Don’t expect Iran to surrender: suffering is the ultimate virtue to Shias Tehran’s defiance against Western military action has been influenced by the honour of martyrdom.

By Michael Nazir Ali                                                                               

THE TELEGRAPH                                                                                             

18th March 2026

I remember, during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, seeing teenagers and old men being given green keys to Paradise and marched off to be cannon fodder for the Iraqi guns. When they were killed (or “martyred”), their parents or children, and the whole neighbourhood, were ordered to celebrate their martyrdom with lights and religious music.

Since childhood, I have been familiar with the Shia celebrations of Muharram, when the martyrdom of Hussain, grandson of the Prophet of Islam, at the hands of a so-called usurper of the Caliphate, Yazid, is mourned with weeping, chanting, self-flagellation and ordeals of fire, as a way of identifying with the martyrdom.

Hussain’s brother, Hassan, is also thought by the Shia to have been killed by Yazid’s father, Mu’awiya, through poisoning. Thus giving to him also the title of martyr or shahid . Their father Ali, cousin and son in law of the Prophet, regarded by the Shia as their first Imam, had earlier been murdered by a fanatic, too. This makes him, in Shia eyes, another martyr – indeed the pre-eminent martyr.

The subsequent history of the various Shia sects was often of persecution, exile and death, at the hands of whichever group happened to be dominant at the time. This has evolved into an entrenched understanding of the virtue of suffering for their beliefs, which is not found in more triumphalist versions of Islam.

In the run up to, during, and following the Islamic revolution in Iran, such an understanding of suffering has been pressed into service by its leaders. Every act of repression by the Shah and his agents, every setback and every difficulty has been understood in the context of the martyrdom of the first Shia imams or leaders.

Among the Ithna Ashariyya or Twelver Shia, the dominant sect in Iran, the age-long expectation that the twelfth Imam or Mahdi, who is believed to be in hiding, will return along with Jesus and establish a rule of justice remains lively. A leading Ayatollah once asked me, “When Jesus comes again will he be with our Mahdi?”

An understanding of suffering and of striving in the way of Allah has been married to this eschatology, or theology of end time. As an Iranian government minister said to me, “Iran’s foreign policy is built on the struggle for justice for the oppressed (musta ‘dafin) everywhere.” This is because such a struggle hastens the return of the Mahdi and his rule of justice. As the Iran-Iraq war demonstrated, if this struggle results in mass martyrdom, this is thought to only hasten the coming of the Imam Mahdi.

Iran’s creating of and strengthening of its proxies, whether in Iraq, Syria, the Yemen or Gaza, is based on such an eschatology of establishing the rule of God and thus hastening the return of the Mahdi. It should not be seen as merely the creation of Iranian hegemony in the region, though, in terms of realpolitik, such an ambition cannot be excluded. When British sailors were taken captive, during Ahmadinejad’s presidency, they were released precisely at Eastertide and the reason given was that this was to acknowledge Jesus’s ascension to heaven, from where he will return to aid the Mahdi in establishing his just kingdom.

This supposed commitment to justice, of course, sits uneasily with revolutionary regime’s record of brutality to its own people. Thousands of the political opposition were martyred in the 1980s, leading to even some Ayatollahs protesting and dissociating themselves from such actions.

Religious minorities, such as the Bahai and Farsi-speaking evangelical Christians, have regularly been imprisoned, excluded from civil society and killed, either judicially or extra judicially. Members of the ancient Jewish community have had their property confiscated, as “enemy” possessions, if they had a relative in Israel.

The Zoroastrians, Iran’s native religion, have been so reduced that there are now more of them in India and Pakistan than there are in Iran. Over the years,protests led by students and women have been dealt with harshly, as have the most recent ones, demanding an end to the regime.

The populist paramilitary group known as theBasij, under the supervision of the IRGC, has been responsible for much of the harassment of women regarding “modest dress”. They have also been behind extra-judicial killings, the confiscation of property and the closing of churches and other places of worship not to the regime’s tastes.

As a movement, theBasijare heavily invested in the Iranian market and derive much of their strength from these resources. They are also the group that has supplied the IRGC with personnel for adventures in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Both corporately and individually, their membership has bought in heavily to Shia ideas of martyrdom and has given them an innovative twist in justifying both their domestic and their international operations.

What the West, and its allies, need to understand is that the rhetoric coming from Tehran is influenced by this martyr complex. It is not merely bluff or defiance but is deeply rooted in Shia psychology, understood in the light of contemporary circumstances.

If the regime were to fall, either as a result of aerial warfare or because of “boots on the ground”, the Islamist revolutionaries have a ready-made force for indefinite resistance to whatever takes the place of the present regime and to its allies. Withdrawal to the mountains and deserts, as well as exile, is an aspect of sharing in the sufferings of their imams, and resistance to the “ungodly” will be understood as hastening the return of Imam Mahdi and the restoration of Sharia-based rule.

Such an awareness of a martyr complex needs to be fed into the political and military calculations now being made. If the regime survives, this will be seen as a vindication by Allah of the sacrifices made by the IRGC, the Basij and the regime generally. Their programme of theocracy, or Wilayat Al Faqih (the rule of the ‘Ulama or experts in Shari’a), will be reinforced as expressing the will of the absent Imam. This means the Iranian people having to bear even more repression and denial of their basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief.

If the military action results in a change of regime, there must be preparations to prevent the Basij and other elements from being able to wage an indefinite guerrilla war, whether from within or outside Iran or both. The difficult tasks of maintaining the structures of civil society, as well as of creating new institutions, need to be planned for now rather than later, which, as Iraq has shown us, maybe too late.

There are large numbers of people in Iran – students, women, minorities, academics and even elements in the Iranian Bazaar or market – who will want to cooperate in the emergence of a new Iran. It will need to be rooted in Iran’s ancient civilisation, from which it can draw inspiration for the urgent task of reconstruction when the ayatollahs fall.

Msgr Dr Michael Nazir-Ali is President of OXTRAD: Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy & Dialogue based in Oxford, UK His website can be accessed here:  www.michaelnazirali.com