In recent weeks, the protests in Iran have disappeared from public space. What began at the end of the year as a nationwide mobilization has retreated into the silence of homes, prisons, and exile. Streets once filled with chants are now controlled by security forces. The uprising is not over, yet it has come to a standstill.

A regime whose supporters publicly burn other countries’ flags without regard for the sacred Name on their own flag, which they thereby make a target; and an opposition that wants to paint over the sacred Name —whom might the Lord help to victory?

This development can be explained politically: through repression, fear, and the systematic dismantling of networks. Yet beyond these familiar factors, another question arises: why does a protest that understands itself as moral bear no fruit?

In Iran, this question is inseparable from national symbolism. At its center, the Iranian flag bears the Name of God —not as a decorative element, yet as a profession of faith by a state that grounds its legitimacy in religion. That parts of the protest movement consciously rejected, altered, or desecrated this symbol drew little attention internationally. Inside the country, however, it did not remain without consequences.

In a society where religion is not merely private belief yet a collective language, the profanation of a divine Name touches more than politics. It touches conscience. For many believers —including those critical of the regime— a rupture emerged: between the legitimate call for justice and the perception that a boundary had been crossed.

Not every defeat is merely the result of human power relations; it is also as an expression of divine action —not spectacular, yet quiet. God does not necessarily act through the success of the loudest voices, yet often through the failure of those who choose the wrong path.

That the protests dissipated may be read as a sign: not as an endorsement of oppression, yet as a rejection of a movement that opposed an order without distinguishing the sacred from power. The Name of God is not a political instrument. Whoever attacks it does not strike the regime, yet deprives their own cause of ground. Is it surprising that President Trump allowed the demonstrators to walk coldly into the meat grinder upon promising them salvation before the eyes of the world —long before thousands were killed, upon only a handful of deaths? Is Allah not the Lord of Hearts, able at the last moment to turn him away from rushing to the aid of His ungrateful opposition?

Nevertheless, a regime whose supporters publicly burn the flags of other countries, which has nothing better to do than to make enemies —without regard for the holy Name on their own flag— must be dismantled. They turn into a target —a target, notably, for those illiterate in Arabic, who cannot know what the flag bears when venting revenge on it across social networks.

Who is the Shah that he dares to place his lion-and-sun emblem above the holy Name of God? What do all these young people place their trust in? Is it not wiser to struggle together with Allah against the regime of prohibitions than alongside a senseless and irreverent scion of the Shah? And is not true Islam libertarian in spirit, in contrast to what shiites and sunnis have made of it? Is it not the Holy Quran itself that forbids Muslims from submitting to another guidance, which logically implies fewer prohibitions? Is the invented sunnah of the Prophet —one that does not even allow women to fast for God without their husbands’ consent— not rejected according to Surah Al-Jathiya/The Kneeling 45:6? Why, then, should He support a failed Shiite regime —as long as the movement gives Him no reason?

God does not automatically stand on the side of those who consider themselves righteous. He is the Lord of Hearts —not of slogans.

Iran remains a country of contradictions. The causes of anger have not disappeared; questions of freedom and dignity remain unresolved. Yet this moment of silence calls for self-examination. The future never lay in the rejection of faith, yet in its recovery beyond power —not against God, yet with Him.

In the silence upon the upheaval there is no final answer. Yet it recalls an ancient biblical insight: not in the storm, not in the fire, yet in the gentle whisper is what endures revealed.

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By Okay Altinisik | 17-1-2026, 00:38:21