I was born in Tehran in 1984 — five years after my nation traded its freedom for a list of promises. I never saw the Iran my parents knew. I grew up inside what the promises built: fear, bread lines, informers, prisons. And I have watched, from my new home in America, the same promises being made again — in English this time.
Scripture tells us why we must talk about this. “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11, NKJV). History is God’s classroom. Iran is the lesson. America is the student.
THE PROMISES
In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini stood before a prosperous nation and made an offer. Free water. Free electricity. Free bus transportation for the needy. Housing for all. The oil money would pay for everything, he said, under a just Islamic system. Iran at that time had an income per capita more than double of South Korea’s. El Al flew nonstop from Tel Aviv to Tehran 18 times every week. We were comfortable. We were free. We were told it was unfair.
Two months after those promises, Iranians voted. One question sat on the ballot: “Islamic Republic — yes or no?” By the new regime’s own count, 98 percent said yes. There was no coup. There was no invasion. There was a ballot box.
In November 2025, New York City elected a mayor on a platform every Iranian of my generation recognized at once. Fare-free buses. Government-run grocery stores. Frozen rent. Free childcare. The rich would pay for everything. Tehran was promised free buses in 1979. New York was promised free buses in 2025. Forty-six years apart, the speeches are nearly identical — there, the promise came in a turban; here, it comes in a suit. Iranians have heard this music before. We know how the song ends.
“You can vote your way in. You cannot vote your way out.”
THE IDENTITY
The free things never arrived in Iran. The changes did. Our flag lost the Lion and Sun — the emblem of Persia for centuries. In its place: “Allahu Akbar,” written twenty-two times.
A Farsi-speaking nation was forced into Arabic prayers. Our daughters became “adults” at nine years old — veiled at nine, marriageable at nine. First they change what you have. Then they change who you are.
So watch the symbols, America. In 2024, Minnesota retired the flag it had flown for generations, and its citizens are still arguing over what the new design resembles.
Some will say a flag is a small thing. Iranians know better. A nation is conquered in its symbols before it is conquered in its laws.
THE STREETS
In Tehran I was made to chant “Death to Israel, death to America” before I was old enough to understand the words. Today I hear the same chants on American campuses — in English. In Western cities, marchers now declare openly that Islam will rule the West, that the caliphate is coming, that Islam will enter every household. The Jew-hatred I was raised on has crossed the ocean and changed its vocabulary: they call it anti-Zionism now. It is the same hatred with a newer name.
Hear me on this. The hatred that begins with the Jews has never once ended with the Jews. Israel is the warning light on the dashboard of the world. When a movement becomes obsessed with destroying the Jewish state, every free nation should check its own engine.
THE THEFT
What did Iran receive for its 98 percent? The regime turned first on the very allies who carried it to power — the students, the socialists, the intellectuals. Universities were closed for years. Women were erased from public life. Eight years of war swallowed our sons; boys walked through minefields wearing plastic “keys to paradise.” Christians were imprisoned for holding church in a living room. The currency collapsed from 70 rials to the dollar toward one million. Everything was stolen from us — our identity, wealth, our daughters, our voice. Every freedom became irrelevant overnight, and it has stayed irrelevant for 47 years.
THE TEACHING I CARRY ACROSS AMERICA
This is why I travel and teach across the United States a presentation built from our history: “The Unholy Alliance between the Reds and the Greens — Iran 1979, America Now.” It walks through the promises, the coalition of socialists and Islamists that made no sense until it made a revolution, the purges, the bill that came due — and the same pattern now emerging in the West in the name of equity, DEI, and taxing the rich. I teach it for one purpose: to protect this nation from being Islamized, so America never loses what Iran lost.
THE PLAN THAT BACKFIRED
Here is the part of the story that Iran’s regime cannot stop. For forty-seven years, the Ayatollahs have forced Islam on my people — Islam in the schools, Islam in the courts, Islam on the flag. They planned the Islamization of Iran, and then of the world. As Joseph said to his brothers: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Everything they built is backfiring. Islam is truly dying in Iran. By the admission of the regime’s own clergy, 50,000 of Iran’s 75,000 mosques have closed their doors. And the church of Jesus Christ is growing faster in Iran than anywhere on earth. ICI has placed more than 1.5 million pieces of Christian literature into Persian hands — and the printing has never stopped, much of it on underground presses. We continually serve believers who are paying for their faith with imprisonment and exile. God announced this long ago: “But it shall come to pass in the latter days: I will bring back the captives of Elam,” says the LORD (Jeremiah 49:39). Elam is in Iran. The mosque is emptying. The Church is filling.
America, learn from our history. Refuse the leftist utopia promises. Guard your freedom. Stand with Israel. Stand with the Iranian church — because the same God who is emptying the mosques of Iran is able to awaken America’s church. I have already lost one country to these promises. I will not be silent, and I will not lose another.
Written by Mohamad Faridi