Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : Imagine a moment so extreme that it defies the basic logic of national loyalty. Picture American opposition leaders traveling to Moscow, praising Vladimir Putin, and applauding the removal or arrest of a sitting U.S. president. Then imagine them standing before Russian media, thanking the Kremlin for “helping restore democracy” in the United States. Such an act would not be celebrated as dissent. It would be condemned as criminal, as treasonous, as an open assault on the constitutional order and sovereignty of the nation itself.
In this context, Maria Corina Machado’s public gesture toward Donald Trump—offered in appreciation for the economic and financial strangulation of her own country and the abduction of a sitting Venezuelan president by U.S. power during the dark hours of January 3—strikes many as more than political theater. To her critics, it appears as an act of high treason: the symbolic selling of national sovereignty to a foreign power in exchange for political backing to ascend to office.
What makes the moment even more charged is the shadow of the Nobel Prize itself. Donald Trump, once an aspirant for the award and denied by the Nobel Committee, now stands publicly “honored” by a political figure whose rise is seen by some as inseparable from U.S. intervention. To them, this exchange feels less like recognition and more like a taunt—an implicit rebuke of the institution’s decision and a politicization of one of the world’s most revered symbols of peace.
Others interpret it more starkly: as the trading of national dignity for foreign endorsement, a calculated wager that power can be gained without the organic consent of the Venezuelan people. Beneath this view lies an even darker implication—that refusal to comply with Washington’s strategic and economic demands, including Trump’s openly declared ambition to seize Venezuela’s oil wealth for American gain, could invite the same fate that befell Maduro.
She perhaps put the exalted concept as a backburner that democracies breathe through dissent. From mass protests in Israel demanding accountability from Benjamin Netanyahu, to parliamentary resistance in Pakistan, to congressional scrutiny in Washington, internal struggle is the engine of reform. But there is a line—that line is crossed when a political movement steps outside its national ecosystem and invites a foreign state to intervene directly in the destiny of its own people.
This is why the language of treason enters the conversation. To challenge one’s own government is a political right. To applaud a foreign power for economically suffocating one’s own society is, in the eyes of many, a moral rupture. Sanctions do not fall on presidents alone. They fall on hospitals that cannot import medicine, on families whose wages collapse under inflation, on children whose futures are narrowed by scarcity. To praise these tools as instruments of “liberation” is, for critics, to sever political ambition from national responsibility.
The same pattern, many argue, is now being traced in Iran. For decades, Iranians have demonstrated that organic struggle is not only possible but powerful. In 1979, a mass popular movement overthrew one of the most entrenched, Western-backed monarchies in the region. That transformation, whatever its later consequences, was not engineered in foreign capitals. It was carried by millions in the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. It was internal, national, and unmistakably indigenous.
Yet today, critics point to the re-emergence of Reza Pahlavi—who left Iran as a child more than four decades ago and has lived his adult life in the West—as a symbol of what they describe as “exiled leadership” being elevated by foreign powers. To them, the idea that someone disconnected from the daily realities of Iranian society can be positioned as a national alternative, while U.S. and Israeli leaders openly signal support for regime change, contaminates the authenticity of domestic protest.
When President Donald Trump issues statements hinting at military action “in support of protesters,” critics argue that the organic nature of Iranian dissent is immediately compromised. What may begin as a homegrown demand for reform becomes vulnerable to being branded—internally and internationally—as a foreign-engineered project. The protester in the street is no longer just a citizen with a grievance. He or she becomes, in the narrative of the state, a potential proxy of external power.
This is not merely a theoretical concern. History is crowded with examples where foreign intervention discredited legitimate internal movements by attaching them to geopolitical agendas. In 1953, Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a covert U.S.-British operation after nationalizing the country’s oil industry. The Shah who replaced him ruled for more than two decades with Western backing, until a revolution erupted that reshaped the region and locked Iran and the United States into a cycle of hostility that continues to this day.
For those who view Venezuela and Iran through this historical lens, the pattern appears consistent. Sovereignty is tolerated when it aligns with great-power interests and challenged when it does not. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—estimated at over 300 billion barrels, the largest proven reserves in the world—are not an abstract statistic. They represent strategic leverage in a global energy system where access to supply shapes diplomacy, alliances, and conflict.
