HANOVER — Following their 12-day war, Iran and Israel began a cease-fire a week ago. Dr. Misagh Parsa, 79, a dissident of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a retired Dartmouth sociology professor of 33 years, answered questions about Iran’s history of social movements and its complicated relationship with the U.S. and Israel.

Parsa moved from Iran to the U.S. in 1970 as a student. His studies have since focused on the 1979 revolution and the population’s ongoing push for democracy against the repressive Islamic Republic of Iran, which has held power since the revolution. In a telephone interview, Parsa described how the Islamic Republic has framed the U.S. and Israel as external enemies to unify the Iranian people, and how the Iranian people’s opposition to their government has deepened in recent years.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What have you written about Iran?

A: My doctoral dissertation (at the University of Michigan) was about the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which was published into a book in 1989. And my third book was published by Harvard in 2016 about democracy in Iran, why it failed and how it might succeed.

Q: What was it like growing up in Iran?

A: The most important thing in my early life was the coup d’etat in Iran sponsored by the CIA in 1953 that overthrew the liberal democratic government. The conflict with the West, basically Britain, was over Iranian oil.

The British had been exploiting Iranian oil from the early part of the 20th century. And Iran at first wanted to have a little bit higher royalties, but the British government rejected it. And then the Iranian administration moved to nationalize its oil. And once Iranian oil was nationalized, Britain moved to boycott Iranian oil.

And a lot of countries stopped buying Iranian oil, so Iran got into problems.

Once the Eisenhower administration came to power, the democratic government was overthrown by the CIA, with British help. And then sometime in 1955, the U.S. government got into negotiations with Iran’s new government.

Q: Why is Iran generally portrayed by the U.S. as a ‘State of Terror’ or on the ‘Axis of Evil’?

A: Iran’s (1979) revolution, which was a very popular revolution, was very highly supported by the vast majority of the population. And it was actually considered one of the great revolutions of the 20th century, like the Russian or the Chinese Revolution.

The problem was that Iranians wanted greater freedom, democratic institutions, and at the same time, they wanted greater equality.

The previous government, the Shah’s, which (began in 1953 and) was overthrown in 1979, brought a lot of economic development and economic prosperity, but it failed in one sense: it didn’t liberalize the government institutions. It was repressive.

It became at the end, by 1975, sort of a one party system — either you accept this one party, the government party, or you leave the country. And Khomeini promised all of those good things: equality, freedom and democracy.

But soon after he came and seized power, he turned around and started talking about things that Iranians have never heard, and that was theocracy. To maintain the theocratic system, he had to execute thousands of people. Between 1981 and 1985, he executed and killed over 11,000 people in armed struggle.

During the Shah’s time, during the whole revolution, less than 3,000 people were killed in protests and demonstrations. So Khomeini’s regime was much more repressive than the Shah’s regime, the previous regime that the U.S. government had supported. And so that created a great deal of problems internationally, but also within Iran — internally, domestically.

Khomeini’s regime survived on bloodshed. And Iranian dissidents abroad were quick to broadcast all of these things. People like myself wrote about all of these things. There were a lot of people who were writing for popular journals and magazines and the media.

So the regime became very repressive and ruthless in the first 10 years of its existence. And then the regime continued repressing. The U.S. media and the press noticed that.

Q: What’s the general opinion that Iranians have of the U.S.?

A: The vast majority of Iranians not only do not support the Islamic Republic, they don’t go to the mosque, they don’t pray.

If you go to countries like Turkey, mosques are full of people. In Iran, they’re empty. Even the Revolutionary Guard, which controls a big portion of mosques, along with the clergy, Iran’s wealth and power, say that only 5% of the mosques are open and people go there.

The vast majority of them only open during important religious ceremonies. Otherwise, they’re closed. Nobody goes. Nobody supports them. Nobody gives them money or anything. That’s how bad it is.

There’s a very small portion that’s traditional, goes to the mosque, and those mosques are open for those people. Those are the ones who probably are very critical, who say the same thing the government says: “Death to America, death to Israel.” From the beginning, this group has been saying that.

And that group is rather small, it’s less than 10% in my view. If you take the mosques, take the elections and what percentage of the population goes and votes, the support for the regime is really not a lot.

