The West Is Still Failing the Advocates of Freedom in Iran

Since the massive popular protests in Iran in 2019 against the reactionary ruling junta in Tehran, the scene has not changed much in relation to the Western position. The Western reaction to the current mass women’s demonstrations has not changed from that shown during the 2019 and 2020 protests.

Since then, the Western reaction has been divided into two parts: empty and meaningless verbal condemnation and new packages of sanctions that are officially against the mullahs' regime in Tehran, but in practice it is the middle and poor classes of the Iranian people who pay the heavy price for these sanctions.

The West, especially the US, has previously failed the advocates of freedom in more than one country ruled by a tyrannical regime. In Hong Kong, millions of protesters took to the streets in 2019-2020 demanding their civil rights from the tyrannical regime in Beijing, also known as the Anti-Extradition Bill Amendment Movement. Finally, the demonstrations were brutally suppressed, and the West did not care about the protesters, who were left to their dark fate.

In Belarus in 2020, the country witnessed enormous strikes as part of the Belarusian democracy movement in the run-up to the Belarus 2020 presidential election, to prevent a sixth term in office. Also, in the case of the Belarus demonstrations, the West did nothing but denunciation and imposing new and useless sanctions against Lukashenko's regime.

The West adopted the same policy in Syria, Iraq, and several other Arab countries during the events of what became known as the Arab Spring. In all of these cases, the West, especially the US, has systematically let down the voices of the protesters, who have been subjected to various forms of retaliation and abuse from their repressive regimes, at a time when the West was satisfied with condemnation sometimes and sanctions at other times.

The shameful Western position reflects several facts: The West's indifference to spreading democracy, which contradicts what it claims, and focus only on Western interests, even if achieving this is, as it has always been, at the expense of the suffering of other nations. The inability to intervene in the issue of Hong Kong and Belarus to not provoke China and Russia.

But the situation is somewhat different in the case of Iran. The West, particularly the US, can support the protests and enable the protesters to make gains on the ground, but for Western and American unique accounts, this is not permissible.

History testifies that the US, France, and Britain were the ones who installed the Wilayat al-Faqih gang in Iran in 1979 after they overthrew the regime of their ally, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The West did not install extremist political Islam in Iran to remove it only after several decades.

The presence of the current Iranian regime serves the agendas of the West more than it threatens them. The most important of these services is the blatant Iranian interference in the affairs of countries in the region and the resulting instability and increased regional tension. This, in turn, serves the policies of the West, increases the sale of arms, and provides the West with pretexts to interfere in the matters of the region.

Former US President Ronald Reagan said: "Our wrong policy is what led to the downfall of the Shah's regime in Iran, a black point in the history of the United States of America, and as a result of this policy a crazy fanatic was able to take control of matters in Iran, sending thousands of Iranians into the regiments of fire."

However, it seems that the story was not, as former President Reagan explained, that it was just a mistake. It was a purposeful and methodical mistake in order for political Islam in the Middle East to be able to take power in an Islamic country. This raised the morale of all extremist political movements in the region, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots such as Al-Qaeda, Jihad, ISIS, and others.

How can the US and the West help the young women and men of Iran get rid of the Shiite political Islam regime at a time when America has handed over power to the extremist Taliban movement in Afghanistan and at a time when it is providing financial and intelligence support to most of the extremist political Islam movements in the Middle East and North Africa, especially, the Muslim Brotherhood.

The young women and men of Iran are now aware of these bitter facts, and therefore, they are demonstrating against the nastiest and most despicable regime in the world, relying only on themselves and on the moral support of all the free people in the world, especially in tyrannical countries.