This is why the charge of unpatriotism carries such emotional weight. To fight your own government is a political act. To fight your own society’s economic survival by endorsing foreign coercion is, for critics, something far more severe. It is seen as stepping outside the national tent and inviting an overwhelming external force inside—one that may crush institutions, fracture unity, and redraw the country’s future according to interests that are not its own.
Even the Arctic has entered this conversation. Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark that consistently ranks among the world’s strongest regions for governance, transparency, and human rights, has become a subject of geopolitical attention because of its rare earth minerals, strategic location, and emerging shipping routes. The implication is stark: in an era of intensifying global rivalry, even the most stable and democratic societies can become strategic assets rather than simply sovereign communities.
At its core, this controversy is not about medals, exiles, or speeches. It is about a red line between internal reform and external allegiance. It is about whether political ambition remains rooted in the will of the people or becomes dependent on the pressure of foreign capitals.
Organic struggle carries legitimacy because it is earned at home. It rises from neighborhoods, workplaces, universities, and streets. It persuades before it compels. It mobilizes before it conquers. Imported struggle arrives differently—through sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, and military signaling.
History’s judgment on such alliances is rarely kind. Nations may survive bad governments. They rarely emerge whole when their sovereignty becomes a bargaining chip in someone else’s strategic game. The ultimate right to shape a country’s future, this argument insists, must remain in the hands of its own people—not in the applause of foreign leaders, and not in the shadow of global power.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The Middle East has been subjected to a destructive and repetitive doctrine that promises peace through regime change but delivers only chaos, fragmentation, and endless war. At the core of this ideology stands Benjamin Netanyahu, whose long-held belief is that Israel’s security and regional dominance require the dismantling of hostile governments rather than coexistence with them. From Iraq to Libya, from Syria to Afghanistan, from Lebanon to Gaza, this toxic philosophy has left entire societies in ruins—yet it is being recycled once again, this time against Iran.
Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, its permanent occupation of the Golan Heights, its repeated strikes inside Syria, and its confrontations with Lebanon all reveal a broader expansionist vision. However, Netanyahu understands that without neutralizing Iran—the only regional power capable of resisting Israeli military dominance—this vision cannot fully materialize. This is why Iran has been framed as an “existential threat,” and why regime change in Tehran has become a central obsession.
Even before the brief twelve-day escalation in June involving Israel, United States, and Iran, Netanyahu had been relentlessly injecting the idea that once Iran’s leadership is removed, peace will finally descend upon the Middle East. This is the same argument used to push the United States into Iraq, to destroy Libya, to destabilize Syria, and to militarize Afghanistan. Every time this doctrine was applied, conditions worsened—terrorism expanded, refugees multiplied, and regional instability deepened.
At that critical moment, Donald Trump did not endorse regime change in Iran. He resisted plunging the United States into another open-ended conflict. However, Israel did not abandon its objective. Instead, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: destabilization from within and the grooming of a manufactured alternative leadership for Iran.
According to Iranian authorities, the current unrest was not merely spontaneous protest but was instigated, coordinated, and guided by Israeli intelligence networks operating under Mossad. Tehran presented evidence that Mossad-linked operatives were embedded among protest groups, receiving instructions directly from headquarters in Tel Aviv. These instructions allegedly included plans to incite large-scale rioting, burn banks, destroy ambulances, attack police officers, and sabotage mosques and public infrastructure. The objective was not reform but disorder.
Most critically, Iranian officials revealed that even after the country shut down its domestic internet, communications between these operatives and their handlers continued through satellite-based systems, while Iran simultaneously faced hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks targeting its communications infrastructure. This exposed the operation as a coordinated hybrid assault combining street violence, cyber warfare, and psychological pressure.
When this evidence was reportedly shown to President Trump, his initial posture hardened. He openly stated that all options remained on the table. However, the situation shifted when Iran halted scheduled executions and refrained from further mass repression. Trump himself publicly stated that executions had been stopped and that there would be no further oppressive measures against protesters. With that declaration, he effectively poured cold water on Netanyahu’s attempt to maneuver the United States into another Middle Eastern war.