Those would be the only ones that think of America as a great Satan, or America is an aggressor and Israel the same thing. Other than that, I don’t know what exactly their views are on America, but a huge portion definitely wants to have American-style democracy.

They want political freedom. They want civil liberties, the same things that are available in the United States. The population is, in that sense, very Western. It’s difficult to say what this ratio of the population thinks (about the U.S.), but since the majority are against the government, the majority of them would also be favoring democracy and democratic institutions.

Q:Can you discuss Iranian social demonstrations and the political strength of the people in Iran?

A: Well, the biggest one happened on the 40th day of the mourning for Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish woman who was killed because of her improper veil.

That day, there were demonstrations and protests commemorating her death throughout the country in all major cities. Because bazaars played a very important role during the 1979 revolution, Khomeini’s opposition tried from day one to get them to shut down.

But after the (1979) revolution, they were very quiet — until the 40th day of Mahsa Amini’s death in 2022, when they shut down. That was huge. It showed the extent of the opposition against the Islamic Republic.

Young people, university students, and the middle class, they’re always involved in some kind of protest and opposition. But once the bazaars came, that showed that the resentment and opposition against the regime is much deeper than anybody had thought.

Q: With the inability to know whether or not Iran actually has the capabilities for a nuclear bomb, would you say that this is a similar situation with Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction?

A: Yeah, in a way you can compare it. Those days it was fabricated that they had (WMDs). Once the Americans and the Brits got on the ground, they quickly took off their masks, because the American and British governments knew there was no WMD in Iraq at the time. And we learned this once the war started.

It’s possible that Iran has a nuclear bomb, but I say there’s nothing. Iran couldn’t make it without significant alterations in what they had been doing. Israel and the U.S. could be sure that Iran wouldn’t make it — before the most recent war. But now it’s a different situation.

I don’t think Iran had the bomb. I don’t think Iran had the inclination to bomb and destroy Israel.

A lot of Iranians also were actually impressed by the fact that Iran was able to respond the way she did against Israel. They didn’t think Iran could do that much damage against Israel. And this is something that the Israeli Republic had kept hidden from the Iranian population, that they had so much capacity to inflict so much pain on Israel.

They are now claiming victory. The Supreme Leader says, “We won,” “Imperialism is defeated,” “Zionism is defeated” and all that.

Q: Is Israel justified in its fear of Iran destroying it?

A: I think the Islamic regime doesn’t mean that they want to kill Americans and Jews.

Jews have been living in Iran forever, for thousands of years, and there are a lot of Jews. Iran is probably the largest Jewish community outside of Israel in the Middle East. There are still Jews in Iran, and they love the country, and they live there.

They are discriminated against, but the Jews are tolerated. The Muslims say that they have the book (the Torah has divine origination for Muslims). They only started saying that they want to destroy Israel especially after the hostage crisis.

Iran’s students took the American embassy and the embassy employees hostage for 444 days. Khomeini was losing support very early on among the population, very early on. And so there were a lot of protests, and there were attempts to overthrow Khomeini’s regime.

They came up with this fight against external enemies, against the United States and Israel, in order to promote domestic, internal cohesion within Iran.

It worked for Khomeini early on. He deflected attacks against him through attacks against the United States and Israel.

It worked for quite some time, but people now have gotten tired of it, and Iran does not have the means to destroy Israel. The Iranian government knows that if they try to destroy Israel, the United States would destroy Iran. I don’t think they are stupid. The (ruling class) clergy are more interested in wealth and power. They were very poor for the past several hundred years, until recent years.

If you go now and you ask the Iranians, there is a poll that showed probably five, six percent would say they had respect for the clergy. The vast majority of them do not respect them. They gradually lost all support, and this (ideological attack on Israel) is a political gimmick to gain support — nationalist support — against Israel.

Q: Would you want to return to Iran at some point?

A: Yes, of course! I’d love to return to my hometown and show my wife, who’s from Chicago, and my son, who was born here, where I grew up.

But there’s no way for me to go back because I’d be killed as a dissident.

Lukas Dunford can be reached at ldunford@vnews.com or 603-727-3208