May 29, 2026: Since the 1978 Iranian revolution that installed a religious dictatorship, the country has experienced the migration of some five million Iranians. That means some seven percent of Iranians are exiles. Over three million Iranians have been displaced from their homes because of the current war with Israel and the Americans. The cause of these population movements has been poverty and government repression inside Iran and government attempts to prevent further population loss. Most of the exiles headed for Europe as well as north and south America. The migration attempts are continuing, in spite of the religious dictatorship's efforts to contain it. More ominously, a growing number of Iranians are abandoning Islam. Less than a third of Iran’s Mosques are still operational. There are at least half a million Christians in Iran, practicing their faith in secret while attracting more converts. There is also a movement inside Iran to older faiths, like Zoroastrianism, which emerged before Judaism and Christianity and heavily influenced these two religions. When Islam arose in the 7 ^th Century, many Persian Zoroastrians moved to India, where they thrived and became merchants, bankers, scholars and an asset to the Indian economy. Currently there is Tata, the Group, a $166 billion a year operation founded and managed by Zoroastrians. About half the world’s 120,000 Zoroastrians are Indians, only about 24,00 survive in Iran. That number is increasing as more Iranians abandon Islam and embrace Zoroastrianism and the idea of Iran once again being known as Persia. A growing number of Iranians want to be done with Islam and all it represents.

Then there is the Baha'i religion that emerged in 19^th Century Persia as a religion that preaches the essential value of all religions and the unity of all people. Currently there are only about eight million Baha’i worldwide, with 400,000 in Iran, where they continue to be persecuted and harassed.

Religious and ethnic persecution have long been present in the Middle East. Two decades ago there was unrest among the Arab population along the Iraqi border. At the time Iran was actually a multi-ethnic empire, with a core of ethnic Iranians surrounded by other minorities. North of the Arabs are Kurds and Azeri Turks. In Western Iran there are Afghans and Baluchis. These minorities comprised over a third of the population. The Arab minority, however, was special, as they sat on top of most of Iran's oil. Saddam Hussein thought these Arabs would rise in rebellion when invading Iraqi troops entered the area in 1980. That didn't happen. But the Arab-Iranians did maintain their culture, and the Iranian majority had never been happy with this. This unrest was caused by government efforts to control the Arab language media. A lot of this censorship was not just being hard on Arab media, but the continuing efforts of the Islamic conservatives to stamp out dissident media. There was no press freedom in Iran, and hadn't been any for over two decades. Iran was blaming foreign media, and, of course, the Americans, for the unrest. Al Jazeera media operations in Iran had been shut down, and other foreign media threatened.

While the population, largely unhappy since the 1980s because of a religious dictatorship, was not rebellious, but it was becoming a lot more unruly. The lifestyle police continued to struggle against women dressing provocatively; at least is, by modest Western standards, illegal alcohol consumption, people who did not pray, and Internet users who said what they believed. The women, drinkers, impious and bloggers were being arrested, in selective cases, to try and intimidate everyone else. But it wasn't working, and never had. The people become bolder and more unruly.

Iran attempted to censor what the 21 million Iranian internet users could access. Using China as a model, Iran imported special software and training as well as Internet Police to make it all work. Iran was particularly incensed with bloggers, and accused some of them of being spies. Iran was particularly angry about Iranian bloggers describing the reality of the armed forces, and the incompetence of civil servants. The military was generally a fraud, with poor equipment, training and leadership. This was very contrary to the government propaganda, which regularly announced new weapons which were never seen in action, and military exercises that were propaganda events, with little training value.

Meanwhile, Iran tried to use the media, both at home and internationally, to push its warped view of reality. Internally, this was ignored by the majority of the 70 million Iranians. But 20 to30 percent of the population accepted it and provided essential support for the dictatorship. Externally, the IRNA/Iran Republic News Agency was largely a hoax, providing fodder for speculation about what the Iranian spin masters were trying to do.

Then there were substantially more announcements of new high tech weapon systems. The systems described were usually mockups, prototypes or imaginary. Iran did produce weapons that worked as these were elementary things like rifles, mortars, unguided rockets and some licensed missiles and rockets from China and North Korea. Iran had few scientists and engineers, because the religious dictatorship did not accept anything modern, and most Iranian professionals had fled to the West. A lot of these new weapons appeared to employ students, and recent graduates, for the technical work. Lots of inspiration, but little that could be built and function reliably. The best Iranian technical talent was working on ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. Both of these projects were using lots of technology imported from China and North Korea.

While Iran made a lot of noise about the need for Israel to be destroyed, Israeli intelligence officials successfully conducted a global media and information campaign to make it clear that Iran was trying to build nuclear weapons, and where the components and technology was coming from. All this might not stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, but it certainly delayed it. This gave Iran yet another reason to dislike Israel.

Pretty much out of sight, a most crucial war was being fought to cripple the Iranian smuggling operation that supplied their weapons programs, especially nuclear weapons. For years, the Americans were systematically cutting Iran off from the international banking system. This forced Iran to engage in more illegal access to banking services. This put Iran's money at risk, as funds could be seized when illegal transactions were detected. Iran had also used the banking system to support terrorist operations and this made Iranian bankers even more vulnerable.