Socialists and Islamists once toppled a shah. Then came the reckoning.

The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January. On the party's left flank, the Democratic Socialists of America saw six new House candidates win, joining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). The DSA’s own post-election statement boasts that its members will fight for Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and an arms embargo on Israel.

Michigan elected Abdul El-Sayed, the nation’s first Muslim senator. New Jersey elected Adam Hamawy to the House. These are different developments, but they have prompted a familiar question on the right: Is a red-green alliance taking shape in American politics?

An activist minority need not command a majority to shift a party’s agenda.

The red-green alliance is a name for tactical cooperation between the revolutionary left and political Islam. They disagree about faith, society, and individual liberty. Yet both have at times opposed American power and Israel, and both know how to organize. The danger lies in the shared campaign that masks incompatible long-term ambitions. A mere count of socialist and Muslim officeholders doesn’t tell the whole story. The evidence lies in the organizations working together.

History supplies a warning about alliances whose members believe they can use one another. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 brought together clerics, liberal nationalists, Marxist guerrillas, and Islamic leftists against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini possessed something his rivals lacked: a nationwide network of mosques and religious authorities capable of mobilizing followers.

From exile in France, Khomeini promised religious freedom. The secular left and nationalist opposition hoped to share in the new order or eventually direct it. The Tudeh Communist Party endorsed the Islamic Republic and praised its opposition to American influence. Its leaders treated cooperation as a route to influence. Khomeini treated it as a temporary convenience.

The result was catastrophic for his former partners. After the monarchy fell, the clerics consolidated authority. The new constitution established religious guardianship over the state. President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr was dismissed in 1981. Armed opposition drew savage reprisals. By 1983, the regime had outlawed Tudeh and arrested its leaders. In 1988, Iranian authorities executed thousands of political prisoners, including members of leftist movements.

Within a decade, many of the forces that had helped bring down the Shah had been imprisoned, executed, or driven abroad. Their common enemy had concealed profound disagreements about who would rule afterward. The clerics won that struggle.

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America in 2026 is not Iran in 1979, and El-Sayed is no Khomeini. But the Iranian precedent exposes a danger that transcends country and century: A coalition assembled around common enemies may conceal irreconcilable ideas of what should replace them.

New York supplies a concrete example. Zohran Mamdani rose through the DSA, while the Muslim advocacy organization CAIR Action backed his mayoral campaign. Socialist activists and Muslim political organizations worked toward the same electoral result. The alliance did not require agreement on every issue. Its strength came from a candidate and a common cause.

The DSA’s demand for an arms embargo on Israel illustrates another point of convergence. El-Sayed, though neither a DSA member nor its endorsed candidate, campaigned against American military aid to Israel. The overlap is political, and we should ask how enduring it may become.

Still, moderate Democrats also won in Republican territory. The victories of Muslim candidates and socialist candidates do not automatically amount to a unified Islamist-socialist movement. The point is narrower and more consequential: Activists who share a few urgent demands can gain influence in a party that has more seats than agreement on how to use them. Khomeini knew how to resolve those ambiguities.

And those ambiguities will matter in the coming weeks, months, and years. Democrats will control congressional committees and possess subpoena power. The DSA’s small House bloc can pressure party leaders, introduce legislation, and shape the debate ahead of 2028, even while President Trump retains his veto. An activist minority need not command a majority to shift a party’s agenda.

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What happens when tactical allies gain power and discover their disagreements? Iran offers one answer, in a country whose institutions collapsed amid revolution. America’s Constitution and its divided political institutions offer a profoundly different order. That difference is a safeguard, but it is no excuse for ignoring the leverage that disciplined factions can acquire inside a governing coalition.

Conservatives should respond with a program rather than a historical analogy alone. That means fiscal restraint, a government limited by constitutional boundaries, protection for religious liberty, and a defense of parental authority in education. It also requires arguments about the cost of living and the prospects for working families, issues that helped move voters this November.

Socialism asks Americans to place greater economic authority in the state. Political Islam, where it seeks religious authority over civil government, raises a different constitutional challenge. Neither claim should be confused with the mere presence of socialists or Muslims in elective office. The task is to test the policies and organizations actually seeking power.

The left’s victories give its activists a louder voice and new opportunities to test their alliances. The history of Iran warns against underestimating what a disciplined partner can do once admitted to power. Conservatives have two years to offer voters something better before 2028. A history lesson alone will not do the job.

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