The resolve of the Iranian people, their steadfastness and commitment to protecting their inalienable sovereign rights, is a reality that is slowly creeping into the awareness of western audiences. This resolve has a far greater history however and it is only once western audiences acknowledge this, that we’ll have a clear understanding of our own struggle.
Iran (formerly Persia) as a recognisable political and cultural entity has existed for 5000 years, predating the rise and surpassing the wisdom of our current imperial powers. It has survived conquests by Arabs, Turks and Mongols and looks set to survive the incoherence of a failing empire, hanging on for dear life by the thread of inverted realities and inept brute force. The history of Iran is peppered with examples of the unfathomable bravery that we witnessed in April of ‘human chains’ forming collectively to protect their critical infrastructure. These examples empower a resolve, defiance and a civilisational consciousness that our arrogant overlords, high on their own propaganda supply, are incapable of comprehending, acknowledging or inspiring.
One powerful example regularly cited by the Iranian leadership and holding particular importance this week, is the Liberation of Khorramshahr. Commemorated yearly, this grueling battle during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), came to symbolise underdog victory against all the odds. An internationally isolated and underequipped Iran retook the city in southwest Iran from Iraq on May 24th, 1982, despite Iraq’s massive military advantage via the backing of the Soviet Union, western powers and the Gulf states. The loss of Khorramshahr in an earlier brutal battle, came as a deep national shock. A once thriving port city in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan was reduced by Iraqi forces to a ghost town in an intense 34-day battle that left 7000 Iranians dead and Iranian soldiers reduced to fighting with knives and bayonets.
Two years later, utilizing their complex terrain, engineering proficiency, tactical ingenuity, resolve and national pride; Iran rallied the troops to reclaim their City of Martyrdom, reflecting a spirit of resistance and perseverance that lives on in Iran’s collective memory. Posting on X on the day of commemoration this Sunday, President Pezeshkian highlighted the battles enduring significance “Khorramshahr today is Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the Strait of Hormuz… Resistance, self-sacrifice, and repelling aggression are rooted in the culture of this land.”
The horrors of the Khorramshahr battles were overshadowed by the industrial scale of the savagery to come; a savagery that western powers are yet to come to terms with. Chemical weapons were used by Saddam’s forces numerous times during the Iran-Iraq war. In March 1988, Saddam used western provided chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers, pro-Iranian Kurdish fighters and civilians. The Halabja massacre, being the largest chemical weapons attack deliberately against a civilian population, is remembered for its unprecedented scale but these weapons were used extensively by Saddam throughout the war, claiming thousands of Iranian lives.
The international community’s response to this day has been shameful. True to form, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency initially blamed Iran for the Halabja massacre, until later evidence placed the blame squarely on Iraq. Western culpability however is a different matter. There has been no formal apology from western powers and Germany, providing the bulk of support for Saddam’s chemical weapons program, still denies its key role.
This duplicity, this illegal, immoral behaviour from the west towards Iran is nothing new. Iran is more than familiar with the rotten games of denial, superiority, projection, extraction, domination, infiltration and savagery conducted by western powers. Within the Islamic Republic’s history alone, Iran has held firm under the relentless illegal and immoral attack of western hybrid warfare; military attacks, crippling sanctions, targeted assassinations, attempted coups, infiltration, psyops, espionage, cyber-warfare, western backed terrorism, blockades and sabotage. This latest stage of the rabid empire’s onslaught, its desperate thrashings to maintain power, blindly underestimating its opponent’s historical resolve; this stage is depleting the empire’s withering military prowess and shattering the sense of moral superiority that blinds and inhibits its own inhabitants.
After nearly three years of genocide, awareness is growing. Truths that once formed the western common sense, self-understanding are being shattered. Our democracies are a facade, our leaders, media, cultural establishments, civic institutions and NGOs are captured by a vile Epstein class that operate beyond any law known to God or man. Iran has demonstrated its foresight in its unparalleled preparation for this war, they are bearing the brunt of this frontier, transcending the divisive tactics of the west to unite collectively, through the strength of their conviction, empowered by their faith.
