What Darius Feared—And the Mullahs Have Wrought

Lies, Enemies, and Drought

Few quotes from Darius the Great have survived. One was found in an inscription, praying that God save Iran from enemies, lies, and drought. Two and a half millennia later, the Islamic Republic has managed to bring all three upon the nation.

Lies came first. The Islamic Revolution succeeded by deceit. Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the regime, fooled Iranians into believing that he was a democrat who would stick to moral teachings, rather than becoming a monarch. After his ascent, the lies continued as the new state was solidifying its hold.

When I was in school, on the anniversary of the revolution, administrators would put copies of Ettela’at, the primary newspaper in the 1970s, on the school walls. One of them would read, “Khomeini: Marxists and Maoists have the right to free expression.” I found it funny because my father had spent five years being tortured in prison for being a Marxist, barely escaping hanging.

I wish that I could say that only the regime lies, but that is not the case. Everyone does. It starts at home, when your parents teach you to lie. Not to get ahead, but to avoid trouble. A memory I always look back to is from a morning when my father was dropping me off at school, “Remember: Don’t tell anyone that we had breakfast!” If people found out that my family was not fasting, it would raise a lot of questions and could possibly get us in trouble, especially given my father’s political status.

Parents might teach you to lie out of necessity, but when the stigma around it breaks, then people learn to lie to get ahead, too. The outcome is a society without trust because lying is normal, and honesty is for losers. My father, the most honest man I have ever met, happened to be a failure as a businessman. The regime has created a sick society, incapable of doing anything, taking the initiative, and trusting each other. Iran’s economic problems are not simply the result of corruption and sanctions but, much more than any of those factors, due to the culture that totalitarianism has created and perpetuated.