Three Crucial Facts on the Savage West's Attempts to Dismember Iran, the Orientalist Progapanda and the Defiant Iranian Mind

Freedom of the oppressed is never delivered on the platter of Imperialist Intervention by the Savage West, wrapped itself in the old Orwellian language of "Civilization".

Three crucial points on the war of aggression against Iran, the Western Orientalist framing of Iranian polity and leadership, and my solidarity.

Protest in solidairty with Iranian people and Iran fight back Western imperialist crime of agression, Parliament Square, London, 28 Fe. 2026 (I teamed up with one British-born Indian-origin, Thai-ordered Buddhist monk who also supports the Palestine liberation struggle)

It is NOT about regime change.

1. USA and Israel are hell-bent on dismembering Iran.

1) Israel-captured Trump Administration seek to dismember Iran (99 million people, 60% Persians and 40% non-Persians, with the land mass as big as western Europe), like Syria, which Washington had dismembered as a matter of policy over 20 years.

2) Iran is NOT a personality cult or one-man-dictatorship.

Iran Made Plans To Deal With Assassinations.

Unlike in Syria or Libya, where the overthrow of the head of state led to a collapse of the regime, Iran made plans to deal with potential assassinations of its top leaders to prevent full regime change.

“The office rests atop a dense network of institutions designed not simply to serve the leader but to constrain him, monitor him, and, if necessary, outlast him. The Islamic Republic is not just a personal regime with religious language. It is a revolutionary system that has invested heavily in planning for leadership changes. When under pressure, its structure is designed to pull together rather than fall apart.”

2. the Western media propagate lies and distortion.

   Don’t forget that it was the British media from which the Nazi propaganda chief Dr Joseph Goebbels drew inspiration: Goebbels modeled his genocidal propaganda against the Jews of Germany - which used to self-identify as “German Jews”, but were forced to call themselves “Jews in Germany”, as a matter of Nazi strategy to sever the organic and ancestral root to the German society and institutions.

   The overwhelming English speaking mainstream Western media coverage led by BBC, CNN, etc. The reporters, pundits, ex-military, political class, academics prove as every bit as racist, delusional, distortive, and imperialist as those who make the decision to wage the Hitterlite war against Iran as a state and a society.

This same criminal Orientalist repeat the same old framing of Iran as a threat to the USA, Israel and the region for a straightforward reason: Iran is THE ONLY non-US-controlled or influenced-state, NOT armed with nukes.

With my Turkish activist and novelist brother Bilgehan Ucak, Leicester Square, London, 28 Feb. 2026

This is per for the course for the essentially Western Orientalist Mind, from 1860’s English news coverage of the last Burmese feudal polity based in my own home city called Mandalay.

The last king was in his late 20’s, a pious but administratively inexperienced and incompetent, crowned by a group of regents after a cluster of contenders and their families were slaughtered. Despite his religious piety, the king, named Thibaw, was portrayed in the then Calcutta- and London-based newspapers and dispatches as “a drunken, repressive ruler”.

Whatever concessions his Court of Mandalay (Ava) would not satisfy the demands by the British in London. By 1885, London was ready to take whatever land mass was left of Burma and uproot the national institutions of monarchy and customs built since AD 1070 as an emerging political state.

The king finally decided to fight back and issued the declaration of war against the advancing British troops along the country’s biggest river - River Irrawaddy (1,200 miles, that originates in northern most part of Burma in Kachin highlands below Tibetan plateau to a small river near Rangoon before joining the Gulf of Mattaban - where half the tonnage of the entire British ships were built with teak from the occupied Burma. (the country was home to the single largest teak forests in the world, and teak was the most durable and yet light wood, deemed best for ship making). Then Rangoon was already taken by the British after the second Anglo-Burmese War in the 1850’s.

After initial defeats of the king’s troops along the Irrawaddy the King reversed his decision ostensibly for fear of massive loss of lives at the hands of the British troops, armed with superior weapons and better trained. He faced the fate of Maduro: he and two wives (the two sisters) and the core of his household staff were - taken into permanent exile in India. All national institutions built over a millennium were irreversibly destroyed and/or uprooted. The most potent national symbol - the palace hall where judicial decisions were made was turned into a drinking club for the occupying British troops, where they drank gin and tonic.

