Iranians Deserve More Than to Choose Between Autocracy or Atrocity

By Owen Nugent

Is it possible to have a mediated, consistent, and moral position on the current affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran? The problem that has faced discussions – particularly online – regarding the assassination of the Ayatollah of Iran and others, alongside the retaliation of strikes is that the positions that most people take are almost secondary to the reactions they garner. A protest I saw in Belfast of various merry bands of protestors and their junior partner of counter-protesting supporters of the Iranian Pretender, Reza Pahlavi, really highlighted this for me. These were people who were not engaged in any sort of discussion, as both shouted over each other instead of at each other. Before POTUS 47 unilaterally started this latest chapter in Mid-East madness, my London Valentine’s day, the one spot of unambiguously good weather that weekend had been similarly interrupted by an anti-Ayatollah rally at Trafalgar Square, although one curious flag of the Star of David, combined with the old Persian flag and the Union Jack suggested to me that there was at least a sizeable contingent of people organised in favour of a Shah, as opposed to being organised against a regime. This was my point of view at the time, and by no means a definitive statement on the sensibilities of most Iranians.

My point of view is firm in that it holds that consistent rules must be observed and applied amongst all members of the international community. Shocking, in this day and age. Within the domestic affairs of countries, I believe that at minimum, certain liberties should come with citizenship, preferably those that allow for a democratic relationship between the citizens of a state and their government. This means that I am against the actions of Russia regarding its invasion of a sovereign country, that I am against the wholly and unreservedly brutal treatment of Palestinian peoples both inside and outside of the borders of the 1949 boundaries that has long predated the tragedies of 2023 and onwards. When it comes to Iran, I think in this regard it can be consistently held that the current relationship between its government and its citizens is woeful, but also that foreign military interference is not something that should be condoned. This can be an uncomfortable view to hold in the sense that someone in our short term can point that the head of this government has been removed, and will further argue that this could have only been possible via the means that were pursued, but this doesn’t hold up. For one, the surviving leadership of the country has just named Khamenei’s son as the new Ayatollah, hardly a great stride in improving the democracy of the country, especially for one that masquerades as a republic.

Some of the louder voices on the anti-Ayatollah side of this political moment tend to be, as I alluded to, from a position where they hold the son of Iran’s last Shah as a figurehead of their movement, akin to the way in which the like-exiled Ayatollah Khomeini served as the main face of resistance to the Shah before 1979. But should we as outside observers lend credibility to the presumptive heir of a throne that many Iranians came to view as the symbol of outside interference in their internal affairs, in particular the realm of oil? A skim through French-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographic novel Persepolis, by no means an intellectually hefty work, succinctly explains the origins of the Pahlavi dynasty and their links to the Anglo-Persian oil company (now BP), as well as the broad disdain that the Shah accrued from supporters of the Ayatollah, as well as Socialist and Marxist dissenters of this regime. What’s to say that a return to Shahdom in Iran will see that this won’t happen again?

Clearly the ringleaders of this latest war haven’t conceived of a day after plan. The war hawks of the Republican Party, and long-time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, have spent so long frothing at the mouth over a war with Iran that it has become a trope in political satire (see: Holden Bloodfeast). As images and videos of streets in Tehran come back to us, showing a hellscape of dark, toxic, oil-ridden clouds on our screens, the chemical callousness of an operation that has been marketed to us as a liberation is a clearly a farce, even for the most ardent hacks of our age. The work of countless concurrent, continuous, and spontaneous popular protests in the country had already done much to weaken the domestic legitimacy of the Ayatollah’s regime. For outside powers to now martyr the face of their country will demolish the bridge to political self-determination that has been carefully built over years of civic determination by Iranians of all stripes across their country.

If we are supposed to believe that earnest, genuine political freedom can now only be achieved like this, in our new post-rules-based order, that the vested interests and impulses of politicians across the pond are the final words on the state of play in the Middle East, I don’t want it. The precedence of doing this in the open, without even attempting to falsify a justification, gives too much to the most dangerous states in our world and the dangers of their ambitions. In this vein, condemnation of the actions of the United States should not be equated with a call for “critical support” to an oppressive regime of religious fundamentalists who are more than happy to murder and police the appearance of women solely by the virtue of their sex. It is nothing more than folly to see what Iran does to its people to maintain their power, or to see the punishment the United States is willing to dish out on Iran for having the wrong leader, and to conclude that you must support one or the other.