As we speak, for the 15th consecutive day, Iranians are protesting the Islamic Republic and its tyrannical leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.
Iran was once a society that embraced egalitarianism, was open to working with the West, and boasted natural resources that made countries like Japan reliant on partnerships to secure national energy security. The Pahlavi dynasty, albeit an absolute monarchy, oversaw this modernisation against a backdrop of press repression and the use of secret police to suppress opposition against its rule.
While some claimed victory over the Monarchy following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the reality of what this theocratic regime has delivered upon Iran is beyond inhumane. In 2025 alone, 1,922 executions were carried out by the Islamic Republic, with Ayatollah Khamenei threatening the use of the death penalty against protestors.
Women’s rights have been all but obliterated; compulsory veiling laws were introduced in 2024, only being paused thanks to international pressure. Iranian women are treated as the property of men, with laws implementing strict guardianship throughout their entire lives, whether it be to their fathers, male relatives, or husbands. Girls can be married at 13 or even younger, with the consent of a judge and a male guardian, with at least 27,000 registered marriages including girls under the age of 15.
While I am not advocating for a return to one form of authoritarianism over another, I refuse to dampen my support for protestors who no longer wish to live under such a dehumanising regime. Ed Davey’s support for the protestors, calling on the Foreign Secretary to rally the international community around their cause, was incredibly encouraging.
There is a quote from Christopher Hitchens that I have always admired, and believe is relevant, now more than ever. Responding to left-wing anti-interventionism regarding Bosnia, he said;
”Don’t intervene, it might destabilise the region.” And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn’t it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco?
We are at a turning point, where one of the world’s greatest autocratic regimes could fall. Now is not the time for soft words or for a pause. The Iranian people cannot afford either. We must be on the right side of history: support the protestors in both sentiment and action by providing them with the means to overthrow the Ayatollah and begin the transition to a democratic Iran.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and an active campaigner and canvasser with Swansea and Gower Liberal Democrats. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, trade unionism, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for the Fabians, Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Nation Cymru, Bylines Cymru, and Centre Think Tank.
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18 Comments
Totally agree with this. Far too many times over the last 20 years, the West has stood back and done nothing in the face of advancing authoritarianism across the World. I do sometimes wonder whether we’ve drawn the wrong lessons from the debacle in Iraq and become too isolationist in response.
However, that leaves a huge question of what exactly we should do, which I notice you don’t attempt to answer. Military action has become very unpopular amongst progressives, but did work in the Balkans and in Sierra Leone a couple of years before Iraq. And it probably would’ve worked in Venezuela if only Trump has been seriously interested in taking action to restore democracy instead of merely putting Maduro on trial. Sanctions only occasionally achieve much, but I haven’t seen many alternative suggestions. And whatever we do, merely destabilizing a regime risks making a bad situation worse (for example by creating a civil war) unless we are willing to carry through and provide enough support to establish a more democratic replacement.
Interesting to read your comment about girls in Iran being allowed to marry at the age of 13.
While researching own family tree research, I discovered that girls in Scotland could marry at the age of 12 until 1929. That is only 97 years ago…
@Joan Summers
That may have been 97 years ago, but this is the here and now.
@Simon Robinson
I feel that answering the question of “what to do” would require its own piece, as many different avenues must be explored 🙂
This is also the “here and now”.
“Child marriage occurs when one or both of the parties to the marriage are below the age of 18. Child marriage is currently legal in 34 states, and 4 U.S. states do not require any minimum age for marriage, with a parental or judicial waiver.”
https://equalitynow.org/what-we-do/womens-rights-around-the-world/womens-rights-in-north-america/child_marriage_us/
@Peter Martin
Yes, and that is equally bad.
The difference here is that the people of Iran are actively protesting against the Ayatollah and the theocratic Islamic State, and therefore, we should be supporting them.
If the American people turn on Trump, as they did in 2020 and vote him out, then that will be good. If he does anything to remove democracy from the US, then we should also back those against him, as we should in Iran.
Well said Jack.
The populists and authoritarians are only part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now. The other part is because liberals / democrats / conservatives / socialists refused to defend the very basics of safe, prosperous societies. We allowed authoritarians and populists to undermine us and we refused to help those seeking to improve their own lot.
You’re right, the ‘what should we do?’ question is complex, but there should be no doubt that we should want to help Iranians be free.
Surely what we want is for the Iranian people to be free to enjoy life in their own country in the way they want to enjoy it, not to have their economy crushed by sanctions designed, as admitted openly by US officials, to create mass misery and social discontent to the point of instigating instability, or to be lied to be western AI social media bots. Iran is not a second Afghanistan. Give them the space to decide what they want for themselves, even if it is not what we would want for ourselves. But the misery of the people of Iran is rooted in sanctions and the lack of options the theocratic leadership has open to it.
