Here we go. I am going to tweet this.

It is quite easy for me to tolerate any government in Iran, including the Islamic Republic (IR) and any other strange form of government. Not because I live in Sweden far from Iran and not because I don’t care; I strongly believe that we don’t have any shortcuts to fix problems, issues and challenges in Iran. Any path to a better life takes time (with/without IR). A long-term plan for happiness for Iran is very simple: Dudeism1. Have a stable, normal, peaceful life and accept that life is not easy without being a threat to other countries. I think we all need a bit of Dudeism. When you are reading this, just take it easy and say: “Yeah? Well, you know, that’s just like uh, your opinion, man.”

It is easy to be anti-war Iranian. Not out of laziness or love for IR. Knowing the suffering that comes with wars and their risky complicated messy outcomes makes it easier to not be pro-war. Not being pro-war won’t make a person anti-war. I think many people have forgotten Iran’s post-World Wars history 1920s, 1940s and 1980s.

When the good guys occupied Iran in two world wars, two rounds of famine took the lives of Iranians at a rate comparable to the Holocaust (simply put, millions died). Because a failed state in Iran didn’t turn into a harmless weak state, the supply chain was disrupted in favor of the safety and security of a few, causing two periods of famine after each occupation. The last Shah of Iran referred to these events as two occupations in “good faith” which “there won’t be three” unless “over our dead bodies”2. The aftermath of both wars had long-lasting effects because these events coincided with fights for democracy, the growing oil industry, the Cold War, and communism, etc., etc. Going through the 1953 coup, the Shah of Iran could not revive democracy because of all these complex intertwined issues, which eventually ended with 1979 Islamic Revolution, immediately 1980s long war with Iraq under Saddam. This last war also had its long-lasting effects but its effect got blended in the revolution itself.

Perhaps Iran is already in a civil war. Iranians are not uniform in their thoughts on many issues, so it is not surprising that there are respectable, contradicting opinions about important matters. Anyhow, while keeping Dudeism mindset, I would like to explain why I think the current situation is like a civil war: (1) There are two sides pro-IR and anti-IR groups. (2) They inflict violence on each other in various forms (killing protesters, helping Israel and the US assassinate political leaders). In other words, the state no longer has a monopoly on lethal force.

The US and Israel have their own objectives for this military campaign. This war has also been framed as help for people inside the country who wanted this kind of fight. So, there is a group of Iranians that uses the opportunity to hurt another group of Iranians. Both represent a sizable population of Iranians who slowly go down the path of calling the other side terrorists. This is what I call a civil war. Many of us will not mourn IR leaders. I still object to killing them. I definitely never wished for a war in any shape or form. The problem is that currently it is hard to see the end of this dark tunnel. Luckily, I believe most Iranians are not involved in this civil war, and they can live in peace once the war is over. Unfortunately, it is enough to have 5% fighting another 5%3 to have a civil war with a lot of bystander casualties.

My view has strong pushback from both sides of this civil war. One side is going to point out that the massacre of protesters in January 20264 leaves no room for tolerating IR: if you care about justice, you have to fight the dictatorship, not counsel calm. The other side will mark my view as treasonous, even the last Shah, backed by the US, would have resisted this war to his teeth. Between those poles sits a potential moral dilemma: resisting a regime that does this to its people, supporting a war that not only takes more lives, but also adds more mess to an already messy situation. As someone living in Sweden, I am not in a position to advocate a specific type of resistance. I can only give my own opinion: the war, as it unfolded, was one of the worst things that could happen to civil society. Regardless of the outcome, we will have a deeply divided country.

So back to my first point: We need a bit more Dudeism. This is not a lazy opinion. The dude’s approach in the movie did not save Donnie’s life. When nihilists attacked them, he died from a heart attack.

Footnotes

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeism, Wikipedia. ↩

  2. Speech of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, January 23, 1973 (Persian transcript, nezamat.ir). ↩

  3. Ammar Maleki on X. ↩

  4. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, advance version of the report to the Human Rights Council (session 61), documenting the situation including events in January 2026: A/HRC/61/59 (advance unedited version, PDF). ↩