It is possible—and necessary—to hold three positions at once on Iran: to oppose the regime’s egregious repression of its people, to reject foreign military intervention, and to refuse nostalgia for an authoritarian past.
The Islamic Republic of Iran governs through fear. It jails journalists and lawyers, executes dissidents, and brutalises women who defy compulsory dress rules. Since the Women, Life, Freedom protests erupted in 2022, hundreds—possibly thousands—have been killed, and tens of thousands more detained. International investigators have documented rights abuses that may amount to crimes against humanity.
None of this should be minimised. The Iranian people deserve dignity, freedom and self-determination.
But condemning repression does not require endorsing war.
History teaches a clear lesson: foreign military intervention does not liberate societies under authoritarian rule. It strengthens the very forces that crush dissent. From Iraq to Libya, U.S. and NATO strikes justified in the language of “liberation” produced chaos, empowered extremists, and buried democratic movements under the rubble of war.
Iran would be no exception. A U.S. or Israeli military attack would hand the regime its greatest gift: a rallying narrative of external aggression that unifies hardliners and undermines civil society. Bombs do not empower peaceful protesters—nationalism does.
Some commentators now even suggest restoring the Pahlavi monarchy as a “solution,” invoking the era of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi or projecting hopes onto his son, Reza Pahlavi, as if a return to royal authority would magically deliver freedom. This is a distraction.
The Shah’s regime was itself authoritarian, backed by foreign security services, and its overthrow in 1979 was rooted in genuine popular revolt against despotism and elite corruption. Reinstating a monarchy—as if nostalgia were a strategy—is not a pathway to democracy; it is a shortcut to new forms of domination.
There is also a troubling hypocrisy in how Western governments invoke Iranian women’s suffering. Feminist rhetoric has too often been instrumentalised to justify militarised policies, while the mass suffering of women elsewhere—whether in Gaza or Yemen—elicits far less sustained concern. Concern for women’s rights cannot be selective without losing moral force.
Selective outrage does not help Iranian women. It endangers them.
Responsible international engagement means applying targeted sanctions against individual human rights abusers, documenting abuses for future accountability, supporting independent media and uncensored internet access, and sustaining diplomatic pressure without collective punishment. It means respecting a basic principle too often violated in global affairs: that people have the right to determine their political future without foreign coercion.
Iran’s regime is oppressive. It has blood on its hands. It should not be normalised or excused.
But neither should Iran become another proving ground for imperial fantasies of control, or a stage for the return of discredited elites in new costumes.
From Iran in 1953 to Iraq in 2003, the pattern is clear: External force may topple rulers, but it rarely produces justice. More often, it leaves behind shattered societies and generations forced to pay the price.
Iran’s future belongs to Iranians—not to clerics, not to foreign bombs, and not to recycled monarchs.