What’s the most annoying thing about being an Iranian in Britain? Since coming to the UK a year ago, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard one particularly irritating comment. I’ve been told it by Oxford students and professors, Uber drivers and friends. It has felt like a shadow following me. No, it’s not a racist remark; I’ve never encountered this in Britain. It’s being told: ‘I support what your government is doing.’

The greatest challenge has been not losing my temper when someone says it

People say it because they oppose Israel, back Palestine or enjoy resisting US imperialism. Of course, they know little of life under the mullahs.

The greatest challenge has been not losing my temper when someone says it. Believe me, it’s not easy. It’s like having a heated argument with someone, saying nothing, and then, in the hot shower at night, thinking of everything you could have said.

Where do I even start when someone tells me they support the Islamic Republic? ‘I don’t,’ seems too short. I love Iran, but its government is repressive and brutal. It finances terrorist groups in the Middle East. It buys guns for militias. Its morality police roam the streets. Its leaders are also wildly incompetent: double-digit inflation has been the norm for half-a-century.

Yet some Brits – blinded by the things they dislike, such as Israel – seem to give Iran a free pass. They are gripped by a kind of western derangement syndrome that means anything opposed to the West automatically gains the moral high ground. It’s as if it’s unimaginable that there could be moral and legal systems far worse than the ones here – because the West is always assumed to be the oppressor. But believe me, as someone who lived his whole life in Iran, there are worse legal systems.

What exactly is admirable about a country that lets a 50-year-old man marry a ten-year-old girl but bans a ten-year-old bottle of wine? (Between 2017 and 2022, roughly 184,000 marriages involving girls under 15 were registered in Iran.) Walking with your girlfriend while constantly fearing the morality police? Drinking alcohol with the risk of going blind because, since it’s illegal, many brew it themselves and methanol poisoning is common? Not going blind from alcohol and not allowing a 50-year-old to marry a ten-year-old is not a matter of cultural preference. One way of life is objectively better; one has nothing to be admired.

Growing up in Iran, one slogan was everywhere — in school textbooks, on walls in the street, on state TV: ‘The West, the Great Evil.’ Strangely, in my experience here, I’ve heard a softer continuation of that same idea coming from Westerners themselves. The reason, in my view, is privileged thinking: privilege is invisible to those who have it. The moment you are born British, you are free to criticise your government, to walk with your girlfriend without fear of morality police, and, when you hit legal age, to go to the pub without risking blindness. Things that seem normal to you are not normal where I was born. What is everyday life for you is a dream for many like me. That is the unique achievement of the Western value system — what philosopher Charles Taylor calls ‘the sanctification of ordinary life.’

That is not my experience, nor the experience of millions.

How many times I’ve wanted to say to British people who tell me ‘I support what your government is doing’: do you know why we’re having this chat here and not in Iran? Because alcohol is banned. Going out without a hijab is risky. Speaking your mind is outlawed.

The differences between life in Britain and Iran are not simply cultural ones, but about basic principles: one culture cherishes life; the other crushes it.

Is there anything I admire about my country? Yes: the men and women who simply want a ‘normal’ life. When Iranian women rose against the hijab, Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote: ‘Nowhere else in the Muslim world — and I mean literally nowhere else — would we see what we are seeing right now in Iran.’ What are we seeing? ‘The men of Iran are standing alongside women as they burn their hijabs.’

That’s the Iran I’m proud of – not the country’s brutal and useless leadership who are leading my homeland into despair. The truth is that western derangement syndrome has blinded many Brits to the reactionary nature of the Iranian regime. Yes, I know you want to ‘free Palestine’. But perhaps you should start by wanting to free Iran from the regime financing so much of the tragedy you claim to oppose.