My Iranian Friends
This is a photo of a young woman in the Iranian city of Abdanan; the first city to be taken back by the people of Iran. She is taking a selfie with a surveillance camera; the tools that have been used to repress the civilians of Iran by the Ayatollahs since 1979. The videos of Abdanan were circulating on social media last night. They are thrilling.
Once again, there is not a word to be seen about this on legacy media sites or news channels. I perused the BBC News website hours after these videos circulated. For decades we have rightfully criticized the BBC for anti-Israel bias. Yet, what you can identify clearly now is universal bias, against America, against Britain, and against the West at large. Not one of their stories is told through an objective journalistic lens. You will not see a public news service, but a blog written by agenda-fueled activists. Iran’s uprising is a story to be buried, given all it serves to do it expose the hijacking of the West by the same tyrannical powers that overthrew the Shah in the Iranian revolution of 1979.
I was surprised to see British academic Simon Schama bleating online the last few days about the cutbacks to PBS and NPR in the United States by the Trump Administration - or the “regime”, as he calls it. “This regime hates culture,” he tweeted. PBS and NPR are committing the same fraud as the BBC has engaged in for decades; cultivating programing to promote the real regime (socialism), disguised as "culture". They’ve been contributing to the undoing of America, as too the BBC has been the midwife to the fall of Britain.
Speaking of “culture”, if you want to understand how the “cultural” leftists are the Islamists’ biggest allies in destroying freedom from within, just look at the beacon of culture that Iran was before 1979. “Culture” was the first to be betrayed by the usurping Marxist-Islamist regime. My dear friend Ryan Saghian is a first generation American Iranian, and one of the top recognized interior designers in the US. He’s been sharing his inspirations from Iran in the last few days, soaring with pride for his brothers and sisters in the uprising:
Interesting what can happen to a vibrant cosmopolitan society with the insurgence of the wrong kind of politics, eh?
Speaking of, there are no political protests of solidarity for the lions of Iran in the streets of New York or LA. There are, however, leftist morons clashing with anti-Maduro Venezuelans telling them that the brutal dictatorship that took everything from them is a great thing, actually. Oh and Mamdani exposing more of his stupidity by the hour. You see, the American left is not on the side of real revolutionaries.
Meanwhile in the actually progressive New York City of the Middle East:
When the Islamic Regime in Iran falls, not only will Iranians be free but so too may the West have a moment of reckoning. The West will be challenged to free itself of the woke mind virus when suddenly millions of Iranians will have the freedom to speak the truth to the world about what the last five decades did to their once spectacular society. The first thing they will tell the West is that the Free Palestine movement is the handmaiden of oppression in your own soon to be former democracies. They will also reveal that there is no such thing as “international law” because it never applied to them, and laws that are selective are not laws. They are political weapons.
Yesterday, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi wrote in the Washington Post, offering himself to Trump as a steward of a national transition to democracy in a new Iran:
> “As 2026 begins, Iran is on the verge of a profound transformation. Across our country — from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar to cities, towns and villages far from the capital — Iranians are risking their lives to reclaim their future. Their message is unmistakable: The Islamic Republic has exhausted its legitimacy, and after almost 47 years, the country wants to be free.
>
> The courage of these men and women deserves more than sympathy. It demands clarity, preparation and responsible leadership — inside Iran and among those who influence global affairs. Because Iran’s liberation will mean much more than a restoration of dignity to Iranians. It will bring a global peace dividend of almost unimaginable proportions.
>
> That’s why I welcome President Donald Trump’s clear and firm support for the Iranian people. His message that the United States stands with those who seek freedom rather than with a regime that exports terror and instability has resonated deeply inside Iran. For protesters facing prison, torture, or death, knowing they are not alone matters. For the regime, it is a reminder that intimidation no longer guarantees survival. We saw proof of that in Venezuela.”
In the last year, Iran has lost Syria’s Assad regime, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and a strong Hamas in Gaza. Now they have lost their overseas hub in Venezuela. And Israel has made a very clever move by recognizing Somaliland in the Red Sea, providing a watchful sane eye over Yemen. Not much is left for Iran. Electricity and water is running out. The taps will soon be dry. Their currency has lost 60% of its value. In tandem, the Western left - the regime’s foreign agents - are digging themselves further underground where hopefully nobody will pay attention to them ever again.
