"The Organization told us: 'Don't just demonstrate—start shooting, and a million people will rise up to carry you on their shoulders!'... We truly believed a million people would come and carry us."
This confession from a member of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist group reveals the delusion behind their armed demonstration on September 27, 1981. But the reality was starkly different. Instead of a popular uprising, their gunfire emptied the streets. The people who did appear came not to support them, but to confront them.
As one organizer, Mohammad Reza Yazdizadeh, recalled, security forces remained largely indifferent, simply clearing the streets to deny them cover. The operation was a catastrophic failure, ending not in revolution but in the group's effective organizational suicide.
A Delusion Repeated 44 Years Later
The same miscalculation recurred in June 2024. This time, the Israeli regime, with Western support, launched attacks and assassinations inside Iran, believing that the slightest pressure would cause the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Once again, the outcome was the opposite. The cowardly attacks ignited national fury. As the Supreme Leader noted, "The streets were filled, but against the enemy, not against the Islamic system." The people's massive demonstrations, even ignoring security recommendations during wartime, poured their anger onto Israel and America, leaving the enemy's agents impotent and bewildered.
A Failure to Understand Iran
It is a profound tragedy that the Zionist regime, with all its resources, has failed to understand the Iranian people, relying instead on the discredited slogans of exiled factions. Their miscalculation mirrors the MEK's fatal misjudgment in 1981.
Back then, the MEK’s internal analysis claimed military parity with the state and predicted a popular uprising that would shatter the "crystal vessel" of the Islamic Republic. Their plan for armed processions to occupy sensitive centers was built on this complete fiction.
The 72-Hour Collapse That Never Was
The delusions of today's opposition are, if anything, more foolish. Following the 2025 Israeli attack, a "Solidarity Conference for the Freedom of Iran" in Brussels predicted the system would fall within 72 hours, Tehran would be captured in a week, and Reza Pahlavi would return with Western backing.
In a series of video messages, Pahlavi echoed the MEK's old rhetoric, speaking of the system's imminent collapse and urging security forces to desert. After meeting with a few Western politicians, he claimed that international support was his and that "talks about Iran after the Islamic Republic" had begun.
44 Years of the Same Failed Dream
The 12-day war ended with Iran's decisive victory and Israel's humiliating surrender, yet this delusional narrative persists. Far from collapsing, the system witnessed even greater national unity. People of all backgrounds, including those previously distant from the government, stood together to defend the nation against foreign aggression.
This popular cohesion has been the constant, unbroken thread from the MEK's failure in 1981 through the secessionist unrest, the imposed war, and countless other conspiracies.
As one MEK member arrested on September 27 recounted, "There was no million-strong crowd... When we tried to flee, no one would open their doors for us. As we were arrested, the people gathered and shouted that we should be executed."
Even the MEK's ringleader later admitted they had tested the 1979 model and found it "no longer repeatable." The participants of the Brussels meeting, however, offered no such confession. They simply crawled back into their holes, their fantasy defeated once again by the unwavering will of the Iranian people.