There are two ways to talk about the war in Iran: one clearly on the right side of history and one clearly on the wrong. This is not a question of left-wing or right-wing or even of being pro or anti the war.
There are plenty of valid arguments to be made both for and against it, and for and against the necessity of war in general. What there is absolutely no justification for, under any circumstance, is to stand with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It is a regime, after all, that has become the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world and rules over its people with a twisted fundamentalist form of Islam that it uses to justify its wholesale oppression, rape, exploitation and mass murder of innocent Iranians – especially of women, members of the LGBTQ community and so-called “apostates” – while its singular obsession with Israel has brought the entire country to financial ruin.
Most horrifically, in just two days in early January, it murdered thousands, likely tens of thousands, of innocent people whose only crime was protesting the financial ruin that their rulers brought upon them.
We live in a complex world, but there is nothing complex about the Islamic Republic. It is, very simply, as evil a force as exists in this world.
It’s not surprising, though, that it will always enjoy the support of its fellow radical Islamists who support the Islamic Republic. They, however, are easy to spot and even easier to ignore. Their bigotry is obscene, but at least it’s honest.
Much more worrying, though, is another group that may not actively support the regime’s radical ideology, but is willing to downplay, ignore, or even defend it as a way of advancing their own narrative: that the West is uniquely evil and has caused most of the evils in the world. And by “West”, I don’t just mean America and Europe, but the liberal-democratic order in general.
This anti-Western movement has been gaining serious traction in recent years, both because the likes of Russia, China and the Islamic Republic have pumped billions of dollars into anti-Western propaganda in everything from TikTok to prestigious universities and because of the very real frustrations of those who feel neglected or betrayed by the system in which they find themselves.
Either way, this is an ideology that, in its desperation to paint Western powers as the ultimate villains of every conflict, will overlook or minimise the Islamic Republic’s crimes, ignore the desperate voices of actual Iranians, and provide cover for a despotic regime as long as it means it can lay the blame for the whole thing on America (for installing the Shah in 1949) or Israel (for existing).
Sadly, Oscar Van Heerden’s recent “Musings” column, “This war has been a strategic defeat for the US and Israel” (Sunday World, April 12) is a textbook example of this phenomenon.
The bulk of his column is, of course, entirely unproblematic as he lays out a compelling and convincing case for why the war was indeed a “strategy” for both the US and Israel. It’s an argument that reflects the general sentiment of those who opposed the war from the get-go, and even the frustrations of those who didn’t: the regime is too resilient to simply be removed through a bombing campaign alone, and Trump has neither the support nor the stomach to commit to the long and difficult ground war it would take to achieve such an objective.
The problem, therefore, with Van Heerden’s latest musings, isn’t a fault in his argument but in what he omits around it: the nature of the regime that the US and Israel are fighting. To Van Heerden, who views the whole thing through a prism of “American imperialism”, the Islamic Republic’s crimes are irrelevant in the face of how it stands as a heroic bulwark against Western aggression: “a resilient people not prepared to give up their sovereignty and freedoms”.
Admittedly, it’s not entirely clear whether he’s referring to the Iranian people or the Islamic Republic here, but the very fact that he never actually delineates between the regime and its victims tells us everything we need to know about this particular worldview.
- Preskovsky is a features writer for Jewish Life magazine
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- There are two ways to talk about the war in Iran: one clearly on the right side of history and one clearly on the wrong.
- This is not a question of left-wing or right-wing or even of being pro or anti the war.
- There are plenty of valid arguments to be made both for and against it, and for and against the necessity of war in general.
- What there is absolutely no justification for, under any circumstance, is to stand with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
- It is a regime, after all, that has become the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world and rules over its people with a twisted fundamentalist form of Islam that it uses to justify its wholesale oppression, rape, exploitation and mass murder of innocent Iranians – especially of women, members of the LGBTQ community and so-called “apostates” – while its singular obsession with Israel has brought the entire country to financial ruin.
