Behrooz Ghamari is affiliated with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto. He was Professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024. He is the author of three books on different aspects and historical context of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath: Islam and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Iran (2008); Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment (2016); and Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution, OR Books (2016).

My worst fear of being buried under Evin prison rubble did not materialize. Evin was not bombed at that time. After eight years and hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, millions of people displaced, economies in ruins, in 1988, a peace treaty was signed between Iran and Iraq. The war ended but the U.S. project of containing Iran and remapping the Middle East persisted. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American patience for any form of challenge to its hegemony in the emerging unipolar world order dwindled.

The response to the 9/11 attacks demonstrated how far Washington will go to display its unmatched military might and its willingness to execute disproportionate power against perceived enemies. Iran remained on top of the target list. One week before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, I was invited to Washington, DC, for a workshop on Iran policy. I, now a professor of sociology, thought that the purpose of the workshop was to find a way to avoid the spread of war to Iran. But the meeting with a small group of the State Department and Congressional staff was about how fast the U.S. forces could march to Tehran after conquering Baghdad. This was the time that Iran was experiencing a period of Thermidorian reaction to the reign of terror of the 1980s when thousands were executed and hundreds of thousands were imprisoned or exiled. The reformist government of President Khatami had come to power with two mantras; dialogue of civilizations, a candid antidote to Samuel Huntington’s infamous Clash of Civilizations, and Iran for all Iranians. Washington was not ready to hear. The White House and the entire neoconservative political class were intoxicated with the fantasy of Boys Go to Baghdad; Real Men Go to Tehran.

The Islamic Republic learned quickly that, in addition to a repressive rule, its existence depended on creating a ring of fire around its borders as a deterrent to the American and Israeli ambitions to redraw the map of the region. More than the evidence of its expansionist project, the Islamic Republic’s investment in the Lebanese Hezbollah, supporting the Assad regime in Syria, and defending the Palestinian cause, had to do with its own security. That is not to say that they did not have ideological convictions against American hegemony and Israel’s largely unchecked reign in the region. But, as Henry Precht, the former director of the Iran desk at the State Department, aptly observed in 1988, what motivates the Islamic Republic is “political and economic independence at home, not dominion abroad.”

On June 23, 2025, amid the horrors of another imposed war on Iran, I had the uncanny experience of watching the news from my home in New York City when the Israeli forces bombed Evin prison in northern Tehran. What I feared more than forty years ago had finally happened. How perplexing that I felt that my home was attacked. That visceral reaction stayed with me for several days. As the news continued to come out, we learned that 79 people were killed, most of whom were prison employees, including social workers and legal staff, as well as many people who were there to visit their imprisoned loved ones. The news also came out that rather than running away, many prisoners rushed toward where the bombs had landed to rescue those under the rubble, among them, a number of interrogators, staff of the prosecutor’s office, and medical staff at the infirmary. After surviving the attack, Dr. Sa’ideh Makaram, who volunteered as a physician at Evin, told the reporters that she had been half-dead, 8 buried under the rubble. “The prisoners pulled me out and took me to a safer corner. They brought me water and wrapped my shivering body with a blanket. They immobilized my broken leg with a makeshift splint and wiped the blood off my face. They could run away, but they stayed. One of them told me that you’re our sister, we would never leave you alone here.”

The bombing of Evin, which is well-known for housing political prisoners, once again brought the Iranian conundrum to surface. Four decades after the Iraqi attacks, here was the regime that came to power as a result of the 1979 revolution still trying to uphold a meaningful sovereignty in a geopolitical tinderbox. The Islamic Republic has used all instruments of power to curb dissent by linking workers, women, students, ethnic and religious minority movements in the face of belligerent foreign intervention, thus turning repression into a means of sustaining sovereignty. The foreign enemy dropping bombs on Evin complicates that calculus. It offers recognition to the plight of those voices of dissent, while at the same time, gives currency to the regime’s anxieties about foreign powers’ desire to instigate a regime change in Iran (see chapter ..... Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent).

Ten days earlier, Israel had launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, assassinating top commanders of the Iranian military and launching bombs and missiles at Tehran and other major cities. They killed more than 1000 people and wounded thousands more during a 12-day campaign aimed at destroying Iranian nuclear enrichment sites and with the ostensible expectation that, as a result of the bombing, Iranians would rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic. After the initial blow, the government organized a massive response, showering Israeli cities with home-made missiles, some of which were able to penetrate the seemingly invincible Iron Dome.

