I’m starting to feel sorry for progressives who are schtum about the revolution in Iran. My contempt for them is giving way to pity. Imagine watching women fling off their hijabs in glorious defiance of the cruel mullahs who rule over them and feeling nothing. Imagine seeing brave youths swarm the streets to confront the tyrants who oppress them and just looking the other way.
The extraordinary valour of the young in Iran has exposed the moral bewilderment of the young in the West
Imagine seeing that young man in London this weekend scaling the walls of the Iranian Embassy to yank down the flag of a ruthless regime and saying: ‘Well, it’s complicated.’ Imagine how zapped of humanity you would need to be, how lacking in the fundamentals of morality, to witness one of the most daring strikes for liberty of modern times and just think: ‘Meh.’
The shameful, tight-lipped caginess of progressives in response to the glorious revolt in Iran is more than cowardice – it’s pathology. These people are so lost in the maze of moral relativism that they can’t bring themselves to criticise an Islamic regime. They’re so mind-screwed by intersectionality that the sight of young women throwing their hijabs on to open fires is more likely to baffle than excite them. ‘Is this hijabophobia?’, they wonder.
They’re so drunk on anti-Westernism that the first calculation they make when a people rises up is: ‘Will this help or hurt America?’ Fearing that the fall of the Islamic Republic would benefit the US, they balk at the thronging freedom fighters who are hell-bent on bringing about just such a fall. Hurting the white, privileged, colonialist West matters far more to these overeducated fools than freeing Iranians from the bondage of Islamist diktat.
The extraordinary valour of the young in Iran has exposed the moral bewilderment of the young in the West. Inculcated with that cruel, truthless idea that ‘All cultures are equally valid’, this new generation is struck dumb by a fiery foreign revolt against an Islamic government. They don’t know what to say, or even what to think. Solidarity struggles to take root in soil defiled by the cult of relativism.
The moral caution of progressives as the young of Iran fight for their lives shows just how corrupting the ideology of political correctness has been. How else to explain that we are witnessing one of the most important feminist revolts in history and yet many feminists are silent? Feminists who think being called ‘sweetheart’ is a patriarchal crime seemingly have nothing to say about a staggeringly valiant uprising of women against the feral crushing of their rights by religious bigots.
As for the Western left – they dream of revolution yet bristle and wince at the revolution in Iran. They deluded themselves into thinking the Islamic Republic was a great counterweight against the West, against capitalism and of course against that Jewish state they hate with such curious passion. Having lost faith in the working classes of their own nations, they made a devil’s pact with radical Islam, dreaming it might deliver a deadly blow to the ‘Western hegemony’. They instinctively fear the mullahs’ fall.
They will come to regret their gutlessness. For the revolt in Iran is a world event of extraordinary proportions. If this regime falls – and those of us still in possession of our moral faculties sincerely hope it does – it will prove to be the most consequential event of the 21st century so far. It will ripple far beyond Iran’s borders, radically changing the Middle East and the world itself. Do you really want your answer to be ‘I was being snarky about it on social media’ when your grandkids ask you what you did during the great Iranian uprising of 2026?
Everything will change if the ayatollah classes fall. Hamas and Hezbollah, already battered by the Jewish nation’s resistance against their regime of terror, will be starved of resources. Israel will breathe easier. Russia’s wings will be clipped as its key, crucial ally in the Middle East is laid to rest by the very people it oppressed. A chastened Russia will be to the benefit of all Europeans, not least the long-suffering people of Ukraine.
The West will be that bit freer, too. Free from the Iranian regime’s exporting of terror and its exploitation of mosques and charities to spread its misanthropic creed through our societies. Last year, numerous Hamas plots in Europe were foiled – the Jews of our own continent, as well as the Jews of the Holy Land, will be safer if the Iranian regime falls. The global project of Islamism, with its anti-Western, anti-women, anti-Semitic ideologies, will quake if the Islamic Republic crumbles.
The cause of Iran is the cause of humanity. Those brave souls are fighting first and foremost for themselves, as they should. After 47 years in the medieval gloom of Islamist rule, they deserve to see the light of liberty. But their revolt, their valour, their unshakeable yearning for freedom is a gift to the world, too. A stunning defeat for the forces of Islamism, delivered by women whose hair flows freely and men who want the right to think for themselves – it is exactly what humanity needs right now.
