Since the start of the mullahs’ rule in Iran, two different interpretations of the country’s history have emerged. One introduced by the regime and its propaganda apparatus, and the other an unofficial version that has been widely accepted among the people.

These two interpretations are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

The first, propagated by the mullahs, presents them as the country’s true saviors who fought the dark dynasty of the Shah. They liberated the people, institute a pious religion, and brought ‘freedom’ for the country without the help of anyone else except divine intervention.

They eliminated all the people’s perceived enemies, from simple detractors to “hypocrites” and atheists. They established a heavenly Islamic State through the “Supreme Leader” or Velayat-e Faqih (absolute rule of the clerics).

In this version of history, there is no place for Iran’s real heroes and heroines. And if we accidentally come across the name of some like Sattar Khan, one of the leaders of Iran’s 1906 Constitutional Revolution, it is because the regime’s historians could not wipe out his legacy entirely. But they still try to downplay his role, introducing him as a simple foot soldier that was led by the clerics based in Najaf, who followed the orders of Iran’s religious leaders.

In this version of history, Mirza Kuchak Khan, the leader of the Nehzat-e Jangal Movement is introduced as an unyielding adherent to the ideologies of the mullahs.

Colonel Mohammad Taghi Khan Pesyan is a fleeting figure, and it is not worthy of being introduced to younger generations.

And, Mullah Mohammad Kashani, one of the evilest political figures in Iran’s history responsible for many disasters, becomes the hero of the Nationalization of the Iranian oil industry instead of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq.

Dr. Mosaddeq is lambasted as a freemason who was only able to achieve what he did thanks to mullah Kashani. And after he betrayed the friendship of Kashani he faced the wrath of God, the people, and the colonialists, and therefore he was finally overthrown.

In this lopsided version of history, Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, is revered as the only savior of the people from Iran’s 2,500-year-old monarchy.

All of Iran’s real heroes are simply relegated to despised positions of separatists, mercenaries of the Soviet Union and Great Britain; Or as simple thugs who diverted Iran’s real historical path. Unsurprisingly, the uprooted monarchy and the despised theocracy have similar ideological slants and sensationalist propaganda when it comes to Iran’s history. They want to rewrite it after their own image.

In their histories, after the theocratic-colonialist coup of August 15, 1953, there is no other movement and resistance remaining, and what exists, as the Shah said, are just a bunch of “terrorists,” Moscow stooges or “Marxist-Islamists.” In his mind, they all deserved to die, and if arrested they must be considered as prisoners who threatened national security and not political prisoners.

Similarly, as the mullahs said after the 1953 coup, the only resistance was led by them alone. And if the people saw any movement and resistance by the likes of the principal opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK/PMOI), or the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG), these were just a few deviant movements whose momentum was interrupted by the mullahs’ staying power.

These are the lies and deceptions propagated by the remnants of the Shah’s monarchy and the mullahs’ intelligence apparatus. These falsities are spread through the internet and social media with their specific brands of historical revisionism in order to mislead especially those who were born after the 1979 anti-monarchical revolution and did not have an objective understanding of the Shah’s dictatorship.

These younger generations have suffered from the mullahs’ complete monopoly on the free flow of information as well as the mullahs’ brutal censorship of facts. They primarily have had access to vague or falsified sources whose purpose is to lead the audience to the false conclusion that the only alternatives in Iran’s political cosmos are either the theocracy or the monarchy; there is nothing else.

The new generations of Iran must be informed about the people’s demands over the past decades. Gradually, through modern technology and social activism, they are becoming aware of who their real heroes are and what the true history of Iran is.

We must know that the Constitutional Revolution was a historic struggle for:

  1. Denial of absolute monarchical dictatorship (the first demand of the Constitutional Revolution was to limit the unlimited powers of the Shah)
  2. The establishment of an independent judiciary
  3. The participation of the masses in political power
  4. The establishment of the National Consultative Assembly (parliament), with the participation of representatives of different strata and classes of the people
  5. And the struggle for social progress, public welfare, free and public education and health care, and the social equality of all peoples

These are the most important and well-known demands of the people throughout the last 130 years. A struggle whose two fronts are distinguishable by the names of its heroes. Among them were:

  1. Sattar Khan
  2. Bagher Khan
  3. Ali Monsieur
  4. Mirza Kuchak Khan
  5. Colonel Mohammad Taghi Khan Pesyan
  6. Shaikh Mohammad Khiabani
  7. Mohamad Mosaddeq
  8. Hossein Fatemi
  9. Mohamad Hanifnejad
  10. Saeed Mohsen
  11. Asghar Badizadegan
  12. Masoud Ahamdzadeh
  13. Amir Parviz Pouyan
  14. Bijan Jazani

And on the other side, the Shah’s monarchy, and its remnants, which are aligned with the propaganda of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).