Behrooz Ghamari is affiliated with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto. He was Professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and Director of the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University from 2020 to 2024. He is the author of three books on different aspects and historical context of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath: Islam and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Iran (2008); Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment (2016); and Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution, OR Books (2016).

My worst fear of being buried under Evin prison rubble did not materialize. Evin was not bombed at that time. After eight years and hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, millions of people displaced, economies in ruins, in 1988, a peace treaty was signed between Iran and Iraq. The war ended but the U.S. project of containing Iran and remapping the Middle East persisted. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the American patience for any form of challenge to its hegemony in the emerging unipolar world order dwindled.

The response to the 9/11 attacks demonstrated how far Washington will go to display its unmatched military might and its willingness to execute disproportionate power against perceived enemies. Iran remained on top of the target list. One week before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, I was invited to Washington, DC, for a workshop on Iran policy. I, now a professor of sociology, thought that the purpose of the workshop was to find a way to avoid the spread of war to Iran. But the meeting with a small group of the State Department and Congressional staff was about how fast the U.S. forces could march to Tehran after conquering Baghdad. This was the time that Iran was experiencing a period of Thermidorian reaction to the reign of terror of the 1980s when thousands were executed and hundreds of thousands were imprisoned or exiled. The reformist government of President Khatami had come to power with two mantras; dialogue of civilizations, a candid antidote to Samuel Huntington’s infamous Clash of Civilizations, and Iran for all Iranians. Washington was not ready to hear. The White House and the entire neoconservative political class were intoxicated with the fantasy of Boys Go to Baghdad; Real Men Go to Tehran.

The Islamic Republic learned quickly that, in addition to a repressive rule, its existence depended on creating a ring of fire around its borders as a deterrent to the American and Israeli ambitions to redraw the map of the region. More than the evidence of its expansionist project, the Islamic Republic’s investment in the Lebanese Hezbollah, supporting the Assad regime in Syria, and defending the Palestinian cause, had to do with its own security. That is not to say that they did not have ideological convictions against American hegemony and Israel’s largely unchecked reign in the region. But, as Henry Precht, the former director of the Iran desk at the State Department, aptly observed in 1988, what motivates the Islamic Republic is “political and economic independence at home, not dominion abroad.”

On June 23, 2025, amid the horrors of another imposed war on Iran, I had the uncanny experience of watching the news from my home in New York City when the Israeli forces bombed Evin prison in northern Tehran. What I feared more than forty years ago had finally happened. How perplexing that I felt that my home was attacked. That visceral reaction stayed with me for several days. As the news continued to come out, we learned that 79 people were killed, most of whom were prison employees, including social workers and legal staff, as well as many people who were there to visit their imprisoned loved ones. The news also came out that rather than running away, many prisoners rushed toward where the bombs had landed to rescue those under the rubble, among them, a number of interrogators, staff of the prosecutor’s office, and medical staff at the infirmary. After surviving the attack, Dr. Sa’ideh Makaram, who volunteered as a physician at Evin, told the reporters that she had been half-dead, 8 buried under the rubble. “The prisoners pulled me out and took me to a safer corner. They brought me water and wrapped my shivering body with a blanket. They immobilized my broken leg with a makeshift splint and wiped the blood off my face. They could run away, but they stayed. One of them told me that you’re our sister, we would never leave you alone here.”

The bombing of Evin, which is well-known for housing political prisoners, once again brought the Iranian conundrum to surface. Four decades after the Iraqi attacks, here was the regime that came to power as a result of the 1979 revolution still trying to uphold a meaningful sovereignty in a geopolitical tinderbox. The Islamic Republic has used all instruments of power to curb dissent by linking workers, women, students, ethnic and religious minority movements in the face of belligerent foreign intervention, thus turning repression into a means of sustaining sovereignty. The foreign enemy dropping bombs on Evin complicates that calculus. It offers recognition to the plight of those voices of dissent, while at the same time, gives currency to the regime’s anxieties about foreign powers’ desire to instigate a regime change in Iran (see chapter ..... Lost Muslim Voices of Dissent).

Ten days earlier, Israel had launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, assassinating top commanders of the Iranian military and launching bombs and missiles at Tehran and other major cities. They killed more than 1000 people and wounded thousands more during a 12-day campaign aimed at destroying Iranian nuclear enrichment sites and with the ostensible expectation that, as a result of the bombing, Iranians would rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic. After the initial blow, the government organized a massive response, showering Israeli cities with home-made missiles, some of which were able to penetrate the seemingly invincible Iron Dome.