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Excerpt
Iran is not merely an authoritarian state with internal abuses. It is a revolutionary regime whose survival depends on repression at home and chaos abroad. Violence is not a failure of the system. It is the system. The same institutions that shoot protesters in Tehran and Mashhad direct terrorist proxies across the Middle East, exporting instability as a matter of doctrine.
It is therefore essential to separate the Iranian regime from the Iranian people. The millions who have repeatedly taken to the streets at enormous personal risk are not enemies of the free world. They are among its most courageous defenders. Women tearing off their veils, students defying clerics, and workers striking in the face of bullets represent a moral struggle that aligns naturally with liberal democratic values, not against them.
To frame opposition to the Islamic Republic as anti-Iranian is both dishonest and immoral. The true betrayal is to excuse or relativise a regime that executes dissidents, enforces gender apartheid, and wages proxy wars across an entire region. Standing with Iranian protesters is not an act of Western imperialism. It is an act of moral consistency.