This was the singularly most traumatic and humiliating moment for the Burmese mind. My ancestors from both sides of my parents were part of the inner circle of the Court of Mandalay. One 5th generation maternal grandparent was a military commander in charge of what was called “1,000” troops, responsible for Eastern side of the walled city. All the commanders were served with the king’s second order: do NOT resist (that is, surrender).

The humiliation was so profound that in my 24 years of life no one in our large extended family ever uttered a word about the fact that our ancestors were part of the lot that surrendered to the imperialist British. The only thing that was left in my grandparents’ home on the east side of the palace was this old sword that belonged to the commander, our ancestor.

As for me, I grew up with cultivated view that surrender or capitulation was the last thing a man (or woman, for that matter) would chose to do. We would die on our feet, than we would live on our knees.

Over the years, there have been so many Orientalists - in western academia, policy circles, media, sincere supporters, etc. when it comes to understanding the Burmese military leaders. The usual discourse of regime collapse, regime change, etc. That view is also entertained by many Burmese dissidents in exile and activists and armed fighters on the ground.

None of them shows any capacity to understand that however horrid the military’s crimes those who lead the Burmese military will NEVER surrender or capitulate to any Western power or demand.

My very first political consciouness was formed very early in elementary school, when I was introduced to a basic Burmese historical narrative: the king surrendered and chose to go into exile, instead of fighting back.

My very first reaction which I recalled after more than half a century was: WHY? WHY DID HE SURRENDER?

The decapitated Burmese society of different ethnic groups within the monarchical system fought back, after the king’s surrender in Nov 1885 - not out of the devotion to the incompetent monarch, but out of their own self of dignity.

Drunk with their own sense of power and invincibility, no western colonizer is capable of understanding or appreciating the strength and depth of this defiance out of a sense of dignity and self-respect of the oppressed or the subjugated.

I am turning 63 in July, and the existential stance I have developed - I would rather die on my feet in the face of unjust power than beg for my life or live on my knees - is as fresh, as unshakable and as deep as it was formed as a very young boy, who looked at the old palace moat through the window of our home in Mandalay.

I totally understand Iranians who have chosen to close ranks with their dictatorial leadership in the face of the unjust, invading Orientalist and imperialist West - spearheaded by Israel and USA.

I am absolutely and unconditionally with the self-respecting Iranians As with the monarchists and anti-Teheran exiles and supporters of Western military intervention to regain their freedom and to reinstall their Shar they will be bitterly disappointed.

Freedom does NOT come from foreign imperialist intervention. I will leave you with the best and most grounded analyses on how Iranian leadership and the supportive and defiant segments of Iranian civil society process their thinking of resistance and defiance.

The very last time I saw my beloved father was across the Thai-Burmese border in the summer of 1997. He and my mother - both deceased now - came across the border into Northern Thailand and spent a day and a night at a hotel with me and my younger brother, who was not politically active or involved as I was with the anti-junta movement of exiles.

My father’s last words in the presence of my mother and my brother: “even if the military intelligence tells you that they got me and they would kill me if you don’t stop your exilic activism, do NOT stop. Don’t ever come back, if you don’t finish toppling this regime.”

I didn’t finish the job he knew I was deeply involved in at the expense of my own academic career or even life. I don’t go home. I am at peace with my choice.

This is NOT about me, I know. But I want to share a deeply lived perspective as someone who absolutely and uncompromisingly despise Western imperialism and cannot stand Orientalism in any shape or form.

That, I think, enables me to understand the incredibly defiant spirit and deeds of the Iranians who have evidently chosen to live on their feet, against the nuclear-armed European and Western savage states. These states are run by men and women - without humanity, dignity, conscience, decency or compassion.

So, to Hell with them!

I will leave you with one of the most accurate and incisive readings of the defiant Iranian Mind.

Read Trita Parsi’s latest.