Free Iran...? No? Any Takers?
From the Gulf to the Caspian Sea, Iran Will Be Free!
Where is the mass mobilisation under the banner Free Iran in Western universities or the wider Left/liberal ecosystem?
The media is strangely quiet; the commentariat can muster little more than “some economic disgruntlement is happening in Iran.”
There is no “From the Gulf to the Caspian Sea, Iran Will Be Free!”
What to make of the soft milquestoast liberals who Free Palestine has so animated for the past two years?
Where is the media, so instrumental in generating outrage on behalf of Gaza?
And where are the keffiyeh-clad campus wannabe-revolutionaries now?
Where are the pseudo-radical slogans?
Tumbleweeds.
Yet, alas, none of this should be surprising.
There are several reasons for the conspicuous absence of outrage directed at the Islamic Republic in Iran, and they all share a common denominator: the worldview known as the Anti-Imperialism of Idiots.
The Islamic Republic has always held a certain appeal for specific corners of the Western Left, although this has generally been more pronounced the further one travels to the left. The appeal lay not only in the fact that the Islamic Revolution witnessed the overthrow of the Western-backed Pahlavi monarchy, but also directly reflected the ideologies of “anti-colonial struggle” and Third Worldism, which impassioned the Western Left in the 1970s and viewed revolutionary movements with zealous enthusiasm, no matter how barbarous the means to their desired ends.
This appeal was exemplified by Michel Foucault, who gushed that:
“Islamic government…impressed me as a form of ‘political will.’ It impressed me in its effort to politicize structures that are inseparably social and religious in response to current problems. It also impressed me in its attempt to open a spiritual dimension in politics.”
The narrative of a “spiritual dimension” to the Islamic Revolution echoed the pseudo-intellectual justifications of terror popular among Foucault’s contemporaries, Frantz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre, who promoted a theory of anti-colonial violence as sacred, liberating, and redemptive. Indeed, Iranian Leftist movements were instrumental in facilitating the Islamic Revolution, believing it to be, in part, their revolution. That is, before the “inseparable social and religious structures” that so impressed Foucault ended up with the Leftists before a firing squad or running into exile. Useful Idiocy at its finest.
But this view of the Islamic Republic is now somewhat historic, and does not explain the conspicuous absence of outrage directed at the Islamic Republic either during the current protests, or with any of the several instances of civil unrest in Iran during the past few years. In fact, the Western Left has found itself repeatedly on the side of the Islamic Republic in recent years, primarily under the banner of Free Palestine. This is a predictable downstream consequence of the Anti-Imperialism of Idiots. To quote the Syrian activist Leila Al-Shami, the “Anti-Imperialism of Idiots” is an ideology that:
“…places states themselves at the centre of political analysis. Solidarity is therefore extended to states (seen as the main actor in a struggle for liberation) rather than oppressed or underprivileged groups in any given society, no matter that state’s tyranny.”
Within this worldview, the test applied is simple: identify what actors may be designated as “imperialist” or “anti-imperialist”, and always side with the latter, no matter how oppressive the state or odious the political ideology of the regime, and no matter whether the actor in question that Western eyes label “anti-imperialist” is, in fact, an imperialist project in its own right. This, if it isn’t obvious, is the Islamic Republic, which before October 7th ran an empire-by-proxy through Islamist militia groups extending through Gaza, Iraq, Syria, southern Lebanon, and Houthi-controlled Yemen. This empire-by-proxy also just happened to encircle the world’s only Jewish state. Surely just a coincidence?