Iranians are presently chasing Islam out of Iran because it has brutalized them for 40+ years. If they succeed they will never entertain "leftism" again. It was never their choice to begin with. The same leftists who scream about “genocide” today spouted blood libels against the Shah in 1979. These included the communists in Paris, and former Supreme Leader Khomeini. They spun lies, forged statistics, set fire to a cinema in 1978 with civilians inside it, and framed the Shah. It’s the playbook. Jimmy Carter’s appeasing America betrayed the Shah and the country fell into the hands of leftists and Islamists. The Islamists murdered the atheist leftists shortly after.
Today these foolish leftists parrot their ancestors to a tee, invoking "international law" to Israel and America, but not to the murderous regimes of Iran and its proxies, like they're playing a game of Catan. "Sharia law" is, in fact, Arabic for international law. Meanwhile, the asleep-at-the-wheel United Nations seems to be relaunching itself as the United Regimes. Over nine days, the Islamic Regime has targeted protesters in 92 cities killing 34, injuring hundreds and arresting over 2,000. The United Nations Human Rights Council have said zilch.
You may ask why the Democrats have yet to make any sort of statement about Iran. Well they were busy having a candelit vigil for the “fifth anniversary of January 6”.
Iran is not my story to tell. My Iranian friends, the circle of which is growing rapidly by the hour, are the narrators of their story. With that said, I welcome Arian Soroush, Iranian-born US attorny and writer, who sent me his work this morning. It is note perfect. With his permission, I am re-publishing it. “The Left’s Betrayal” is below for you to read. Iranian friends, we will not be silent like our neighbors. They stabbed you in the back 47 years ago, long before they did the same to us. We are with you.
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_The Left ’s Betrayal, by Arian Soroush._
I write with great emotion. Once again, as happens every few years, my brave compatriots in Iran are risking their lives. They are protesting one of the most oppressive imperialist regimes of modern history.
And once again, as with every other time, the Western left is nowhere to be found.
I refer to the same group who, on October 7, 2023—and in the days that followed, before any Israeli response—jubilated at the “resistance” of so-called “freedom fighters.” Islamist terrorists, by any honest definition. They championed a group that has done nothing, anywhere, at any point in history, to demonstrate a serious commitment to self-determination that leads to freedom, dignity, or prosperity. Instead, as is the Islamist playbook, they seek to dominate at home, terrorize abroad, and rely on Western leftist allies to launder their violence into moral abstraction.
Meanwhile, the peaceful and freedom-loving people of Iran—actual freedom fighters, with actual intent to live normal, prosperous lives—receive no such sympathy. No campus chants. No viral outrage. No moral urgency. Instead, we are left largely with the backing of the maligned right. (For which, by the way, we are grateful—whatever their motives.)
This is no new phenomenon—it is a pattern. One that predates the Islamic Republic itself.
I do not approach this as an abstract political issue; I spent my childhood summers in Iran, saw the system firsthand, and this injustice has remained the most defining and animating political issue of my life.
Let me recap real quick.
The 1979 revolution did not begin as a purely Islamist uprising. It was a coalition: Islamists, the Communist Tudeh party, Islamist-Marxist groups, and other leftist factions, united primarily by shared hostility toward the Shah and toward the West. These alliances were not accidental. Islamists and leftists have long found convenience in each other, particularly in their shared anti-Western instincts.
And what happened once the Shah fell?
Every one of those leftist allies was systematically eliminated—executed or exiled. Once the Islamists consolidated power, the leftists’ temporary usefulness expired, and the fundamental incompatibility between Islamism and leftist ideology was resolved the only way Islamism knows how to resolve such tensions: through eradication.
Fast-forward to 2009. Millions of Iranians poured into the streets to protest a blatantly rigged election, demanding something modest by any global standard: less theocracy, more accountability. They were met not with reform, but with violence—beatings, live fire, mass arrests, and killings carried out by the regime’s security forces.
What did President Obama do?
He stayed silent.
Years later, he would acknowledge that this was a mistake. But at the time, silence was policy. After all, the Democrats were long determined to strike a nuclear deal at nearly any cost—granting the regime international legitimacy and billions in sanctions relief, even as it continued to brutalize its own population and export violence across the region.