Parallel to the destabilization campaign, Israel simultaneously cultivated a political alternative: Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former monarch. Pahlavi has lived outside Iran since the age of twelve, spending his entire adult life in the United States. He has no organic political base inside Iran, no demonstrated grassroots support, and no tangible connection to the daily struggles of the Iranian people. For decades, he remained politically irrelevant. Suddenly, amid unrest, he was reintroduced as a “savior.”
Despite living a luxurious lifestyle in the United States without any clearly defined source of income, Pahlavi has been aggressively promoted as a viable leader for Iran. He was invited to Jerusalem, where, in interviews with Israeli media, he openly spoke about historical alignment between Iran, Israel, and the Jewish people. In doing so, he publicly positioned himself as ideologically aligned with Israel’s regional agenda. This appearance confirmed that he has effectively sold himself as a convenient figurehead—offered the illusion of kingship in exchange for political obedience.
This two-pronged Israeli strategy—instigating large-scale unrest while simultaneously presenting a pre-selected alternative ruler—mirrors earlier regime-change playbooks used elsewhere. However, it is fundamentally flawed. Reza Pahlavi does not represent modern Iran. He has no roots in today’s Iranian society, no institutional backing inside the country, and no legitimacy among a population that has lived through revolution, war, sanctions, and resistance. Attempting to impose him as a solution only exposes the artificial nature of the entire project.
More dangerously, an attack on Iran would not resemble Iraq or Libya. Iran controls or influences critical waterways and trade corridors. It possesses strategic depth, hardened military infrastructure, and powerful allies. Any war would immediately draw in Russia and China, turning a regional conflict into a global economic and military crisis. Energy markets would collapse, supply chains would fracture, and the United States would face overstretch and humiliation rather than victory.
While the U.S. mainland may be geographically distant, American military bases across the Middle East and beyond remain well within Iran’s reach. Moreover, if Iran preserves even part of its nuclear infrastructure under such pressure, the eventual consequences for Israel could be far more severe than anything Netanyahu anticipates. A cornered Iran is not a defeated Iran.
At this moment, the United States is already deeply entangled elsewhere—in Venezuela, in the Greenland controversy in the Arctic, amid internal unrest over federal enforcement actions, and as the credibility of NATO and the United Nations continues to erode. Being dragged into another war engineered by Netanyahu would contradict every principle of “America First.”
This is the moment for the United States to free itself from external pressure groups, including AIPAC, and to pursue an independent foreign policy grounded in national interest rather than ideological entanglements. The Middle East does not need another regime destroyed. It needs restraint, realism, and an end to expansionist fantasies that have already devastated an entire region.
History has already judged the regime-change doctrine. The only question now is whether the United States will finally refuse to repeat it.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : Wars in the modern era are no longer fought only with bullets, missiles, fighter jets, or nuclear deterrence. Increasingly, they are fought long before any kinetic action begins—on a quieter, more deceptive battlefield: the battlefield of perception. Images, videos, and narratives now travel faster than diplomacy, bypassing borders, institutions, and even reason. In this new reality, social media has become one of the most dangerous weapons ever devised—capable of destabilizing societies without firing a single shot.
Over recent weeks, a flood of videos has emerged on social media platforms claiming to show massive demonstrations across Iran. The imagery is dramatic: endless crowds filling wide boulevards, national flags lining streets with striking uniformity, and aerial perspectives suggesting a country on the verge of total upheaval. There is no denial that Iran, like many nations under economic pressure and political strain, experiences dissent and protest. That fact is neither new nor controversial. What demands scrutiny, however, is whether the specific videos being circulated reflect organic reality or constructed spectacle.
Having worked as a news producer during a formative period from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, and having remained engaged with media management and state-level communication thereafter, I approach such material with trained skepticism. In professional journalism, the first rule is simple: never accept the image at face value. Images must be interrogated, contextualized, and tested against known patterns of human behavior, geography, and political reality.
Several elements within the widely shared video https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS5ntmNFQ/ raised immediate concerns.
First, the behavior and structure of the crowd itself. Genuine mass demonstrations are inherently chaotic. Human gatherings fluctuate in density, form pressure points at intersections, and show visible irregularities along sidewalks and side streets. Movement is uneven; space opens and closes unpredictably. In the video under scrutiny, the crowd density remains remarkably uniform across extraordinary depth—from the foreground to the far horizon. There are no visible bottlenecks, no dispersal patterns, no natural thinning at the edges. Such visual consistency is rare in real-world human assemblies and suggests construction rather than spontaneous congregation.