Our challenge in the west is to part the murky waters of moral equivalence that blights our understanding; the remnants of decades, centuries of demonisation campaigns that persistently rumble through the collective consciousness.
Whether it’s Iranophobia, Chinaphobia or Russiaphobia, we need to embrace the lived reality of anti-imperialist forces through a renewed lens, laying bare the orientalist fabrications of western primacy. When the bikini is lauded as a symbol of female emancipation, we should come to see its vile reality; that this female fashion iconic symbol was launched to celebrate the testing of H Bombs on Bikini Island, making guinea pigs of the thousands of indigenous inhabitants of the archipelago.
That this image of femininity masks the darkness of Project 4.1, where inhabitants were referred to as ‘radioactive data’ and studied by the US to examine the consequences of their bomb testing. The equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb exploded in the area for twelve years, destroying incalculable lives, the environment, culture and the traditional way of life. Predictably, the US has failed to apologise for these atrocities or even to acknowledge responsibility for the nuclear testing program [refer to John Pilger’s film The Coming War on China].
The bikini was also adopted in Iran as a symbol of progress by the imperial puppet Mohammad Reza Shah (1941–1979), masking the reality of his brutal dictatorship, supported by the western backed and trained Savak; one of the most brutal torture organisations in modern history.
Iranians at home are uniting as they witness and experience first-hand the overt violent reality of the US/Zionist empire. The spell of western individualism and liberty, that once may have had a hold on younger Iranian minds, disconnected from the lived reality of the SAVAK and the Iraq war; this spell has lost its potency.
We have a long way to go in the UK and the west to reach that level of clarity, to effectively challenge the Eurocentric, orientalist bias that infiltrates people’s thoughts; those assumed ‘truths’ that are anything but. The knee-jerk, default bias towards support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia, will hopefully be transcended by a wider lens that can see Zelenski’s embracement of Zionism and NATO’s aggressive expansion campaign in Europe for the past 25 years.
Instead of echoing the Russian imperialism mantra, we’ll see the crimes of US imperialism via NATO, a project that is draining our coffers and any potential for true sovereignty. That instead of parroting the free-speech fable, the establishment lines of our political, economic, media, cultural and educational institutions will become patently clear.
When China is presented as a security threat, we’ll know the reality of how western powers have politicised our nuclear watchdogs for decades, playing Russian roulette with all our lives. We’ll come to thank China for challenging America’s unilateral sanctions, an economic device that is responsible for 38 million deaths over a 50-year period [The Lancet Global Health, July 2025]. Not only does this make an assimilated moral existence within the neoliberal, imperialist order impossible, it is also stunting any potential for a thriving domestic and international economic alternative. We could be examining China’s economic success, their high-speed rail lines that put shame to our (theoretical) own and ditch our tired, archaic posturing about democracy; a pompous positioning that is no less blinkered than the emerging far right it gave birth to. As Eric Li, the Chinese entrepreneur said in John Pilger’s film The Coming War on China ‘in the US you can change the political parties, but you can’t change the policies’. Democracy is a nice idea, but it makes for an ugly mask, if we can shed the trappings of its delusions, we might have a chance at making authentic steps toward progress.
The empire is collapsing, we need to coordinate our efforts towards fighting for a different approach, an authentic break and ideally a different model. In Europe, Spain is a guiding light that is taking a firm stand against US dominance, Italian trade unions have also shown the power of mass mobilisation. The shadow of colonialism and centuries of plunder have evolved into a well-oiled international economic, PR, military war machine that is incapable of halting its path of destruction. Iran’s spirit of resistance- its commitment, sacrifice and ingenuity- has thrown a stumbling block on this path.
Instead of attacking the world that is struggling to be born we need to fix the functioning of our organism within this emerging counter-hegemony. The domestic bubbles that pander to and nurture fear of the far right are a neoliberal trick- one that will take us down with the sinking ship. Iran is doing the heavy lifting, fighting on the physical frontier. They have dealt with their orientalist monster- it’s time that we face our own.
