 2024, Kerman was attacked during the commemoration of General Qassem Soleimani's death (94 dead, 284 wounded). This time, in 2026, ISIS set fire to buildings in the city center during demonstrations, creating an apocalyptic atmosphere.
An attack by foreign special forces
It was at this point that snipers, positioned on rooftops, began indiscriminately gunning down targets, both among the protesters and the security forces. This is the "dogfighting" strategy, tested in the 1990s and successfully replicated from Libya to Ukraine. The shooters are probably Israelis of Iranian origin (there are 250,000 of them in Israel), but I don't know for sure. These killings turn all sides into enemies of one another. The security forces, terrified, become savages.
In just a few days, the death toll rose from 1,200 to over 40,000.
What Trump wants and what he can do
When the massacres began, President Trump demanded that Iran stop killing its own people. This message, which seemed like common sense to those unaware of the responsibility of the United States and its Israeli allies, was echoed throughout the West. Public opinion once again turned to the United States, the "world's policeman." It was therefore an excellent public relations move for the White House.
However, President Trump knows he cannot change the course of events. Iran's problems are, sociologically, the blind devotion of its population to its clergy, and politically, the "republic of the wise," which leads to a proliferation of power centers and, ultimately, to the paralysis of the government in general. Neither of these problems can be resolved by military intervention, and even less so by a limited, temporary airstrike.
Donald Trump is therefore taking advantage of the situation to bring back to the forefront the issues that concern him: nuclear weapons and missiles. He knows-and his Director of National Intelligence has confirmed it-that Iran has not had a military nuclear program since 1988, but that a faction within the political class wants Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, as Pyongyang has successfully done. He also knows that, while Iran has the right-a right disputed by Israel-to build ballistic missiles, it now possesses hypersonic missiles. Tehran used seven of these to strike Israel during the 12-Day War. All of them hit their targets. No one was able to intercept them.
These are therefore the two subjects that he is discussing with the Iranian authorities; two subjects with no connection whatsoever to the massacre that he denounced and that all Iranians suffered and endured.
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[1] Secret trial: 15 years in prison for Ahmadinejad's vice-president, Voltaire Network, March 28, 2018.
[2] The Charter of Solidarity and Alliance for Freedom (The Mahsa Charter, March 9, 2023.
[3] اختصاصی بیبیسی؛ رضا پهلوی: این فرصتی طلایی برای سرنگونی رژیم است, BBC, June 15, 2025.
[4] Donald Trump's Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit, Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, May 1, 2017.