Am I the only one who struggles to see the difference between unarmed people who desire peace in their city being shot at and killed by unaccountable state agents on the streets of Minnesota and unarmed people who desire peace in their city being shot at and killed by unaccountable state agents on the streets of Tehran?
there is a podcast by David Olusoga and Sarah Churchwell called’ journey through time’ exploring the Spanish Civil War. They say that the Nazis were watching carefully for the international response and when there was none (apart from ill equipped civilians) they were emboldened. Made me think. ….
@John: Do you seriously believe that, if the sanctions on Iran weren’t there, the Iranian regime would allow the people of Iran to enjoy their lives they way they wish?
And, without condoning what happened in Minnnesota or the awful response by Republicans, there is a rather obvious difference between an isolated incident in which one official shoots one protestor (which might possibly have been the result of a mistake made in the heat of the moment), and having organised squads of guards come in with machine guns to mow down protestors en masse.
I think Joan Summers was making the interesting point that it isn’t that long ago that some elements of a patriarchal society like those in Iran applied in the UK. My mum was brought up in 1930s England, and her dad refused to let her go to university and forbade her to get a job when she left school, because a woman’s place was in the home. Things do change, but slowly in most cases. We must all remember the Arab Spring in 2011, which brought about ‘democracy’ in Egypt – for a short while, until autocracy was re-established.
Donald Trump is a transactional politician, and imposing sanctions or punitive tariffs makes sense to him because it ‘hits them where it hurts – in the pocket’. His simplistic view of the world ignores the facts; as long ago as the sanctions imposed on Iraq it became obvious that autocratic rulers don’t care if their people suffer suffer hardship due to trade sanctions, and in fact find sanctions useful, because they can blame the economic damage on their foreign enemies.
Bombing Iran would only make the clerics more entrenched. I don’t think any of us knows what the solution is, but perhaps we can hope that something akin to the end of Apartheid in South Africa will happen – the sudden collapse of a cruel regime due to a combination of pressures from different places.
Right now Trump’s claim that he supports the Iranian people simply gives their rulers an excuse to kill them when they protest, on the grounds that they are acting as a subversive force on behalf of a foreign enemy. This is so obvious it seems absurd to mention it, but we have to assume Trump doesn’t realise that in this case, careless words cost lives.
Presumably in the mind of Khamenei, the decent people of Iran who are at their wits’ end as the Iranian economy nosedives, are the embodiment of evil, and he thinks his duty is to have them killed. I would describe that as a psychotic delusion, in which he has lost contact with reality, because anyone in their right mind would see that the Iranian people simply want the right to benefit from Iran’s potentially huge wealth, instead of living in poverty.
But what motivates the thousands of revolutionary guards who are carrying out his wishes? Have they all gone mad, or do they fear retribution if the regime is ousted ?
I wouldn’t say Iran under the last Shah “embraced equality”. It was relatively liberal in terms of women’s rights and role, but there was massive economic inequality. As in early 20th century Russia, rapid economic development plus not enough efforts to spread the benefits create a much more revolutionary situation than stagnation.
I strongly agree with the rebuttal of Standpoint Theory absolute cultural relativism. Oppressing people is wrong and liberal views on free speech and woman’s rights are not the preserve of the “West” or even of modernity. The trick, of course, is to calculate what interventions may work. Dubya Bush and Iraq is the cautionary tale.
On @Simon Banks’ point about calculating what interventions work, I’d agree, but would make two further points.
1) There are a lot of different kinds of interventions. We’ve seen military interventions / invasions end in disaster and sometimes work out well, but there are (at least sometimes) many options short of invasion. Opening borders, closing borders, supplying equipment, supplying weapons, broad-based sanctions, targeted sanctions, etc.
Even just looking at military interventions there are a lot of options. Things might have been a great deal better in Syria if a day or two’s bombing of Syrian miltiary airports and planes had removed the Assad regime’s ability to systematically destroy hospitals, power stations, water treatment works, bakeries, transport hubs in towns and cities across vast swathes of the country in rebel hands.
I’ve seen one report that the Iranian government has used a military aircraft to attack protesters, but I’ve no sense as to whether that’s true and if so, how common it is. There was a huge amount of information coming out of Syria which, while complex, gave those interested the opportunity to try to understand what is happening. But in the case of Iran, those of us without access to military / spy satellites have very little idea what exactly is going on, which makes it very hard to know whether we should support any particular course of action.
2) Also worth distinguishing between interventions instigated by outsiders for their own reasons (whether they be well-meaning or otherwise) and those inspired by those impacted. Not to say whether any particular intervention is wise or not, but I think there is a difference responding to a massive event started by others (e.g. a mass uprising and a violent response) and to perceived (or imagined / fabricated) justifications in the absence any other opportunity or reason. Liberating Kuwait in 1991 from an Iraqi invasion was very different to choosing to invade Iraq in 2003.
It seems to me, that the imposition of a “strange” religion – by force! ( Jewish Zionism) ; gave rise to a natural and extreme reaction in the surrounding countries.
Enabling extremely radical and violent religions to take hold. And also started much of the terrorism we have suffered in the “West”, since.