This morning, as I was going through the news, the images of a protest in front of the University of Tehran caught my attention—slogans full of nationalist passion, and that during the days of Muharram and Ashura! Hadn’t they been telling us for forty years that the entire Islamic worldview, the whole “truth of Shiism,” is summed up in the flag of Ashura? Hadn’t they said that Ashura is not just a ritual, but a model for fighting oppression? And now? Now there are no black flags, no mourning chants; instead, there is Kaveh the Blacksmith, Arash the Archer, and the red and yellow suns of ancient Iran. As if this very regime wasn’t the one that, until yesterday, considered any reference to pre-Islamic history uncivilized and sinful. The Islamic Republic’s project, which was supposed to build an “Islamic Ummah,” now, in the face of failure, is clinging to nation-building. Out of fear. Fear of the people, fear of collapse, fear of groundlessness. This shift is not just symbolic—it is a sign of crisis. A crisis of legitimacy, a crisis of narrative, and a crisis of survival.
But the issue of Israel will have no solution as long as its existence as a “state” and member of the United Nations is officially recognized. No compromise, no two-state solution, no legal illusion within the current power structure can change that reality. And this is not the voice of the fascist officials in Iran, but of a large part of the Iranian people: Israel is seen as a military garrison. That’s it. But whether we like it or not, it is a UN member state, and no single country (Iran) is going to stand against it alone—especially not when its main allies, China and Russia, are also among Israel’s biggest trade partners! How much effort do the West and its intellectuals really put into the project of de-recognizing Israel as a UN member state? How often do political structures with such a platform actually take to the streets? Almost never! And yet Iranians are somehow expected to be the only ones doing it? No!
We are no longer prisoners of classical colonialism, nor obedient subjects of the so-called saviors of Europe’s Middle Ages. We are the inhabitants of a wounded world, where the corpses of old colonialism still rise from our wheat fields and oil wells—but instead of rescue, we are bombed under the banner of freedom. We still have to scream that we are human beings, not avatars of martyrdom and violence for the fading dreams of the West.
Our socialism is not the whitewashed socialism of festivals and universities, nor a role-playing game of resistance to fill leisure time. Our socialism is born from stolen bread, the broken bodies of workers, and an uneven fight for survival. While we stand with bare fists against our own executioners, we also say no to Western bombs. At this very moment, as the cries of children in Gaza echo through the world, that same so-called enlightened world asks us whether we are “anti-Zionist enough.” As if being human requires an ideological certificate stamped in the capitals of the Global North.
The fight against Israel is meaningless without the Eastern people’s struggle for dignity and democracy. You cannot support democracy in the West while considering only “war” as legitimate in the Middle East. You cannot march against fascism and patriarchy in Athens, Paris, and London, yet turn the same monster into a symbol of resistance and martyrdom in Tehran, Ankara, and Damascus—and label anyone who refuses to accept this false and disconnected binary as a traitor or a fool!
The false binary of Western liberalism—on one side, missiles, sanctions, and regime change; on the other, cultural Orientalism and the glorification of the silent victim—offers nothing but two faces of the same imperialism. This is the same West that builds shelters for queer people in Europe, yet whispers “Islamic culture” when faced with the institutionalized violence against women in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It’s the same West that criticizes the Church, but refers to the theocratic regime in Tehran as a form of “resistance.” And those leftists who have completely understood Edward Said’s method on Orientalism upside-down, now defend Islamic fascism—without realizing it is not a native culture, but an imperialist project dressed in local colors.
We are not victims of choice—we are people whose right to choose has been suppressed. A right that cries out through the struggles of daily life, in the decision to stay or leave, to choose between bread and dignity. If Greek voters have chosen fascist parties, are we supposed to respect that and stop resisting? Then why is it that when we fight against Islamic fascism, we are called “agents of America,” “anti-Palestinian,” or worse, enemies of Islam? Especially when, after Israel’s attacks, the Islamic regime no longer uses the name of Islam or the culture of Ashura to rally people, but turns instead to Iranian nationalist myths to unify them! Four decades of brutal Islamism went up in smoke, yet the West still insists on identifying us with it.
This contradiction doesn’t come from ignorance alone. It is structural racism and antisemitism, hidden behind the intellectual postures of the West. A racism that sees the Eastern human not as a revolutionary subject, but as a wild body—or at best, as a symbol of “anti-Zionist order.” In this sick logic, the Palestinian who becomes a martyr is admirable, but the Iranian who fights for freedom and equality is seen as suspicious and poisoned. They’ve built a false binary—Islamic Republic or Pahlavi/Mojahedin—and ignore every other front, every other structure that refuses to play by their script.
What’s the answer? Struggle from below. Building organizations that come neither from Western institutions nor from the identity crises of Global North intellectuals. Drop the cultural analysis and return to politics. If you’re truly with us, then fight against all forms of tyranny. And if you can’t, at least don’t stand in the way.
We have already found our path. We are the very masses who have made history—and will make it again.
