The Double‑Edged Machine:

The Islamic Republic, the Theft of the Palestinian Cause, and the January 2026 Massacre

A Structural–Geopolitical Analysis for International Activists

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Introduction: A Contradiction You Can No Longer Ignore

On 8–9 January 2026, Iran’s security forces killed, within 48 hours, up to 50,000 of their own citizens in the streets – a scale of slaughter so vast that body-bag stocks ran out and freight trucks replaced ambulances for transporting corpses. Human Rights Watch called these events “unprecedented” in Iran’s modern history and warned: “Rulers who massacre their own people to avoid accountability are likely to commit further crimes.” Amnesty International described it as “the deadliest period of repression in decades of research on Iran.”

Yet this same regime presents itself as “defender of Palestine” and “voice of the oppressed worldwide.” This paper, drawing on evidence from three key works – Black Wave by Kim Ghattas, Vanguard of the Imam by Afshon Ostovar, and The Envoy by Zalmay Khalilzad – plus recent, well‑documented reporting, argues that the Islamic Republic is not part of the solution in Palestine, but a central part of the problem and a major obstacle to justice.

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Part I – Lens of Instrumentalization:

Palestine as a Political Commodity

1.1 Khomeini and the “Theft” of the Palestinian Cause

In Black Wave, Kim Ghattas recounts how Ayatollah Khomeini seized the Palestinian cause at the birth of the Islamic Republic. When Yasser Arafat arrived as the first foreign leader to visit post‑revolutionary Tehran, Khomeini clasped his hand and declared that he had “carried the cause of Palestine in his heart for fifteen years.” Crowds chanted “Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine,” and the Israeli embassy was handed over to the PLO.

Ghattas, however, pulls back the curtain. She shows that Khomeini had made a cold political calculation: by latching onto Palestine – the quintessential Sunni Arab cause – he could compensate for his Persian and Shia identity and position himself as leader of the entire Muslim world against Saudi Arabia. In this sense, Palestine was not a “national goal” but a geopolitical tool – a tradable political commodity in a regional power struggle.

1.2 Quds Day: Propaganda Innovation, Not a Genuine Project

Ghattas reveals that Quds Day was in fact conceived by Ibrahim Yazdi – a secular‑leaning deputy prime minister – but Khomeini appropriated it as his own. The annual ritual, which brings hundreds of thousands of Iranians into the streets, functions primarily as a mechanism to renew the regime’s legitimacy, not as a concrete step toward Palestinian liberation.

As Ghattas notes, the “ritual of protest – burning flags, chanting ‘Death to Israel’ – never really took root outside Iran.” In other words, Quds Day works much better as domestic political theatre than as transnational solidarity.

1.3 Palestinian Disillusionment with Iran

Ghattas shows that Palestinians themselves quickly grew disillusioned. By the end of 1979, Palestinian cadres were describing the Iranians as “real nut cases,” shocked by the new Iranian elite’s mix of religious zeal and social conservatism. Yet Khomeini did not care; as Ghattas writes, “he had what he needed.”

Khomeini pressed Arafat to rebrand his movement as an “Islamic resistance,” but Arafat – equally shrewd – refused, unwilling to become a client brand under Iranian ownership. That unresolved tension pushed Khomeini to cultivate Islamist Palestinian alternatives like Hamas, deliberately undercutting secular Palestinian nationalism to bring the Palestinian narrative under his ideological umbrella.

1.4 The Political Economy of Palestine:

100 Million Dollars a Year – For What?

According to U.S. estimates, Iran has provided roughly 100 million dollars annually to Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas. Analysts cited by Iran International emphasise that Palestinians have become “pawns, particularly of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and that their plight is used as “a geopolitical tool in Iran’s broader quest for regional dominance.”

The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack is a textbook case. It occurred just as Saudi‑Israeli normalization was nearing a breakthrough – a development that would have gravely undermined Iran’s regional leverage. The attack “did absolutely nothing for the civilians of Gaza or the Palestinian cause,” but it “perfectly served Iran’s geopolitical interests” by derailing normalization and plunging the region back into crisis.

