To understand Iran, you must have some understanding of Iran’ religious composition. The Iranian regime claimed to be 99% Muslim of which 90% in Iran are Shia . Actual numbers are considerably different. 72% of the population does not agree with the mandate for women to wear the hijab (a 1979 revolt that caused 1050 Iranian women to lose their lives, but nevertheless failed). 68% do not think religious mandates belong in public law. Iran is no longer a majority Islamic nation. From the pie graph, you can see that only 32% actually claim to be Shia, while over 46.7% are either no religion, Humanist, Agnostic, Atheists, or just Spiritual. That puts the Shia in the minority and gives them a dubious claim to be the theocratic government entitled to control Iran.
The Shia branch claims to be the second largest division of Islam and comprises about 200-260 million people, approximately 13% of Muslims. While the largest branch is the Sunnis, comprising 90% of Muslims, living worldwide, in Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Morocco, etc. The principal difference between Sunni and Shia is who should succeed Muhammad: his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, or an elected Caliph, something that happened “only” fourteen centuries ago.
Shia apocryphal teaching of the “End Times” is parallel to the Bible regarding a lying messiah (the Antichrist) and the second coming (the coming of Muhammad al Mahdi, the twelfth Imam). The Twelfth Imam’s return will bring peace, but also the Day of Judgment and the End of Times. The belief in the Mahdi’s imminent return influences Iran’s national foreign policy. The Mahdi will judge how the caretakers of Iranian foreign and internal policy (the Imams) have performed and issue rewards and punishments accordingly. This is not theoretical; this is what theocratic dominance brings, and the upper echelons of the theocracy who run the country believe this medieval eschatology word-for-word. It appears that the “hardliners” in Iran are in charge. They align with the remnants of the theocratic regime along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), 125,000-armed troops. We are not dealing with normal thinking, but ancient Qur’anic myths that guide the mullahs’ thinking. That is how you can justify killing 45,000 of your own citizens without blinking an eye. The Twelvers (what that branch of Shi’ite thinkers is called) do not appear to care about the well-being of their population; they think about making sure they live their lives in accordance with obeying the core tenets of Shia Islam and openly proclaim their willingness to die in defense of their beliefs. Still, they also think about their afterlife in Paradise with 72 virgins and rivers full of wine. Although Muslims are forbidden to drink alcohol on earth, because alcohol causes so much harm to people on earth, in Paradise, where amazingly alcohol does no harm according to the Quran (God’s direct words), all you need to drink wine is to dip your cup in any river in Paradise, as explained in Surah 47:15.
Those are the rewards for the truly pious, especially if they die in martyrdom, as the Ayatollah Ali Khomeini died, as promised in the Hadith, narrated in the Sunan of Imam Tirmidhi, in which the Prophet is reported to have said: “The martyr has six unique traits: he is forgiven immediately; he sees his seat in Paradise and he is saved from the punishment of the grave; he is granted safety from the great terror [of the Day of Judgment]; a crown of honor is placed upon his head, a ruby of which is better than this life and all it contains; he is married to 72 maidens of Paradise; and he is allowed to intercede for 70 relatives.” The mullahs are steeped in the teachings of the Quran, which Muslims believe was orally revealed by God through the angel Gabriel over a period of 23 years to Muhammad, and the Hadiths, the second holiest book in Islam, which details the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle (companions in Sunni Islam, Ahl al-Bayt in Shia).
The Regime forfeited its right to claim to represent the Iranian people’s religious beliefs by adding up the numbers of the religious. It has betrayed its people and has murdered multiple thousands for unjustified, crazy, and criminal reasons comparable to the insanity of the Crusades and the Holocaust. The time for them to go has already passed by 46 years!