By Kayhan Life Staff
Artists: Behnam Mohammadi and Ahmad Barakizadeh
Ten years ago, on Oct. 29, tens of thousands gathered at Cyrus the Great’s tomb in Pasargadae, southwestern Iran, to celebrate their national heritage. The gathering morphed into a direct political challenge to a regime determined to subordinate Iranian identity to revolutionary Islam.
The 2009 Green Movement, despite its suppression, had exposed the limits of reformist leaders whose loyalty to the system outweighed their willingness to oppose it. The protests of 2017-2019, the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement of 2022, and the “Sun and Lion” uprising in January 2026 called for an end to the regime.
Pasargadae gave the movement a national voice. Its message endures in the conviction that Iranian identity and aspirations overpower the Islamic Republic’s ideology.