And of course, we all know who the Western liberal/Left identify as the “imperialists” in the Middle East, despite Israel constituting a state roughly similar in size to New Jersey, a home for ~7 million Jews in an area of land that constitutes 0.1% of the total land mass of the Middle East and North Africa region, at war from the day it declared independence to the present. An “imperialist” country whose borders have only ever changed as a result of defensive wars fought against repeated invasion by surrounding states sounds, by any yardstick, to be a target of imperialist designs, rather than an imperial project in itself. But the salience of Soviet “anti-zionist” tropes remains a core motif for the Western Left. And since “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” have been foundational mantras for the Islamic Republic, defining the existence of this tyrannical regime, this rhetoric lands squarely with the Anti-Imperialism of Idiots, and dictates what state they’ll centre their political analysis on accordingly.
In this inversion, over the past couple of years, the Islamic Republic found a renewed friendship with Western Leftists, united by their pathological hate of Israel. And so it was that the leader of a regime that hangs gays from cranes and beats women to death for showing some hair hailed the keffiyeh-clad campus clowns in American universities as being on the “right side of history.” Thus, when the Twelve-Day War1 between Israel and the Islamic Republic played out in June of last year, the Western Left genuinely believed that siding with the monstrous regime of the Islamic Republic was the “right side of history.” It takes an extraordinary amount of moral relativism to arrive at that point, even if one views the war in Gaza in the worst possible light, even if one views this as a “lesser of two evils” choice, the Islamic Republic, by any measure, is not that lesser evil.
Yet so the Western liberal/Left marched, under the banner of Free Palestine, with placards displaying the Ayatollah and invoking his vilely ironic perspective on what side of history is right, through the streets of London. And the police arrested an Iranian activist for displaying a sign at a Free Palestine rally that read, ‘Hamas Are Terrorists’, a statement of fact in any context except to the Western liberal/Left, to whom Hamas are “freedom fighters”. And so the flags of the Islamic Republic’s proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah were waved on the streets of New York. The raison d’etre of the Islamic Republic is continued, perpetual Islamist revolution, “Axis of Resistance”, “Death to America”, and “Death to Israel”. And for far too many people who think they are moral actors, this opposition to Israel and America is sufficient to side with a regime that has brutalised its people for over 40 years.
Is there a level of suffering that would qualify the Iranian people for sympathy from the RightSideOfHistory™ crowd? If we removed Israel from the moral calculus of Western Leftists, would the brutality of the Islamic Republic be seen in isolation for what it is? Is there a certain number of executions, or a certain number of women that have to be beaten by the “morality police” that would qualify the repression of Iranians as another cause célèbre for Western liberals? In fact, leave Israel in the equation now; is there any amount of death, misery and suffering the Iranian people could experience that would move a Western liberal to the only right side of history in this equation—unequivocal, unqualified opposition to the Islamic Republic—irrespective of, or despite, their views on Israel?
This relativist moral rot runs so deep that, as the current protests were starting to gain steam, the first response of the Guardian was to give the regime a platform, in an absurd article that amounted to pure propaganda mixed with the Islamic Republic’s compulsive paranoia about Israel and whitewashing of its diplomatic record, portraying the regime as a peace partner. And why would the Guardian run such a piece? Because Trump had said America was “locked and loaded and ready to go” if the regime fired on protestors. What mattered to the Guardian in that moment was to be seen to fire back at Trump, even if it meant platforming the Islamic Republic’s propaganda. Not a shred of political principle or journalistic integrity in sight. Here is the truth: it doesn’t matter if Trump is the most deranged, unprincipled president in the history of the United States; if he plays some part in bringing down the Islamic Republic, that would be a good thing. Even if every single other thing he and his administration do is awful, giving Iran a shot at life after the regime would be a good thing. Simpliciter. No qualifier needed. The man can be hated with every fibre in one’s being, and that would still be true.
