No to Foreign Intervention, Shahs, and Mullahs: Freedom Only Comes From Below
Written by Hawzhin Azeez
Unfortunately for the people of Iran and their long-held aspirations of removing the brutal Ayatollah regime, Trump’s killing of Khamenei has only served to create a martyr – a martyr that will soften his brutal legacy for many, increase support from hardliners for the regime, and move many moderate Iranians to defend the regime.
Meanwhile, images of pro-regime supporters mourning the Ayatollah have bewildered international media and confused segments of the Left into arguing that since people are publicly mourning, the regime must have had genuine popular support. And of course it did! A segment of Iranian society follows the hardline regime’s ideology, believes in and supports its Shi’ite supremacy, and has benefited from the regime in some shape or form.
This does not negate the reality that the regime is hardline, extremist, corrupt, brutal, repressive, undemocratic, and anti–women’s rights, and that it has massacred and brutalised thousands of its own citizens over the years. Images of regime supporters mourning should not derail the discussion that this very regime is responsible for at least 40,000 deaths in the space of one week, and that it continues to brutalise minorities such as Kurds, Baloch, Baha’i, Azeri, Ahwazi, Christian, and Jewish communities across the country. Iran also accounts for a massive proportion of confirmed executions worldwide, rising in recent years to nearly two-thirds of the reported global total!!! As Kurds we are consistently the most executed ethnic group across Iran – mainly because we are the most vocal in resisting the regime and unwavering in demanding our basic human and cultural rights.
The ideal situation would have been for the people’s of Iran to remove their regime, but since they have been robbed of their agency they are now wearily watching the unfolding conflict.
Now a war has been imposed on the people in the name of liberating them – a liberation that does not have democracy or the interests of the people of Iran at heart. It is a liberation that, as we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, uses the language of women’s liberation to impose a puppet dictator in the form of Reza Pahlavi, who will “liberate” a small segment of elite Iranian women in society to the detriment of collective women’s rights, leaving the structural violence experienced by marginalised women and communities in place.
If liberation does not dismantle authoritarianism, patriarchy, and ethnic domination, it is not liberation at all, but rather regime change that hijacks feminist language to replace religious authoritarianism with nationalist authoritarianism. Western interventionism by nature is incapable and unwilling to do this. This is why we say no to interntional intervention that impose puppet dictators in waiting such as Reza Pahlavi. This is why, as Kurds, as minorities, as pro-democratic groups, we consistently say: “No Mullahs! No Shah”!
This statement is a declaration that freedom cannot come from outside imposition. It is a demand that democracy, women’s rights, and the protection of all minorities must be at the heart of any future Iran. Anything less is not liberation, but a continuation of the same violence, dressed in new rhetoric, replacing a religiously garbed male with another hardline male, only dressed in an expensive suit.
This is something we as Kurds have witnessed and continue to experience in Syria, where celebrations over the removal of the brutal Assad regime had barely ended before the regime was replaced by an extremist force aligned with Al-Qaeda and ISIS, in the form of Ahmad al-Sharra. The democracy loving peoples of Iran, the long suffering minorities, the women and girls of Iran deserve better than this painful outcome.
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