Latest / The Daily Article / How has the Iranian regime survived mass protests?

Transcript

How has the Iranian regime survived mass protests? · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day, it's Monday, January the 19th, 2026.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining us for Dinnison Forum's daily article podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's daily article is authored by Cultural Theologian, Dr. Jim Dinnison.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The human rights activist use agency said Sunday, it has verified at least 3,919 deaths during a massive wave of protests that swept Iran in recent weeks and fears the number could be significantly higher.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Other human rights groups and insiders estimate that between 12 and 15,000 people were killed.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Demonstrations that began in late December have reportedly subsided as an extra ordinarily violent crackdown by Iranian security forces appears to have succeeded for now in driving protesters from the streets.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Foreign policy calls the regime's response the greatest massacre in modern
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why would a government kill so many of its own people?
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: How can it do so and survive?
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The recent protests were sparked by an economic crisis that can be fixed only if Iran gets relief from international sanctions.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would require the regime to compromise on its nuclear and missile programs.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such compromise would obviously be in the best interest of the Iranian people.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, these nuclear and missile programs are essential to the government's Islamist purpose, which is opposing in their terms the Great Satan, the US, and the Little Satan Israel, to establish a, quote, unquote, true Islamic state that will hasten the coming of the body, their Messiah.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: In this ideological frame, Western pressure makes Iran's case that they are
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: protests against the government are viewed as opposition to Islam.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The regime is therefore willing to kill as many of its own people as necessary to survive, like autocrats in Cuba, China, Russia and North Korea.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: They claim that such sacrifices are outweighed by the ultimate benefit of their ideology for the collective good.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: By contrast, our declaration of independence claims that governments, quote, are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, This is why we are ultimately governed by laws, not people, and why we elect people to represent us in making and enforcing these laws.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, while our system provides checks and balances on unaccountable individual power, its intended secularism cannot articulate those transcendent purposes and morality that lead to ultimate flourishing.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The same government system that abolish slavery in 1865 also produced
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sanctity of Life Sunday was observed in churches across the nation yesterday to remind us that the battle for life continues and to call each of us to do our part.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Service is the intended theme of today's holiday.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to the Smithsonian, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is the only federal holiday designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer and improve their communities.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Americans pause to remember the great civil rights leader, we do well to remember the ideology that inspired him.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dr. King stated, life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: King then added, quote, everybody can be great.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: because anybody can serve.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to have a college degree to serve.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, in quote.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where, however, does our fallen culture find such a heart full of grace?
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: in how Christianity changed civilization and must do so again, historians mark Aqualina and James Elpop and Dreha, outline seven revolutions, birth by the Christian movement that changed our world.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: One, a revolution of the individual affirmed that all people are created equal in the image of God and no one is expendable.
• 4:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two, a revolution of the home affirmed it is a place of safety and love
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: where women and children are not to be exploited.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Three, a revolution in the workplace affirmed that people are not property that they must be free to choose their work and that they must be given free time for worship or artistic expression and for the enjoyment of their loved ones.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Four, a revolutionary legend taught the world that God is love.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Five, a revolution of the community taught people to love their neighbors.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Six, a revolution of the way people thought about life and death rejected the culture of death and affirmed a culture of life and of hope, encouraging people to stand up for human rights.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And seven, a revolution of government set up the ideal that rulers should serve those who they rule, not the other way around, and that all people should enjoy freedom of religion.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, when Jesus began saving souls and changing lives, he produced a movement of hearts full of grace.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this grace changes hearts and nations still today.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Albert Einstein noted, we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them, in quote.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when we submit our lives daily to Jesus in the quote-unquote white funeral that dies to ourselves and asks him to remake us like himself from 2 Corinthians 3 verse 18, we experience the amazing grace that changed John Newton and changes all who embraced it today.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I visited Newton's grave in England several years ago.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: where I found the epitaph he wrote for himself.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: quote John Newton clerk once an infidel and libertine a servant of slaves in Africa was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ preserved, restored, hardened, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labor to destroy.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, if Jesus is your Lord, you have been preserved, restored and pardoned as well.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have submitted your life to him as your Lord today, you will preach the faith as an inevitable and empowering consequence of His Spirit's work in your life.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Dr. King, an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, Have you started living yet?