Despite that betrayal, Iranians did not stop. Protests continued, intermittently but persistently, over the next decade. Each wave was met with repression. Each time, the world largely looked away.
Then came 2022.
The Woman, Life, Freedom uprising—sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, whose crime was exposing too much hair. A young woman beaten to death for a strand of hair. One might imagine this would ignite the global left, so quick to claim feminism and human rights as its moral domain.
It did not.
Instead, we heard silence. Or worse, hesitation. Warnings about “cultural relativism.” Concern about criticizing the laws of a foreign country. As though the threat of death for women expressing themselves were a delicate anthropological question rather than a moral emergency.
And what did the Biden administration do?
By easing pressure on the regime during his presidency, the administration helped ensure the regime had the financial oxygen it needed to survive the moment. Of course, lip service was paid to the protestors—but structurally, the approach did not change. No meaningful escalation. No support commensurate with the scale of courage on the streets. Just continued adherence to the stale policy of making a deal.
No regime change for you, silly Iranians—don’t you know that diplomacy is the way of the thoughtful, regardless of how many bodies pile up?
This reflexive instinct to oppose whatever one’s political opponent favors—from Iran to Venezuela—is not incidental. It is central to the left’s failure of moral clarity. Obama wanted a deal, so the left wanted a deal. Republicans talk about regime change, so the left rejects it outright, as though the source of an idea alone determines its morality.
And so, principle is replaced with posture. Freedom and human rights relegated in favor of party lines.
Critically, the left has betrayed not just Iranians—but also its own professed values.
And the hypocrisy is infuriating.
The same people who speak endlessly about human rights fall silent when those rights are violated by Islamists. The same voices that posture as feminists will not speak plainly about a system that reduces women to legal minors, punishes joy, criminalizes dissent, and elevates death over life. The same activists who claim to oppose imperialism make endless excuses for a religious imperialism that has devastated Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon—and every once-rich society it has touched.
Islamism is treated as a protected category, not because it is misunderstood, but because condemning it would fracture the left’s preferred moral narrative.
And this brings us to October 7.
The same people who could not find their voices for Iranian women suddenly found them in celebration. Celebration of mass murder. Celebration of rape, kidnapping, and slaughter—so long as it could be reframed as “resistance.” The same people who warned against judgment when women were beaten to death for their hair had no trouble justifying atrocities when the victims were Israelis.
And if the Western left believes it will be spared, it should study history more carefully. Islamism has no permanent allies—only temporary ones. In Iran, leftists marched alongside Islamists, rationalized them, enabled them, and dismissed early warnings. Once power was secured, those same leftists were eliminated. Movements that elevate absolutism do not coexist with dissent for long. They consume it. And the Islamist threat grows.
Look at Australia.
In the wake of October 7, it had no qualms about rewarding Islamist violence with symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state. The message was clear: launch the most savage, barbaric attack in modern history, wait for the inevitable response of warfare that you intended (and that you designed to maximize your own civilian casualties), and we’ll back you. No such recognition—symbolic or otherwise—was ever extended to actual freedom fighters in Iran. And months later, Australia got Bondi: the Hanukkah beach celebration turned massacre by gunfire. This is what moral cowardice buys you. You appease, you validate, you look away—and then you act shocked when the violence doesn’t politely stay “over there.”
And I assure you, it’s not just the Jews they’re after. Islamist ideology is explicitly supremacist: rooted in actual doctrine, it demands domination—not coexistence—over those who do not submit. That is not paranoia. It is their own stated worldview. Jihad is only its most explicit weapon. Migration pressure, propaganda networks (including what you’re fed on social media), institutional capture, and intimidation are its quieter tools.
When you stay silent about this—or worse, enable it—you do not get peace. You get more violence. More intimidation. More attacks. And when those attacks happen, the same voices that cry endlessly about “genocide” offer only brief, embarrassed murmurs.
So, while I’m mad about Iran, I’m also deeply worried for the direction of Western society more broadly. I’m no alarmist. I try to look rationally at history and patterns. And my empirical conclusion, put simply, is that we are deeply, profoundly fucked.
To conclude, I say to those who need to hear it:
Wake the fuck up.
Get on the right side of history before it’s too late.
Thank you for reading.
