A friend recently asked me: “Why would the left support the mullahs?”
As Iranian security forces gun down protesters in the streets—death tolls now estimated between 12,000 and 20,000—the question addresses the most consequential moral failure of our time, one that directly threatens both Iranian freedom fighters and the Jewish people.
The answer exposes how an ideology born in Paris cafes in the 1970s migrated through Western universities into America’s mainstream, poisoning our ability to distinguish between freedom fighters and fascists—and ultimately, between those who would destroy Israel and those who would defend it.
The left’s romance with Iran’s theocrats began when Ayatollah Khomeini lived in Paris before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. For French intellectuals like Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre, the Islamic Revolution checked every ideological box: anti-imperialist, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-American. That it would become a totalitarian dictatorship was irrelevant—the same moral calculation that led Western intellectuals to excuse Stalin’s gulags and Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
The leftist romanticization of Islamic extremism found its American champion in Richard Falk, a Princeton University professor and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. He wrote that Khomeini and his inner circle were “uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals” with “a notable record of concern for human rights.”
While Falk later acknowledged the regime’s brutality, as recently as 2017, he praised the Islamic Republic: “I believe one of the lasting legacies of Imam Khomeini was to give authoritative priority to the Palestinian struggle.”
There it is. The left only sees Iran through the all-encompassing lens of “Israel-Palestine.”
Since the Soviets in the 1960s, the left has framed Israel as imperialist and colonialist. They have supported or excused Palestinian terrorism for decades, including denying Hamas’s atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Unquestioned solidarity with the Palestinians has become the defining litmus test of the progressive left.
Once Hamas becomes framed as anti-imperialist resistance, Iran becomes their heroic sponsor—resisting Zionism, capitalism, American hegemony. Criticizing Iran means betraying “The Cause.”
Jeremy Corbyn, when he served as the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, openly called Hamas his “friends.” Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) scolded Iran’s mullahs for crushing protests, then immediately pivoted to a longer lecture about U.S. imperialism and the 1953 coup. Message: Whatever Iran does, America—and, by extension, Israel—are still the real villains.
This framework turns a fundamentalist dictatorship that funds terrorism against Jews worldwide into a victim, America and Israel into oppressors.
Let me be more specific about what’s happening in Iran.
On Dec. 28, protests erupted in Tehran. Within days, they transformed into nationwide calls for the end of the Islamic Republic itself. Protesters chanted “Death to Khamenei!” and waved the pre-revolutionary flag depicting the sun and a lion.
The regime’s response was merciless. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij militia used live ammunition and shotguns loaded with metal pellets. On Jan. 8, Iran cut external communications to hide what Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi warned would be “a massacre under the cover of a sweeping communications blackout.”
She was right. By Jan. 10, estimates reached 2,000 dead in 48 hours. By Jan. 13, investigations concluded that at least 12,000 civilians had been killed. Some estimates now reach 20,000 dead.
This is the same regime that has spent 47 years calling for Israel’s destruction, funding Hezbollah and Hamas, pursuing nuclear weapons, and exporting terrorism globally. The same regime is now massacring its own people for demanding freedom.
Now compare the response.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued tepid statements. The United Nations has been silent.
Compare this to the immediate, absolute, unrelenting outrage these same organizations directed at Israel during operations in Gaza. When Israel acts in self-defense after a border invasion, the massacre of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 others on Oct. 7, progressive NGOs demand prosecutions within hours by the International Criminal Court.
The Iranian people deserve the full-throated support of every human-rights entity, every progressive politician, every person who claims to care about democracy and freedom. Instead, they get “yes, but ... .” Just like Jews, they have been abandoned by the very people who claim to champion justice.
The silence regarding Iran’s massacres and the outrage at Israel’s self-defense are two sides of the same coin. Both stem from a framework that cannot distinguish between victims and villains when Jews are involved.
Here’s the supreme irony the left cannot admit: The Iranian people rising up against theocratic dictatorship are the real resistance.
Not Hamas, which calls for Jewish genocide and massacred Jewish families on Oct. 7.
Not Hezbollah, which turned Lebanon into an armed Iranian colony with as many as 150,000 rockets aimed at Israelis.
Not the ayatollahs, who murder their own citizens, fund global terrorism against Jews and openly call for Israel’s annihilation.
The Iranian people are the authentic anti-imperialists—resisting an empire that has conquered Lebanon through Hezbollah, Syria through Assad, Iraq through militias, Yemen through the Houthis, and Gaza through Hamas.
Here’s the critical connection: The regime massacring Iranians in the streets is the same regime that has spent 47 years trying to massacre Jews. The billions that fund bullets killing Iranian protesters fund rockets fired at Israeli civilians, Hamas’s salaries and Hezbollah’s arsenal.
If the Iranian people are right that their regime is evil, then its proxy armies—Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis—are evil, too. And their cause—the annihilation of Israel and the Jews—is evil.
The global left fundamentally cannot admit this truth.
Because if it does acknowledge that Iran is a fascist theocracy murdering its own people fighting for freedom—and that this same regime is also the world’s primary funder of terrorism against Jews—then the entire progressive framework collapses.
The people of Iran fighting for their freedom are the real resistance, as are the people of Israel defending their right to exist. The left has failed them both—catastrophically, unforgivably, and for the same reason.
When the Islamic Republic falls—may it happen speedily in our day—the Iranian people will tell their story. Forty-seven years of brutality, repression, terrorism, misogyny and billions of dollars exported to support genocide against Jews. A story that will demolish the anti-imperialist mythology the left has built around Iran and its proxies.
What Tehran reveals is the very nature of progressivism. When your beliefs require you to side with theocrats who massacre 20,000 people fighting for freedom and to condemn Jews defending themselves against terrorism at the borders, you are no longer a political ideology. You are a fundamentalist religion.
