Old footage of Iran from the 1970s has blown up across social media this week, and patriotic Americans should pay attention. Dave Rubin shared a direct-message clip from a recent roundtable with Mike Baker and Elica Le Bon that walks viewers through the stark contrast between that era and the theocratic nightmare that followed. The clip and the wider viral thread are forcing people to confront history many in the mainstream press would rather forget.
What viewers see in that archive is a Tehran most Americans never knew: bustling cafes, women in dresses or without headscarves, nightspots and a public life that looked unmistakably modern and Western by the standards of the day. Iran under the Pahlavis pursued rapid modernization and social change that opened avenues for women and professionals in ways the Islamic Republic later tried to erase. Those images are not propaganda — they are a visual reminder that freedom can be taken away in a heartbeat when fanatics seize power.
The revolution of 1979 didn’t just change a government; it rewired an entire nation’s laws around strict religious control, culminating in compulsory veiling and the morality police who patrol private life. What was once a society with mixed modern and traditional practices was reorganized into a system that legally polices women’s clothing and public behavior, and the consequences for dissent have been brutal. Iranians who remember the 1970s see the loss of choice as a cautionary tale about centralized ideological control.
Those warnings are not academic. Independent human-rights monitors and international investigators have documented the state’s violent response to dissent — including torture, arbitrary detention, and executions — as the regime crushes any prospect of liberal reforms from within. The brutality visited upon peaceful protesters and young women demanding the simple right to choose their clothing underlines what tyranny looks like in the modern age. We ignore those facts at our peril and at the cost of real human lives.
For conservatives watching from the United States, the viral footage is a wake-up call that freedom is not inevitable and that cultural relativism has real victims. Too many on the so-called left excuse or minimize the Islamic Republic while pretending to celebrate diversity at home; that hypocrisy deserves to be called out loud and often. Showing ordinary Iranians laughing in cafes decades ago should not be treated as nostalgia alone but as an indictment of the regime that stole those liberties.
Americans who cherish liberty should amplify those images and support measures that keep pressure on Tehran while standing with the brave Iranians risking everything for basic freedoms. The regime’s authority is fraying, and analysts now ask publicly whether its hold is sustainable in the long run — a fact that should embolden free nations to back dissidents and refuse business as usual with a theocratic oppressor. We must side with the people who want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not the clerics who strip those rights away.
