The stunning display of hypersonic missiles, drones and other firepower by Iran during the ongoing war with the US and Israel, as well as during the 2025 12-day-long conflict with Tel Aviv, has exploded the overblown claims of scientific achievements made by the West in the last couple of centuries. The latest flare-up has inadvertently provided an opportunity to the Islamic Republic to show the world the all-round progress made in the most adverse circumstances in the last 47 years. Something between USD 100 billion and 120 billion of Iranian assets are lying frozen in international banks.
Mind it, when the Revolution took place in 1979, the entire Western media in one voice yelled that the “mad mullahs” would push Iran to the seventh century – that is, during the age of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). It is another thing that now they are being accused of making nuclear bombs.
Yes, countries of Europe and the United States have made great progress in various fields. But the time has come to ask how they have reached this point. They had indulged in all sorts of loot of resources from colonies and intellectual robberies, killing of scientists and scholars of the rest of the world on the ground of suspicion as well as abducting many of them from far-off lands.
The best example is of Germany, from where several Jewish scientists fled to the United States in the 1930s. But after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, the US took away the German scientists who had worked in Hitler’s labs, which were used to develop all sorts of chemical weapons and poisonous gases. So, the perpetrators and victims both ended up in American universities and centres of learning and research, obviously to Make America Great.
The Western surgeons adopted the most unethical practice of medical guinea pig experiments on Blacks and aboriginal populations to achieve their goal. For example, 19th-century American doctor James Marion Sims, called Father of Gynaecology, used to perform operations on enslaved Black women without anaesthesia, though it had been developed by then. In one case, he reportedly operated on a Black woman at least 30 times. In 2017, his statue in New York was vandalised and defaced allegedly by some African-Americans.
It is also a fact that in many cases, the foot soldiers of colonial masters borrowed indigenous technology and branded it as their own discoveries. The West did not give credit to anyone else for these developments made collectively by the world.
This does not amount to denying some of the rare breakthroughs made by them. Once they became powerful, they enjoyed the benefit of brain drain. The spread of English in particular and other European languages helped them market their inventions and discoveries. Who is not aware of the fact that European seafarers reached different parts of the so-called new world centuries after the Arabs, Chinese, Indians and other navigators had already explored them? Yet, students in most parts of the world are wrongly taught as if they were all western discoveries.
As if that is not enough, the club of G7 countries manipulates the global economy in such a way that it favours them. The loot of Africa and Latin America in particular is still going on – the best example is the recent abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
Compare this with what Iranians have achieved amid 47 years of brutal sanctions, blockade and economic boycott, as well as the eight-year-long West-backed aggression by Iraq (1980-88). In the case of Iran, there is no scope whatsoever nor any intention to exploit colonies, get rich and thus make massive investments in research and development.
The defence mechanisms developed not only by Iran but by non-state actors, with shoestring budgets, like Hamas, Hezbollah and Ansarullah (also called Houthis) deserve a dispassionate study. Contrast their performance with the disastrous defeat of the combined armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan against Israel in the six-day war in June 1967.
No doubt, beleaguered Iran is of late facing an economic crisis. Yet, it is also a fact that in the post-coronavirus epidemic years, several other countries had to undergo a similar phase.
Unlike European countries, the US and Israel, which fully cooperate among themselves in the field of research and development, Iran has hardly any such opportunity, though of late there are reports that China and North Korea did assist it secretly in developing some of its war machine.
Though Iran has surprised the world by its performance in this hi-tech war against the global superpowers, several non-Western countries with no record of colonialism have also made huge progress. Now, even relatively smaller nations like Turkey
, Malaysia, Indonesia and Mexico have shown that they can match European powers without having any scope for economic exploitation of other weaker countries.The minus point with them is that they could not market the progress they have made in various sectors because of the language constraint. The advantage with the West is that with the help of English, which can be understood almost all over the planet, they have succeeded in creating an impression that they are the only ones who can rule the world.
Needless to mention, almost all of them are White-race countries with few contradictions among them and have a common objective of dominating the globe by all means, fair and foul.
Wars and bloodletting certainly cannot be the best way to measure the development of any country. But unfortunately, this is a global reality.
This post was last modified on March 13, 2026 8:32 pm