Iran is the 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2; Iran has a population of around 75 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance
owing to its location in three spheres of Asia (West, Central, and South). Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran’s direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country’s largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation.
The seed of the 1979 glorious Islamic Revolution was planted in 1963 when Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini was arrested after declaring the Shah a "wretched miserable man" who had "embarked on the path toward destruction of Islam in Iran”. Three days of major riots throughout Iran followed in the country where tens of thousands of people were either killed or maimed from police fire. Ayatollah Khomeini was released after eight months of house arrest and continued his agitation, condemning Iran’s close cooperation with Israel and its capitulations by extension of diplomatic immunity to American military and civilian personnel in Iran. In November 1964 Ayatollah Khomeini was re-arrested and sent into exile first to Turkey then Iraq and finally France where he remained in exile for a total of 15 years, until the revolution.
Imam Ruhullah Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1, 1979 and the Revolution gained victory on the February 11, 1979.This period, from February 1 to 11, is celebrated every year in Iran as the "Ten Days At Dawn”. February 11 is "Islamic Revolution’s Victory Day", a national holiday with widespread processions in every city of Iran to celebrate that glorious victory.The revolution was unusual for the surprise it created throughout the world and it produced profound change at great speed, was massively popular, and replaced a westoxicated monarchy with a theocracy based on Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists (or WIlayat-e Faqih). Its outcome—an Islamic Republic "under the guidance of an extraordinary religious scholar from Qom"—was, as one scholar put it, "clearly an occurrence that had to be explained".
The Islamic revolution proved –contrary to the goal of the secular propaganda- the possibility of the coexistence of knowledge and religion and also of the great cooperation which could happen between both. After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran did not forsake scientific knowledge even for an inch but worked on all fronts, making great achievements in the military, industrial and the medical as well as nuclear researches and proving that treading the path of scientific knowledge does not necessarily mean joining the so called western culture and the western cult of immoral decadence and degeneration. Bringing together religious commitment and modern science Iranians were able -with God’s help- to defeat their enemies on all fronts.
From inception the Islamic Revolution was not welcome by the two contending power blocks that existed in the world then; the East and the West. At first a bloody war was imposed on it by Saddam Iraq to destroy the Revolution after the failures of all internal intrigues of assassinating its Revolutionary leaders and a military coup. Iraq was supported by the two power blocks united by their determination to destroy the young tree of the first modern Islamic political expression, adequate funds were provided by the despotic Arab rulers to cover Saddam’s unslaughter.Saddam-Iraq failed due to the resilience and resistance of the Revolutionary nation of Iran but that feat was achieved at a great human loss. The blood that was shaded and the sacrifice made at the Revolution and of the war became the water that irrigated the young tree of that Islamic entity.
With its vast natural resources especially in Crude Oil and Natural Gas by having the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the Third largest proven petroleum reserves couple with a competent and able leadership, Iran’s march to greatness was not unexpected. The Western hegemonic powers were still not comfortable with the Islamic Republic and using the pretext of developing Nuclear Weapons they imposed various debilitating sanctions on the Islamic State including a ban on selling its Crude Oil. With four rounds of UN sanctions and various unilateral sanctions by Western nation, Iran holds the record of the most sanctioned nation in modern contemporary history. They did all these despite the fact that Iran’s nuclear program is the most transparent in the whole world. The United States of America is at the fore front of this campaign of sanction Imposition, a nation that hold the singular record of using Nuclear Weapons to murder hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilian population. To this day that nation had not apologies or show remorse to that most heinous crime in human history.
Despite all the sanctions and obstacles placed on its path by the arrogant West including murdering innocent Scientist by the Western intelligence agencies and Israel, Iran continue to make phenomenal strides in all fields of human endeavors attracting admiration from all freemen and women the world over. The most recent achievements is sending live Monkey to space, the Monkey returned hale and healthy which is the prelude of sending humans to space. Iran is doing these without losing its Islamic identity, an identity often maligned by the West as backward and archaic. In the past they claimed that Hijab is a symbol of oppression and backwardness but today in Iran we saw women clad in Hijab contributing positively to the development of their country on all fields. They also claimed that Islamic laws are outdated and are incompatible to the modern needs of mankind but today we saw that crude hypothesis been defeated in Iran. With the physical and moral manifestation of the Islamic identity of Iran, the arrogant West lost the soul of Muslims forever.
Today Iran had shown the world that a nation can oppose the arrogant hegemonic designs of the West and still survive; thatthe Islamic political system is viable for all ages and had all the answers to the modern needs of man .The West had often pride itself as the peak of human progress but with the embarrassing economic down turn facing the West today and other societal disfigurement such as the Sandy school massacre in the United States, this hypothesis remained an hypothesis because that was what it was from the beginning.
With the emergence of Iran and other great nations of Latin America, the world will not remain the Chessboard of the arrogant West where its treat other nations as mere pawns to be used and when they outlived their usefulness to be discarded. These emerging great nations envisage a world that is dominated by values that made man the best creation of the creator, values such as equality, Justice, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. These are words one often hears from the mouth of the arrogant West and their Parrots but practically meant nothing to them as they had arrogated to themselves the position of been the only custodians of mankind. The custody they had always violated and trampled upon to suit their selfish interest at the detriment of majority of humanity.
It is our hope that the nations of Africa and Asia will free themselves from the shackles of global imperialism and international Zionism and join this axis of freedom and true independence for a more balanced and just world. A world devoid of imperialism,neo-colonialism and racist Zionism, a world where people will not be classified according to First-,Second- and Third-world, a classification that not only describe their economic condition but also the value and worth-ness of their lives. We join the rest of the free world in celebrating this glorious Revolution in its march to greatness.
HARUNA ELBINAWI
KADUNA-NIGERIA.