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Part II – Lens of Center‑Security:

The IRGC as an Internal and Regional Occupation Force

2.1 Quds Force: Named for Jerusalem, Active Everywhere Else

In Vanguard of the Imam, Afshon Ostovar explains that the IRGC’s Quds Force – “Quds” meaning Jerusalem – was originally conceived to lead operations against Israel. Over time, however, “its mandate expanded to encompass all of the IRGC’s foreign covert and military operations.” The unit named after Jerusalem became, in practice, the regime’s main tool for intervention in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen – everywhere but Palestine itself.

Ostovar also notes that the IRGC’s core mission is “safeguarding the revolution,” a mandate that assumes the permanent existence of a threat and thus a permanent need for enemies. This institutional logic gives the Guards a structural interest in preserving tension, not resolving it.

2.2 “The Road to Jerusalem Runs Through Karbala”:

A Metaphor That Never Materialized

During the Iran–Iraq War, one of the regime’s most powerful slogans was “The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala.” Ostovar shows how this slogan cast Karbala both as destination and as a waypoint in a broader revolutionary march against imperialism and Zionism. In practice, however, direct confrontation with Israel “largely fell off the agenda” after the war. Jerusalem remained a metaphor, not an operational military goal.

What did materialize were mass “human wave” assaults: teenage Basij volunteers, some as young as 14, sent across minefields and into entrenched Iraqi fire. One boy, barely filling his seat on the bus, told a reporter he was going to the front “because Islam is in danger.” The Guards treated these young volunteers as expendable human shields for the revolution – a pattern later replicated in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

2.3 Strategic Depth: Human Shields on Other People’s Borders

Ostovar documents how the IRGC carefully built a network of proxy forces to push the frontlines away from Iran’s own borders. Hezbollah – whose emblem was explicitly modelled on the IRGC’s logo – became “a carefully armed and funded asset since 1982, designed to contain Israel and the U.S. indirectly.”

In Syria, the Guards deployed hundreds of their own troops and mobilized a transnational militia network of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani Shia fighters. Ostovar notes that the IRGC “recruited Shiites from other countries and paid them to fight in Syria.” An Afghan prisoner told journalists he had been released from an Iranian jail and offered 600 dollars a month to fight in Syria.

2.4 Collapse of “Strategic Depth” and the Return of Violence Home

By late 2024, this “forward defense” strategy began to collapse. Israeli operations severely disrupted Hezbollah’s communications, killed Hassan Nasrallah and key commanders, and degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities by an estimated 50 percent. Analysts concluded bluntly: “Hezbollah can no longer effectively serve as a strategic shield for the Iranian regime.”

For years, Tehran had exported violence to other people’s borders partly to avoid fighting its own citizens in the streets of Tehran. With that external shield eroding, the regime increasingly turned the same machinery of organized violence inward. When mass protests erupted at the end of 2025, triggered by economic collapse and a free‑falling rial, the IRGC and police used precisely the tactics they had honed in Syria and Iraq against ordinary Iranians: rooftop snipers, live fire at chest and head level, and impunity under cover of communication blackouts.

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Part III – Lens of the “Business of Instability”:

A Regime that Breathes Through Crisis

3.1 Soleimani and the Political Economy of Influence

In The Envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad offers a rare inside view of how Iranian influence works in Iraq. When he tried to broker a genuinely inclusive Iraqi government to give Shia Arabs an alternative partner to Tehran, Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani intervened. According to Jalal Talabani, Soleimani said he “understood what Khalilzad was trying to do and would not allow it to succeed,” warning of “grave consequences” for Iraq and any faction that cooperated.

Soleimani reportedly raged that “Khalilzad is the worst person in the world” and said he wanted to come to Iraq personally “to kill this Khalilzad.” This was not rhetoric; it was the voice of an actor whose power depends on the absence of stable, autonomous local orders.

3.2 The Iranian “Stranglehold”: Structural Dependence by Design

Khalilzad describes how “Iran had a stranglehold on the Shia Islamist parties.” If any leader drifted from Tehran’s line, “Iran would discipline him by cutting off money or even mobilizing militias against him.” Iran also “used growing violence in Iraq to convince Shia Arabs that their relationship with Iran was crucial to their survival.”

