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Wall Street Journal
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Why Israel's War Is Ours Too
In your editorial 'Israel's Nuclear Good Deed' (June 14), you rightly urge Washington to support Israel's pre-emptive strikes against Iran. Our cause is just: For months we witnessed the Islamic Republic build up its nuclear-weapons program, and we know its intentions. Yet this battle, which I've participated in against Iran's proxies, isn't merely an existential struggle for Israel. It's a battle for the values of all democracies. Everyone should remember which country is a dictatorship that exports terror and brutally oppresses human rights, and which is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israeli women participated in the attacks against Iran, the regime that brutally suppresses women like Mahsa Amini, beaten to death for not wearing the hijab. Homosexuals march in pride parades in Tel Aviv while sentenced to death in Iran's courts. Most Persian Jews left their homes owing to fear of religious persecution, whereas people from all religious beliefs pray in ancient churches, mosques and synagogues in Jerusalem.
Straits Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Straits Times
Iran's divided opposition senses its moment but activists remain wary of protests
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in a televised message following the Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 18, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. A man holds an image of Reza Pahlavi, as people protest against the Iranian regime, following the death of Mahsa Amini, outside Iran's consulate, in London, Britain, October 9, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photo DUBAI -Iran's fragmented opposition groups think their moment may be close at hand, but activists involved in previous bouts of protest say they are unwilling to unleash mass unrest, even against a system they hate, with their nation under attack. Exiled opponents of the Islamic Republic, themselves deeply divided, are urging street protests. In the borderlands, Kurdish and Baluchi separatist groups look poised to rise up, with Israeli strikes pummelling Iran's security apparatus. While the Islamic Republic looks weaker than at nearly any point since soon after the 1979 revolution, any direct challenge to its 46-year rule would likely require some form of popular uprising. Whether such an uprising is likely - or imminent - is a matter of debate. The late shah's son, U.S.-based Raze Pahlavi, said in media interviews this week he wants to lead a political transition, proclaiming it the best chance to topple the Islamic Republic in four decades and saying "this is our moment in history". Triggering regime change is certainly one war goal for Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Iranians to say "we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom". Within a ruling system long adept at quashing public displays of dissent, there are signs it is readying for protests. Mohammad Amin, a member of the Basij militia that is often deployed against protesters, said his unit in Qom had been put on alert to root out Israeli spies and protect the Islamic Republic. However, while the strikes have targeted a security hierarchy that crushed previous bouts of protest, they have also caused great fear and disruption for ordinary people - and anger at both Iranian authorities and Israel, the activists said. "How are people supposed to pour into the streets? In such horrifying circumstances, people are solely focused on saving themselves, their families, their compatriots, and even their pets," said Atena Daemi, a prominent activist who spent six years in prison before leaving Iran. MASS PROTESTS Daemi's concerns were also voiced by Iran's most prominent activist, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, in a social media post. Responding to an Israeli demand for people to evacuate parts of Tehran, she posted: "Do not destroy my city." Two other activists Reuters spoke to in Iran, who were among the hundreds of thousands involved in mass protests two years ago after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, said they also had no plans to demonstrate yet. "After the strikes end we will raise our voices because this regime is responsible for the war," said one, a university student in Shiraz, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. Another, who had lost her university place and been jailed for five months after the 2022 protests and who also requested anonymity, said she believed in regime change in Iran but that it was not time to take to the streets. She and her friends were not planning to stage or join rallies, she said, and dismissed calls from abroad for protests. "Israel and those so-called opposition leaders abroad only think about their own benefits," she said. Apart from Pahlavi's monarchists, the main opposition faction outside Iran is the People's Mujahideen Organisation, also known as the MEK or MKO. A revolutionary faction in the 1970s, it lost a power struggle after the shah was toppled. Many Iranians have not forgiven it for then siding with Iraq during the stalemated war of 1980-88 and rights