22.04.2026, Moscow.
Iranians turned out to be much more united in the conflict with the United States than anyone could have assumed. The United States received an “asymmetric response” to its attack, combining the military-strategic wisdom of the authorities and the obvious consolidation of the people with “the great Persian tradition and enormous self-respect,” philosopher, political scientist, and leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan stated on April 17 on the Conversation with a Sage program on the Zvezda radio channel.
The political scientist emphasized that the current population of Iran is not as homogeneous as it was in the early 1980s. Kurginyan cites the Islamic Revolution of 1979 as one of the reference points for the process of national “heterogeneity” — an event that led to the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of Iran’s theocratic system led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Various political processes initiated by Europe and the United States revolved around this event, driven in part by the West’s desire to create a unified Islamist arc against the Soviet Union, comments Sergei Kurginyan.
According to him, if US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu possessed sufficient strategic intelligence, all they would do is “increase this ‘disunity’ of the Iranian nation,” he notes.
“The Iranian socio-political system has grown tired, become loose: commercial interests, clan struggles. All of this could have been exploited. But as soon as the Americans struck Iran with bombs and everything else, all this heterogeneity, which was a saving grace for Iran’s enemies and could have been bet on — it disappeared immediately!” emphasized the political scientist.
He noted that there are certainly hidden anti-state forces in Iran, “Israel not only knows the location of every, so to speak, Iranian military personnel, but it has also built an impressive fifth column.” The political scientist believes that these forces will play their role, but for now, “the conspiratorial fifth column is a suspended factor.”
In Iran’s socio-political space, a certain “subversive” potential has accumulated over several decades — open dissatisfaction with the mullahs, specific individuals, an overly conservative course, the inability to reform the country or change the dress code, other circumstances, and the economic situation, comments Sergey Kurginyan. But after US aggression, “all of this disappeared, the Iranian nation consolidated in a stunning way,” noted Sergey Kurginyan.
He emphasized that what is at stake in the US-Iran conflict is not military power, but the human factor — the willingness of the population and elites to make sacrifices, combined with the system of governance and technical capabilities.
According to the political scientist, Iran has demonstrated “an extraordinary military-strategic intellect, which his enemies did not expect.” Namely, Iran’s takeover of control of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as its strikes on US facilities in the Persian Gulf countries, which “are the Achilles’ heel of the United States themselves because they transfer enormous amounts of money there.”
“Iran has shown that it has not wasted time. And I will dare to make such a bold assumption that someone from the Far East helped it. During this time, Iran has created a very original military machine,” stated the leader of the Essence of Time movement.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