This is a general model: manufacture or perpetuate crisis, then present yourself as the only lifeline. A peaceful, pluralistic Iraq – or Syria, or Lebanon, or Gaza – would reduce Iran from indispensable power‑broker to just another state. Therefore, from Tehran’s vantage point, peace is not an opportunity; it is a threat.

3.3 The 7 October Attack:

A Perfect “Instability Play”

The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack occurred at a strategic moment: Saudi–Israeli normalization was close, and the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC) had just been announced. Both developments “ran directly counter to Iran’s long‑standing regional ambitions and destabilizing agenda.” The attack and the subsequent war froze normalization, derailed IMEC’s political foundations, and restored crisis conditions in which Tehran thrives.

The human cost fell overwhelmingly on Palestinians in Gaza: tens of thousands killed, neighbourhoods destroyed, a generation traumatized. On the geopolitical ledger, however, the crisis allowed Iran to re‑market itself as the “real champion of the Palestinian cause,” even as its own people bled in the streets of Kerman, Mashhad and Tehran.

3.4 Nuclear Negotiations: Palestine as Bargaining Chip

Analysts at the Heritage Foundation noted that the 2015 nuclear deal “front‑loaded sanctions relief for Iran and allowed it to retain most of its nuclear infrastructure,” while Tehran simultaneously “transferred thousands of increasingly accurate rockets to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and around 100,000 rockets to Hezbollah.” In this configuration, a genuine, durable peace in Palestine would have undercut one of Iran’s strongest bargaining chips: the capacity to escalate or de‑escalate proxy conflict at will.

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Part IV – Indivisible Justice:

The Ethical Core of the Argument

4.1 The Moral Paradox of Selective Activism

If human rights are universal – and they must be – then one cannot condemn apartheid and systemic violence in one geography while ignoring political mass killing in another. In January 2026:

• Security forces carried out “massacres of protesters” in multiple cities, according to Human Rights Watch.

• Activist networks and rights groups put the confirmed death toll at a minimum of 6,126 dead, including 86 children and 49 bystanders.

• Senior Health Ministry officials told TIME that “up to 30,000 people may have been killed in just 8–9 January.”

• More than 41,800 people were arrested.

• The internet was shut down to “conceal the true scale of the carnage.”

Any international activist who supports this regime “because it supports Palestine” is, in effect, participating in the silencing of thousands of Iranians whose only crime was to demand dignity and basic freedoms.

4.2 The Destruction of Dialogue Through Polarization

Ghattas shows how the Saudi–Iranian rivalry “helped destroy spaces for dialogue and democracy across the region.” Politics was reframed into rigid binaries: Islamist vs. Zionist, Shia vs. Sunni, “resistance” vs. “normalizers.” Ostovar documents how the IRGC defines threats so broadly – from liberalism and secularism to moral “corruption” – that the concept of an “enemy of Islam” becomes omnipresent and endlessly malleable.

This polarizing logic has seeped into parts of the international activist scene: you are either “anti‑Israel” and therefore obliged to tolerate Iran, or “pro‑Israel” and therefore presumed hostile to Palestinians. That is a false dilemma. One can – and must – oppose occupation and apartheid in Palestine while also opposing a regime that massacres its own people.

4.3 Iranians Themselves Know the Game

Iranians have long understood how their regime exploits the Palestinian cause. Ghattas recalls that in December 2017, protesters filled the streets because the nuclear deal had delivered no tangible benefits for ordinary people while the regime continued to pour “blood and money into Iraq and Syria.” Their chant – “Not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran” – was a blunt indictment of this instrumentalization.

The widow of an IRGC officer beheaded by ISIS in Syria declared that “her husband had given his head so that women in Iran would keep their hijab.” Journalist Masih Alinejad noted the grotesque irony: he died defending a system that forces women to veil, in a country where women are not compelled to do so.

