The silence about the detestable abuse and massacre of Iranian civilians at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran has become deafening.
While potentially thousands, and even tens of thousands, of protesters have been brutally killed by the regime, the South African government as well as many political parties and organisations have not just remained silent or clung to forced neutrality — they have even thrown their lot in with Tehran’s theocratic dictatorship.
Since seizing power in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Ayatollah and the mullahs, a religious elite, have turned Iran into an authoritarian state pushing a twisted, archaic religious doctrine.
Women are considered less than second-class citizens and are punished simply for refusing to wear a headscarf.
Homosexuality is punishable by death. A religious and military elite run roughshod over the citizenry, profiting off oil wealth while funding an international terror campaign that has led to the collapse of many countries and the promulgation of multiple civil wars.
While pro-Palestinian groups raced to condemn Israel for perceived war crimes and human rights infractions, the very same groups have either remained silent about the Iranian protests or have come out in support of a government slaughtering its own people.
The corrupt blend of Islamic theocracy and socialist central planning has led to the Iranian economy crashing, and millions of citizens finally having enough with the regime and rising up against them.
In response to these demands for reform and the adoption of human rights, the regime has opened fire on unarmed civilians with automatic weapons.
Civilians being treated in hospitals have been kidnapped by the regime and have disappeared.
The Iranian regime has shown no restraint in the treatment of its own population, which reveals the bald-faced hypocrisy of its many allies in South Africa.
While pro-Palestinian groups raced to condemn Israel for perceived war crimes and human rights infractions, the very same groups have either remained silent about the Iranian protests or have come out in support of a government slaughtering its own people.
This reveals something we should already know: the goal was never to stand with the oppressed or support human rights; it was to advance an agenda steeped in hatred of the Jewish state and the West in general.
Notably, the ANC and department of international relations & co-operation have not condemned Tehran’s violence, instead welcoming Iran to join naval drills off South Africa’s coast. The EFF has explicitly supported Tehran, accusing the protesters of being tools of “Western imperialism”.
BDS and Africa4Palestine have depicted the Iranian regime as a victim of Western aggression, even though the government in Tehran is killing its own citizens and funding a terror network that has led to countless deaths throughout the Middle East.
Gift of the Givers claims to stand up for all human rights but has not said anything about the violence in Iran or condemned any violence except that which it perceives to be Israel’s fault.
The Media Review Network (MRN) has actively pushed a pro-mullah, pro-regime agenda in the South African media, depicting the protesters as pro-Western terrorists and actively promoting South African and Iranian relations despite the violence.
While the MRN exists as a pro-Palestinian and Muslim advocacy organisation, it clearly doesn’t care about Muslims unless it believes that it’s the West harming them.
The DA has challenged the government to take Iran to the UN Human Rights Council, but at the time of writing South Africa’s only consistent foreign policy is condemning Israel for defending itself, and the West for overthrowing tyrants. The extent of the presidency’s position has been to call for calm, while refusing to condemn the regime.
It is clear from the response of all of these organisations that their condemnation of Israel and the West was never about human rights or principle, but simply about a devout hatred of the West for the sake of hating the West.
The protests in Iran reveal this moral and intellectual bankruptcy and threaten their deeply held conviction that Iran is an anti-Western success story.
But it isn’t a success. It’s a brutal dictatorship combining the worst of Islamic fundamentalism with the worst of socialism. It is everything that the radical left loves in South Africa, and its collapse shows how wrong they are.
That is why they refuse to condemn Tehran and side with the people of Iran against their oppressors. So, instead they strip agency away from the Iranian people by constructing conspiracy theories involving the CIA and Mossad — simultaneously leaning on repeated anti-Semitic libel.
The truth is that the people of Iran have chosen to rise up. Any involvement from the West is in the interest of a people who are hungry for liberty and prosperity.
The people don’t need to be pushed by foreign interests, but hopefully foreign interests help them in their fight so that they can achieve the freedoms they deserve.
What all this has made clear is that the anti-Western contingents of our government and civil society have placed themselves on the wrong side of history, and they will continue to be proved wrong again and again.
• Woode-Smith, an author, economic historian and political analyst, is based in Cape Town.
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