The Tehran Tether: A postscript on the useful idiot
Why Western activists can't support the proxy while ignoring the paymaster
The theocratic trap: A requiem for the useful idiot
It has long been a specialty of the Western “progressive” to develop a sudden, convenient case of amnesia whenever the objects of their affection—the “liberation” movements of the Middle East—reveal themselves to be nothing more than the subsidiary franchises of a medieval death cult.
For decades, a certain segment of the academic and activist class in London, Paris, and New York has indulged in a masochistic romance with the most retrograde forces on the planet. They have marched under the banners of Hamas, a movement whose charter is a synthesis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the most frantic delusions of seventh-century theology, convinced that they were somehow striking a blow for “justice.”
But history, as it often does, has presented these weekend revolutionaries with a bill that is finally due. The recent, electrifying (actual liberation) eruptions of courage within Iran—where women are casting off the hijab and men are facing the gallows for the crime of wanting to live in the twenty-first century—have forced a crisis of conscience. Or, more accurately, they have exposed the hollowness where a conscience ought to be.
The “pro-Palestine” enthusiast now finds themselves in a most awkward position. They have spent years carrying water for Hamas, a group that is, in every literal sense, a janissary of the Islamic Republic of Iran. One cannot support the proxy while claiming to oppose the paymaster. One cannot cheer for the “resistance” in Gaza while turning a blind eye to the gallows in Tehran. To do so is not merely a double standard; it is a moral collapse.
Consider the landscape of this hypocrisy. For years, we have been told that the primary struggle in the Middle East is the struggle against “settler-colonialism.” This is the mantra of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) crowd, who view the only democracy in the region as a unique evil. Yet, when the Iranian people rise up against a regime that is the world’s leading practitioner of actual colonialism—exporting its “Islamic Revolution” via the slaughterhouse of Syria, the wreckage of Lebanon, and the hollowing out of Yemen—the silence from the Western Left is deafening.
Where are the “Queers for Palestine” when the Iranian regime hangs teenagers from construction cranes for the crime of “sodomy”? Where are the “Feminists for Gaza” when the Gasht-e Ershad—the “Morality Police”—beats Mahsa Amini to death for an errant strand of hair? The answer is that they are hiding behind a thicket of “anti-imperialist” jargon, terrified that if they criticise the mullahs, they might accidentally sound like a neoconservative or, heaven forbid, a supporter of Western liberal values.
The funding of Hamas by the Iranian regime is not a “conspiracy theory”; it is a line item in the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). When Hamas launched its pogrom of October 7th—an orgy of necrophilia, infanticide, and mass kidnapping—it did so with the blessing, the training, and the hardware of the Iranian theocracy. This was not a “uprising” against an occupation; it was a deliberate attempt to sabotage any hope of regional stability and to assert the dominance of the Shia Crescent.
The Western supporter of Hamas is thus an accomplice to the very regime that is currently drowning the Iranian streets in blood. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot claim to be a champion of the oppressed while supporting a group that functions as the forward-operating base for a regime that oppresses its own people with a savagery that would make a medieval inquisitor blush.
The choice is now stark, and it is binary. On one side, you have the Iranian people—those incredibly brave students, workers, and women who are shouting “Death to the Dictator” and “Women, Life, Freedom.” They are the true vanguard of liberty in the Middle East. They are asking for the basic rights that the Western activist takes for granted: the right to speak, the right to dress as they please, the right to not be governed by a group of self-appointed representatives of the Almighty.
On the other side, you have the “Axis of Resistance”—a euphemism for a network of terrorist proxies, from Hezbollah to the Houthis to Hamas, all coordinated by a necrophilic clergy in Tehran that views human life as a cheap commodity in the service of a divine apocalypse.
If you choose the latter, let us at least have the honesty to drop the pretension of “human rights.” If you support the regime in Iran or its Palestinian subsidiaries, you are not a “progressive.” You are a reactionary of the most dismal sort. You are a supporter of theocracy, a cheerleader for misogyny, and a fellow traveler of the most virulent form of anti-Semitism currently available on the market.
The time for obfuscation is over.
You must decide whether you stand with the victims of the IRGC or with the men who pull the levers of the gallows. You must decide whether you support the liberation of the Iranian people or the continued “jihad” of their oppressors. To continue to support Hamas while ignoring the cries for freedom in Iran is a form of moral cowardice that no amount of academic jargon can disguise. It is time to choose: the Enlightenment or the Inquisition? Liberty or the Lash? The Iranian people have already made their choice. It is high time the Western Left made theirs.
And so it goes.
These bright-eyed PhD candidates are currently very busy rearranging the moral furniture of the universe. They have discovered, with the help of a few posters and a megaphone, that history is a simple game of Cowboys and Indians, only with better scarves. They weep for Palestine with the synchronised precision of a high school marching band, yet when the Iranian government decides to turn its own daughters into target practice for wanting to show their hair to the breeze, these same scholars suddenly become as quiet as a Trappist monk with a sore throat.
It is a curious performance. They have traded the messy, inconvenient pursuit of Western logic for a pre-packaged narrative that fits neatly into a pocket-sized manifesto. They are so terrified of being called “un-progressive” that they’ve forgotten how to notice a slaughter unless it has been properly vetted by the campus subcommittee on approved outrages.
We are all addicts, I suppose. Some are addicted to morphine, and some are addicted to the warm, fuzzy feeling of being on the “right side” of a one-sided conversation. But to ignore the women of Iran while claiming to hold the scales of justice is a special kind of magic trick. It requires a level of intellectual gymnastics that would make a Cirque du Soleil performer weep with envy whilst simultaneously falling to his death.
They think they are being revolutionaries, but they are mostly just being polite to the wrong ghosts.
Welcome to the monkey house.
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