Priests of Death, Professors of Decay

Why the Iranian People Despise Their Theocracy—and Why Western Academia Cheers It On

You’re here—seeking wit, wisdom, or just procrastinating with flair. Fine. But let’s not pretend this is some noble ramble through the free market of ideas. You’ve spent more on lukewarm oat milk from a café that butchers your name.

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Let’s begin with a thesis so obvious it should be a truism, but will no doubt be deemed Islamophobic by every tenured imbecile from Tehran to Toronto: the overwhelming majority of Iranians loathe their ruling theocracy, and they are right to do so. Not in some abstract, slow-burn, bourgeois fashion—but with a visceral, exhausted, decades-deep contempt.

And yet, here we are again, watching that bloated academic and NGO caste—those preening moral exhibitionists in faculty lounges and UN panels—wrap themselves in the tattered flag of human rights while sidling up to torturers in robes. They flatter themselves as defenders of “non-Western perspectives” but end up becoming mouthpieces for a regime that flogs women for dancing and disappears teenagers for posting on Instagram.

The Iranian Mullahcracy is not merely authoritarian—it is satanic in structure and method. A theocratic mafia that blends medieval superstition with petro-capitalist corruption.

These are not men of God.

These are men who’ve weaponized God to sanctify plunder. Their holiness extends only as far as the oil barrel, the customs ledger, and the offshore account. They are not clerics. They are gangsters in drag.

And yet, the West—lazy, self-flagellating, intellectually barren—defends them. Why? Because the Mullahs say “Death to America” with enough regularity to trigger Pavlovian guilt among Ivy League professors and Guardian editorial boards.

Here’s a dose of inconvenient empiricism: According to GAMAAN’s 2020 survey, only 40% of Iranians identify as Muslim, and over 70% favour secular governance. That’s not reform. That’s rejection. That’s a national middle finger aimed directly at Qom.

Even the regime’s own leaked internal polling admits the collapse: mosque attendance has cratered, birth rates have plummeted, and public trust in clerical authority ranks somewhere below the weather report. This is not a devout nation. This is a captive one.

I met a man named Ali in a dog park—yes, a dog park, which itself defies the Mullahs’ puritanical bile—and he told me something I can’t forget:

“These people are not bad Muslims; they’re not Muslims at all. They’re marketers. Their God is power. Their prophet is profit.”

And he’s right. The IRGC, the regime’s militarized looting syndicate, controls vast swathes of the economy—oil, telecoms, construction—and funnels profits not into hospitals, but into villas, Rolexes, and European football clubs.

Transparency International documents Iran’s kleptocracy with numbing consistency. The Atlantic Council reveals networks of shadow banking, smuggling, and fuel racketeering so intricate they make Enron look like a lemonade stand.

And what of sanctions? The regime thrives on them. Scarcity enriches monopolists. The sanctions-busting class are not victims—they’re industrialists. Your iPhone in Tehran costs $4,000. Guess who’s importing it? The same IRGC oligarch who calls sanctions “economic terrorism” on BBC Persian.

This is the oldest trick in the authoritarian handbook: create the crisis, sell the cure, pocket the profit. The Mullahs aren’t pious; they’re arsonists with fire insurance. Take Bloody November 2019, when between 321 and 3,000 protesters were murdered in the streets. Why? Because bullets distract. Because corpses are easier to govern than citizens.

And still, we pretend. We pretend this is a sovereign government, not a hostage situation. Iran is a nation kidnapped by clerics, sustained by Western apathy and Chinese credit.

Let me pose a question, and I invite you to answer it honestly, if not aloud: how many Canadians, having immigrated to the United States or Britain, would erupt with joy upon hearing that Donald Trump had dispatched B-2 bombers to obliterate Canada’s nuclear facilities? None? Of course not. Not even the most Quebecois-separatist drunk on maple-flavoured nihilism would cheer that on.