Second, the perspective and scaling appear inconsistent with physical reality. Buildings recede naturally with distance, but the human forms within the crowd retain disproportionate clarity far beyond what optics and aerial resolution would allow. In authentic drone footage, individuals quickly lose definition as distance increases, blending into texture and motion. Here, human figures remain visually distinct deep into the frame, defying the expected behavior of light, distance, and atmospheric interference.
Third, the symbolic repetition is striking. Flags appear at near-identical intervals, with uniform size, color saturation, and orientation. In real protest environments, symbols are irregular: some flags hang limp, others ripple unpredictably; many are partially obscured or tilted at varying angles. Perfect visual repetition is a hallmark of design, not of lived reality.
Fourth, there is an absence of micro-chaos. Even a single frame extracted from authentic protest footage captures motion blur, raised hands, head turns, banners at differing angles, and small disturbances rippling through the crowd. The video in question presents magnitude without motion—an image that appears alive but lacks the subtle disorder that defines real human movement.
Fifth, the information environment itself raises questions. Iran is among the most tightly controlled digital spaces during periods of unrest. Internet throttling, platform disruptions, and communication blackouts are common responses to internal instability. Under such conditions, high-definition, uninterrupted aerial footage does not typically circulate freely or repeatedly. Scarcity, not abundance, defines information flow from closed environments. The sudden frequency and clarity of this material therefore contradict known patterns of access and control.
This contradiction prompted further scrutiny. History provides sobering lessons. Before Iraq was invaded, narratives and visuals prepared global opinion. Before Libya collapsed, selective imagery framed intervention as humanitarian necessity. Before Syria descended into prolonged catastrophe, emotionally charged footage simplified complex realities into moral binaries. In each case, media preceded missiles. Images softened resistance, manufactured urgency, and created justification for actions whose consequences were later measured in human tragedy.
The current moment bears uncomfortable similarities. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again openly revived the language of regime change in Iran, addressing the Iranian public directly and encouraging confrontation with the existing state. This rhetoric is not accidental nor unprecedented. It follows a long-established pattern in which internal unrest is amplified externally to legitimize future action.
At the same time, the familiar and highly combustible narrative of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions has been reintroduced with renewed intensity. Despite years of inspections, contradictory intelligence assessments, and shifting red lines, nuclear alarmism is once again being used to mobilize fear—particularly within Western political circles. Its function is clear: to draw the United States back into a regional confrontation centered on Israeli security calculations.
Statements from Washington reinforce this trajectory. When American leadership publicly warns that Iran will be struck “where it hurts” if unrest is met with force, such language serves as a signal—not merely to Tehran, but to global audiences. It signals that escalation is conceivable, that internal disorder could justify external intervention, and that public opinion must be conditioned in advance.
Simultaneously, the re-emergence of Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s former monarch, as a proposed alternative leadership figure follows a familiar script. His sudden prominence, international exposure, and expressed willingness to lead mirror past efforts to elevate external figures as symbols of legitimacy during periods of destabilization. History shows that such figures often resonate more with foreign audiences than with populations on the ground—but they serve an important narrative function nonetheless.
It is within this convergence—Israeli advocacy for regime change, American military signaling, revived nuclear fear narratives, and the elevation of an external political alternative—that the circulation of dramatic protest imagery must be understood. These visuals do not merely document events; they construct inevitability. They suggest total collapse, universal opposition, and moral urgency—all prerequisites for public acceptance of actions that would otherwise face resistance.
This does not mean dissent does not exist in Iran. It does. But exaggeration, fabrication, and narrative inflation have historically been used to convert limited unrest into justification for catastrophic intervention. The consequences of such manipulation are not abstract. They are measured in destroyed cities, displaced populations, and generations condemned to instability.
Today, wars begin not with sirens but with shares. Not with explosions but with engagement metrics. By the time missiles are launched, the psychological battlefield has already been won.
The responsibility therefore lies with citizens, journalists, and analysts alike to resist reflexive belief. To pause. To question. To distinguish between organic human expression and manufactured spectacle. Justice demands evidence. Peace demands restraint. And truth demands patience.
In the age of instant imagery, seeing is no longer believing. Verification is.