The Left's Silence on Iran Isn't Hypocrisy; It's Consistency

David Harsanyi
Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:30:58 -0800
Opinion

There are no flotillas on the way to save Iran. No Soros-funded "democracy" groups pressuring Western governments to intervene on behalf of civilians who are being arrested and murdered. No astroturfing movement demanding economic boycotts.

When college students returned from winter break last week, they didn't find a single encampment supporting the Iranian uprising against one of the world's most brutal regimes.

Nor are there any emergency meetings or condemnations from the United Nations. Member states were busy denouncing the United States for removing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and Israel for its recognition of Somaliland. The more people might be free, the more the U.N. is distressed.
Updated: Fri Jan 16, 2026

There are no flotillas on the way to save Iran. No Soros-funded "democracy" groups pressuring Western governments to intervene on behalf of civilians who are being arrested and murdered. No astroturfing movement demanding economic boycotts.

When college students returned from winter break last week, they didn't find a single encampment supporting the Iranian uprising against one of the world's most brutal regimes.

Nor are there any emergency meetings or condemnations from the United Nations. Member states were busy denouncing the United States for removing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and Israel for its recognition of Somaliland. The more people might be free, the more the U.N. is distressed.

Outlets such as the BBC, which spread virtually every fictitious claim about the Gaza "genocide" and "famine" that was handed to them by Hamas propagandists, could barely spare a segment for the widespread protests in Iran.

A year ago, Mark Ruffalo, Billie Eilish, Guy Pearce and scores of other moral ignoramuses were seen wearing red and orange pins featuring a hand around a black heart symbol — referencing a Ramallah lynching of two Israeli reservists in 2000 who drove down the wrong street and were literally torn apart by a Palestinian mob. One of the murderers deliriously displayed his blood-soaked hands from the window to a cheering throng.

This year, the Golden Globes didn't feature a single celebrity championing the Iranian people.

All the silence is revealing. Not because it's hypocrisy. It isn't. It expresses a consistent political position. The progressive Left and woke Right are on the side of the mullahs. There are many reasons for it.

The charge of "hypocrisy" against leftist defenders of the mullahs reminds me of the mockery we throw at members of groups such as "Queers for Palestine." It misses a larger point. The red-green alliance between leftists and political Islamists is nothing new. They have all the same enemies.

The press? As Tahmineh Dehbozorgi recently noted, the Western media largely ignore the Iranian uprising "because explaining it would force an admission it is desperate to avoid: the Iranian people are rebelling against Islam itself, and that fact shatters the moral framework through which these institutions understand the world."

Indeed, Western progressives in the media treat Islam with, at best, a self-destructive moral equivalence or, at worst, reverence. The same people who cover domestic immigration enforcement as a portend to the Fourth Reich treat the Iranian regime, which regularly executes women for crimes against Islam, with kid gloves.

This deceptive coverage of political Islam is reminiscent of the Left's complicity in Stalin's terror in the 1930s, whitewashed to shield the broader communist cause.

Like the Soviet Union, the modern Iranian state is a full-blown totalitarian system. Not merely because it functions under an array of fundamentally illiberal ideas but because it controls virtually every aspect of life, from the spiritual to economic. What's worse is that the Iranian state is the biggest exporter of this brutal ideology, responsible for at least 1,000 American deaths over the years.

Let's call the Iran-championing "intellectuals" in Washington who would like to see the mullahs obtain nuclear weapons as a bulwark against Israeli regional hegemony the Ben Rhodes faction. The brutality of the regime doesn't concern them whatsoever.

And let's call the Israel-obsessives on the right the Tucker Carlson faction, who find modern Western ideals, "neocons" and the AIPAC far more offensive and dangerous than the theological fascism of political Islam.

A successful revolution against the Shia radicals would almost surely benefit the region. The clerics' fixation with Israel has little rational geopolitical reasoning. It is theologically motivated, while also useful in deflecting attention away from the regime's domestic failures.

Of course, we don't know whether this new uprising will succeed or what would happen if it did. This isn't the first time Iranians have rebelled. Thousands have probably been murdered already. Tens of thousands are in prison.

It seems unlikely that an Iranian revolution would succeed without a political or military coup or some external force. The Twelver Shi'ism of the clerics makes them different from the shah or other secular dictators who might be concerned about the lives of their people or their own fortunes. Mullahs would likely rather see the entire country in flames than surrender. Just look at how much needless peril and pain they place themselves and their nation in chasing nuclear weapons.

The president is reportedly weighing military options to support the protesters' efforts to dislodge these murderous fascists. You may support him in this effort or not. But any true champion of human rights is rooting against the mullahs.