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Part V – Deconstructing the Regime’s Narrative:

Evidence from the Three Books

5.1 “Exporting the Revolution” = Exporting Violence

Ostovar notes that in Lebanon, the IRGC divided its activities into four tracks: (1) cultural and ideological work labelled “exporting the revolution,” (2) military and ideological training, (3) funding the Lebanese resistance, and (4) recruitment. The concrete outcomes of this “export” were devastating terrorist attacks: the 1983 bombings of U.S. and French barracks that killed hundreds, the 1984 U.S. embassy bombing, and a wave of kidnappings and assassinations in 1985–1988.

5.2 Hezbollah: The IRGC’s Clone, Not a Spontaneous Resistance

Hezbollah was not a purely indigenous Lebanese movement; it was midwifed and shaped by Tehran. Ostovar shows that “the name Hezbollah was suggested by Khomeini, and its official emblem is based on the IRGC logo.” Iranian ambassador Ali Akbar Mohtashemi‑Pour played a central role in bringing together like‑minded militants and clerics to form a “Khomeinist Shiite resistance.”

5.3 Syria: A “Shia International Army,” Not Pure Solidarity with the Oppressed

Despite official denials of sectarian motives, Ostovar notes that the foreign coalition assembled by the IRGC for Syria was “almost entirely Shiite.” A pro‑IRGC war reporter filmed an Iranian commander in Aleppo boasting that those supporting Assad included “the Supreme Leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghan mujahideen,” while Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – backed by the U.S., UK and France – supported the rebels.

The commander framed it as “a war of infidels against Islam,” but when an Iranian colleague tried to describe local civilians, his friend scoffed: “There are no humans here yet – they’re Arabs.” This is not the language of principled solidarity; it is the language of sectarian contempt.

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Part VI – January 2026: The Moment of Truth

6.1 Anatomy of a Massacre

The December 28, 2025 protests, sparked by the collapse of the rial, quickly spread nationwide. The regime’s response was unprecedented:

• 8–9 January 2026: Security forces deployed snipers on rooftops and opened fire on crowds. Senior Health Ministry sources told TIME that “so many people were killed by security forces that the state’s capacity to handle bodies was overwhelmed.”

• State TV announced an official death toll of 3,117 (including 2,427 civilians and security personnel).

• Human rights groups documented at least 6,159 killed, including 86 children and 49 bystanders.

• Health officials privately estimated up to 30,000 killed in just two days.

6.2 The Repression Machine: Same Tools, Same Logic

The institutions that carried out these killings – the IRGC and the Basij – are the same ones Ostovar describes as “instruments of coercion” and “counter‑protest forces.” The same Basij militiamen who crushed the Green Movement in 2009 and the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022 were now shooting en masse in 2026.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called the protesters “unwanted and harmful elements,” echoing the IRGC’s decades‑old vocabulary about “enemies of Islam.” In perhaps the starkest statement, IRGC leadership reportedly referred to the Iranian people as “our atomic bomb” – a chilling admission that citizens are seen as strategic assets and human shields, not as rights‑bearing individuals.

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Analytical Conclusion:

A Call for Solidarity with People, Not Regimes

The historical and contemporary record supports one clear conclusion: the Islamic Republic is a double‑edged killing machine.

• External blade: It uses Palestinians and Lebanese as pawns in a geopolitical game – arming and funding groups that do not bring peace or freedom, but perpetual instability that strengthens Iran’s bargaining position.

• Internal blade: It deploys the same apparatus of “resistance” to crush any dissent at home – from the mass executions of the 1980s, through 1999 and 2009, to “Woman, Life, Freedom” in 2022, and finally the January 2026 bloodbath.

To international activists: Supporting the Islamic Republic in the name of Palestine means supporting a regime that:

• Stole the Palestinian cause to hide behind it.

• Uses civilians in Gaza and Lebanon as human shields.

• Systematically sabotages peace processes because peace threatens its influence.

• And in January 2026, massacred thousands of its own citizens in the streets.

Justice is indivisible. If racial apartheid is unacceptable anywhere, then political mass killing must be equally unacceptable, regardless of whether the perpetrators call themselves “anti‑imperialist.”

This paper is an invitation to shift the paradigm: from “solidarity with regimes” to solidarity with peoples. The peoples of Palestine and Iran are both victims of the same logic of militarized authoritarianism. Their liberation depends on breaking that logic – not choosing one oppressor against another.