Iranians are bravely fighting tyranny as the West wallows in performative outrage

Iran is on the brink, and everyone there knows it.

Ordinary Iranians are at the end of their tether. They are protesting because fear no longer works. Intimidation has lost its hold. They know exactly what the regime does to those who challenge it. They have seen the arrests, the long prison sentences, the brutal interrogations, the torture, the disappearances. They have buried the bodies of those who died in prison or were shot in the streets, whose names were erased before their remains were returned by the authorities. They are fully aware of what they are facing. And still they come.

That is not symbolism. This is not messaging. That is defiance under genuine threat. They know the world is not coming to their aid. This is not the first time they have taken to the streets, and they have been let down before by the so-called humanitarian West.

These are not protests choreographed for export, or designed to flatter Western sensibilities. This is a ruthlessly oppressed population pushing back against a regime that rules through religious coercion, intimidation, and violence, while steadily destroying the country itself. The Islamic Republic has crushed dissent at home and exports its ideology abroad, pouring vast resources into repression and proxy wars while making war on its own citizens.

These protesters are not posturing. They are not chasing admiration. They know the risks. This is a desperate battle for freedom. This is what genuine protest and resistance looks like. Raw, chaotic, dangerous, with the highest possible stakes.

By contrast, across Western capitals and campuses, a very different spectacle unfolds. Loud, self-assured, saturated with moral certainty. Protests that claim to stand for human rights and resistance to oppression, taking place inside the safety bubble of Western society. The slogans are polished. The outrage rehearsed. Zero risk. Zero consequences. Zero danger.

Starved of meaning or purpose, sanctimonious virtue-signalling activists unquestioningly swallow the lies and propaganda while convincing themselves they are on the right side of history.

History, meanwhile, is happening elsewhere, with desperate people risking everything.

What has taken hold in the West is not solidarity with the oppressed but the performance of virtue. Palestine has been turned into a moral stage on which activists rehearse outrage, congratulate themselves on their righteous indignation, and revel in their moral superiority. They pride themselves on their “courage”. But courage is easy when there are few consequences.

“Palestinianism” offers rebellion without cost, outrage without risk, and moral elevation for free. And the direction of that frustrated energy is no accident. Mass protests in the West are manipulated and exploited by outside forces and bad actors, driven less by concern for ordinary Palestinians and far more by hostility toward Israel and Jews.

The crowds march “for Palestine”. They chant for “resistance” while aligning themselves with Hamas, an Iranian proxy that has crushed dissent in Gaza and rules through fear, violence, and religious extremism, imposing on Palestinians the same authoritarian control the Islamic Republic imposes on Iranians. This is not solidarity with Palestinians. It is alignment with their oppressors.

The same is true of Hezbollah, paraded on Western streets as a symbol of defiance despite being a core component of the same Iranian project, sectarian, authoritarian, and violently intolerant. Hamas and Hezbollah silence dissent, subordinate women, eliminate rivals, and sanctify violence. Both exist to advance Iran’s openly stated goal of encircling and destroying the Jewish state.

Hezbollah has effectively occupied Lebanon on Iran’s behalf for decades. Hamas serves as Iran’s primary southern threat against Israel. Both have led their territories into ruin, with devastating consequences for Lebanese and Gazans alike, just as the Islamic regime has done in Iran.

And yet they are embraced. Why? Because the driving force here is not Palestinian freedom. It is the demonisation, de-legitimisation, and dehumanisation of Israel, the one state in the region actively resisting Iran’s expansionist, proxy-driven Islamist project.

Oh, the irony. Or perhaps simply the ignorance… Which is no excuse.

Western protesters claim to oppose oppression while cheering forces that impose it. They claim to stand for liberation while backing movements that extinguish it. They condemn terror in theory while rationalising, justifying, minimising, or outright denying the atrocities of 7 October, the deliberate slaughter of Israeli civilians, men, women, and children. They talk endlessly about human rights while ignoring documented abuses committed by those they label “resistance” and “freedom fighters”.

At the same time, these self-styled humanitarians strip Palestinians of agency. They portray them as helpless, voiceless, and incapable of responsibility. Eternal victims whose lives must be managed and explained by a Western humanitarian industry that thrives on grievance and the perpetuation of the conflict. Organisations such as UNRWA and a sprawling NGO ecosystem have entrenched dependency, excused corruption, and insulated Palestinian leadership from consequence, all under the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Israel, by contrast, asserts its own agency, its independence, capabilities, and responsibilities, and is punished relentlessly for doing so.

And Here’s the Thing. While Western streets fill with useful idiots peddling false narratives, Hamas propaganda, and Iranian lies, knowingly or otherwise, when Iranians rise up against the “head of the snake” itself, those same streets remain empty, silent, unmoved. No mass demonstrations. No campus occupations. No NGO mobilisation. No celebrity outrage. No sustained moral response.

That tells us everything we need to know about the West and these highly choreographed anti-Israel demonstrations over the past two years and more. If the West genuinely believed in resistance to oppression, Western capitals would be flooded with protesters standing with ordinary Iranians. Not as a one off, but relentlessly. Louder and more sustained than any march against Israel.

They are not.

When the struggle is against the Islamic Republic, not Israel, passionate justice warriors and protesters in the west somehow lose their voice. They are simply not interested. These “peace activists” and “human rights movements” are not motivated by opposition to tyranny or solidarity with the oppressed. They are animated by something far uglier, an obsession with Palestinians, a fixation on Israel, and a willingness to tolerate or excuse incitement, hatred and extreme violence against the Jewish state and Jews in general, as long as it can be framed as virtue.

The Iranian people, and their actions, expose Western protesters as frauds. The Iranian people are not committing acts of terror. They are not massacring civilians. They are not raping, kidnapping, or livestreaming atrocities. They are protesting, striking, and resisting power directly, fully aware of the potential consequences. That is protest, that is resistance.

7 October was not resistance. Hamas’s brutal exploitation and sacrifice of ordinary Gazans is not resistance.

The comparison destroys the moral narrative. It shows that Western outrage is not governed by principle, but by ideology.

Iran’s uprising does more than indict the Islamic Republic. It exposes the dishonesty of Western protest culture, the NGO industry, and a humanitarian sector that finds its voice when it comes to Israel, yet remains silent when Iranians fight the oppression of the mullahs. It shows what courage looks like when it costs something, and how quickly Western outrage evaporates when asked to confront genuine evil rather than a convenient villain.

The people of Iran are not looking to make a point. They are fighting to reclaim their country, their freedom, and their lives. By contrast, the Western anti-Israel protest movement isn’t fighting for Palestinians, for freedom, or for human rights. It is nothing more than self-absorbed cosplay, driven by the need to feel righteous and relevant.

Events in Iran expose it for what it is. One is resistance. The other is performance. History will not confuse the two.

More of Gary Cohen’s writing is available via his substack.