In my opinion, a similar moral relativism underpins the relatively scant, tepid coverage of the current moment in Iran with regard to Israel. Whether someone likes it or not, whether they can even bring themselves to admit this or not, the fact remains that the Islamic Republic is only as weak as it is right now because of Israel. Before October 7th, the regime appeared as a menacing regional hegemon in the Middle East. Now, Israel has largely destroyed Hamas as a serious threat, has incapacitated Hezbollah in South Lebanon, has protected the Druze community in areas of southern Syria dominated by Islamic Republic militias, and emasculated the Islamic Republic in the Twelve-Day War, damaging their nuclear programme. All of this to little meaningful response from the regime, now revealed as a tinpot tyrannical dictatorship with nothing but bark and little bite. Iranians know this, too. But if, hypothetically, Israel had a hand in ending the tyranny of the Islamic Republic, the Western Left would immediately leap to defending the regime, no matter how much suffering for the Iranian people that entailed.
The final reason why the media, in particular, is so apathetic to the current moment in Iran, and indeed toward the Islamic Republic in general, is that the regime engenders cognitive dissonance in their view of Islamism itself. The Islamic Republic represents the very ideology that the Western liberal commentariat spends inordinate amounts of time running interference for, denying the very existence of, and equivocating every time a car rams into a Christmas market, someone is beheaded in France, Jews are stabbed at a synagogue or slaughtered on a beach, or a women is beaten to death for wearing a headscarf a little loose. They can never name it. They can never say it aloud, speak it into existence. If they say nothing, it doesn’t exist. I wrote about this last year, by reference to the moral incoherence of the Western Left following the Mahsa Amini murder:
Never once did they stop to ask why such State-sanctioned violence in Iran is happening, who is perpetrating such oppression, and for what purposes and justifications. They didn’t ask those questions because they couldn’t hear the answer, and they couldn’t hear the answer because it is inconsistent with their worldview.
Because what exactly were Western Leftists protesting in response to Mahsa Amini’s death, if not Islamist ideology? Was she not killed for a punitive and arbitrary “moral” code imposed on women? Was she not killed for the material reality of her sex-based status as a woman under Islamist doctrine? Was she not killed by state actors, by a specific police unit existing solely for the enforcement of that Islamist doctrine? Was this enforcement not at the behest of a theocratic Islamist regime, the self-styled “Islamic Republic”? Did this regime not exist because of the “Islamic Revolution”?
Best to look away, so.
Best not say why the Iranian people have been subjected to four and a half decades of immiseration, repression, death and suffering.
Watching the protests grow over the past week, my Iranian wife has turned to me on several occasions and asked, “Will we get to go to Iran?” It is something we often talk about. Lord knows she’s seen enough of me swilling Guinness in an Irish pub, the high watermark of our culture. The closest I’ve got in return is her Mum’s incredible ghormeh sabzi and tahdig rice. And the saddest part is that the answer to her question remains, for now, “no”. What a tragic prospect that I could spend my life with someone who is the very epitome of Iranian women and never get to see, feel, and share her homeland with her. It’s the hope that really kills. The maybe. The what if? musings on the possibilities of Persia, post-Islamic Republic, where life is not confined to azadihaye yavashaki.2 Where there is a life to be made. We can only hope, soul-destroying as the hope is.
In reality, the war that started on October 7th has been a war between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Although the so-called “Twelve-Day War” in June 2025 was the only direct inter-state conflict between the two countries, the Islamic Republic’s “empire-by-proxy” effectively meant “war-by-proxy”, from Hamas’ attack on October 7th to the war with the Islamic Republic’s favourite son, Hezbollah, and the actions of the Houthis in the Red Sea.
Translated as “my stealthy freedom”, a movement started by the Iranian journalist and activist, Masih Alinejad, in which women posted photos of themselves unveiled, at angles that negated the possibility of their being identified.
Those kids should learn something about politics, not interpretations of history profs. I noticed that most people in the West fail to understand how autocracies and teocracies actually function, they also don't understand that autocrats and dictators regimes need to create enemies to hold on their powers for years, start wars, opress and kill their own citizens - all for justifying absolute control. And if some shit happens, the western govs finally open their eyes and what do they do? Isolate countries, making life of people there even more unbearable, which in my opinion is a big mistake, and gives even more strength to autocracies to do their dirty business.