groups have accused it of abuses at its camps and of cult-like behaviour, both of which it denies. The Mujahideen are the main force behind the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which like Pahlavi has cultivated close ties with some Western politicians. At a Paris forum this week, the council's leader Maryam Rajavi reiterated her opposition to any return of the monarchy, saying "neither the shah nor the mullahs". How far opposition groups outside Iran enjoy any support inside the country is uncertain. While there is fond nostalgia among some Iranians for the period before the revolution, it is an era that most are too young to remember. Within Iran, the successive rounds of national protests have also focused around differing issues. In 2009, demonstrators flooded the streets over what they saw as a stolen presidential election. In 2017, protests focused on falling living standards. And in 2022 women's rights were the trigger. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the election candidate protesters said had been cheated in 2009, has been under house arrest for years and is now 83. His policy was to reform the Islamic Republic rather than replace it - the goal of many protesters in later movements. For opponents of the Islamic Republic inside Iran, those unanswered questions of whether or when to stage protests, what agenda to pursue, or which leader to follow are only likely to grow more pressing as Israel's airstrikes continue. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Channel 4
a day ago
- Politics
- Channel 4
‘Wars don't bring democracy, they don't bring freedom'
We spoke to Iranian author Sahar Delijani. Her book 'Children of the Jacaranda Tree' is based on her family's experience as political dissidents. It describes how her uncle was killed by the Islamic regime for his opposition, and her own birth in prison. She now lives in the U.S. and is a supporter of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that emerged after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. We started by asking her if she'd heard from family members in Iran.
India Today
a day ago
- Politics
- India Today
Fact Check: Videos of Iranian women 'defying' the regime amid ongoing conflict are misleading
As Israel and Iran continued exchanging strikes for the seventh day, several videos surfaced online claiming that women in Iran were celebrating Israeli attacks on the country, a form of defiance against the theocratic government. Let's debunk two such protest?A video allegedly showing an Iranian woman dancing in the rain surfaced online. Sharing this video, an X user wrote, 'An Iranian woman sends a message to the Islamic regime: 'We will dance on your grave with all our hearts. We now have joy and hope for the future. The murderers of Iran's children and women will fall. The Islamic regime will perish.'advertisement The viral video was originally shared by Tamta Sabelashvili, a Georgian model and influencer, on her Instagram account on June 5, 2024. The model has listed her location as Strasbourg, France, on her Facebook account. She has also shared several photos and videos of the city on Instagram, with captions written in Georgian. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Tamta Sabelashvili (@tatasb_9)Refuting the viral claim, she shared a screenshot of the community note attached to the post, which said that she was not Iranian and that the video was not recent. Additionally, we found the viral video posted on her TikTok account in July also confirmed to India Today Fact Check that she is Georgian, and not Iranian. She said she has no idea why her video is being shared with such removing hijabs?advertisementAnother such video allegedly showed several Iranian women removing their hijabs in a school. Sharing this video, an X user wrote, 'Iranian girls remove their hijabs, take over their school, and chant, 'Death to the dictator and the Islamic regime'.'Reverse image-searching keyframes from the viral video led us to the same video in a compilation of Iranian student protest clips uploaded to YouTube on October 4, 2022. This indicates that the viral video is neither recent nor related to the ongoing Iran-Israel also found several 2022 news reports containing the screengrabs from the viral video. As per a report, the clip showed schoolgirls waving their headscarves in the air against the Iranian regime after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, who was detained by Iran's morality police on September 13, 2022, in Tehran for allegedly violating the country's mandatory hijab law. She died in the hospital three days later, sparking widespread outrage and did not find any credible media reports indicating widespread mass protests by Iranian women amid the Israel-Iran it's clear that these videos are not related to the present Iran-Israel InMust Watch Want to send us something for verification? Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000 You can also send us an email at factcheck@
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Netanyahu is using Muslim women's 'rights' to justify his war. What hideous, hollow hypocrisy
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has invoked the Iranian regime's heinous women's rights record to justify his heinous war on Iran. This is the man whose genocide of Palestinians in Gaza killed more women and children in its first year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades. 'They've impoverished you, they've given you misery, they've given you death, they've given you terror, they shoot down your women, leaving this brave, unbelievable woman, Mahsa Amini, to bleed on the sidewalk for not covering her hair,' he told Iranians in an interview with Iran International. It is incredible to hear Netanyahu call on the Iranian people to rise up against the very things he has subjected Palestinians to. But it is not surprising. I am all too familiar with the ways imperialists, occupiers and invaders weaponise Muslim women's bodies and rights to justify their wars. As an Egyptian, I know that colonisers such as Evelyn Baring, the 1st Earl of Cromer and the de facto ruler of Egypt between 1883 and 1907, supported greater rights for Egyptian women while being an anti-suffragist back home. Far from emancipating Egyptian women, Baring made it almost impossible for those opposed to the occupation and European influence to criticise traditions or religious practices without looking as though they were taking the side of the west. As a woman of Muslim descent, I remember vividly the US claiming its invasion of Afghanistan was to 'liberate' women from the Taliban's misogyny. Twenty years after that reckless invasion, an increasingly disastrous war and occupation, and a criminally chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban once again rule. Even worse and more shamefully, as a feminist I know that, unlike Afghan feminists, white feminists in the US were cheerleaders of that invasion, failing to understand the dangers of imperial powers co-opting women's rights. Leaders of the Feminist Majority Foundation – including Eleanor Smeal, the former head of the National Organization for Women – attended events at the state department and met administration officials. The spring 2002 issue of Ms magazine called the invasion a 'coalition of hope'. 'As we achieve our objective, we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom,' said Netanyahu in another televised speech aimed at Iranians. 'This is your opportunity to stand up and let your voices be heard. Woman, life, freedom – zan, zendegi, azadi.' The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, in a hospital in Iran in September 2022 days after being detained by the regime's 'morality police' for allegedly not complying with the country's hijab regulation, sparked the feminist 'woman, life, freedom' revolution. Women, queer people and marginalised minorities in Iran rose up to fight not only the regime's compulsory hijab law but its decades of repression. They did not need Netanyahu to fight for their freedom then, nor do they need him now. On the contrary, his attempt to co-opt the courageous uprising is the quickest way to discredit feminism itself – often dismissed as 'western' and alien. Wars and invasions harm, not strengthen, revolutions. As an Egyptian, I know all too well that the Egyptian regime tried its hardest to claim our 25 January revolution in 2011 was being masterminded from abroad. Protecting the 'liberal' and 'western' values of women's rights is an easy moral cover for what is an invasion, war or colonisation always motivated by a desire for power, resources or both. If western leaders really cared so much about female bodily autonomy, perhaps they could look closer to home. The same George W Bush who claimed to defend women from the burqa and the Taliban was the same George W Bush who, on his first day in office, cut off funding to any international family-planning organisations that offered abortion services or counselling. Would the white feminists call for the invasion of the US today, where a premature baby was extracted from the decaying body of a brain-dead Black woman who, against the wishes of her partner and family, was treated like an incubator because of the state of Georgia's ban on abortion? The patriarchy-atop-theocracy melange of Iran's 'morality police' is easier to see because it is so visibly expressed in the enforced hijab. But what is the enforced pregnancy of the Christian zealots in the US but a melange of patriarchy built atop theocracy right there? Wars and invasions do not liberate women. Ask the women of Afghanistan today. Every time an imperial power claims to 'liberate' women from 'their' men, those men will seek to wrestle back control over 'their women' when the invaders are gone. Taliban 2.0 have banned girls' education and barred women from working in public and private sectors, except for Afghan healthcare and a few other departments. They have barred women from travelling long distances by road or air unless accompanied by a male relative, and from visiting public places such as parks, gyms and bathhouses without a male relative. The Taliban have shut down even women-only beauty salons. As a feminist, I marvelled at and cheered on fellow feminists in Iran rising up for woman, life, freedom. And I am sure they know that the enemy of their enemy is not their friend. Mona Eltahawy writes the Feminist Giant newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
