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The
argument that the Islamic Republic of Iran, established in the wake of the
Iranian revolution of 1979, has a moral compass will come as a shock to many of
the propagandized people of the West.
Iran supports the Palestinian cause. It sees the Palestinians as the victims of
a decades long programme of ethnic cleansing instigated by Zionist Israel which
is backed by the United States. It also supported left wing liberation
movements in South Africa and Central America. Israel was at the same time
supporting Apartheid South Africa and training right-wing death squads in Latin
America.
The Iranian Constitution has a clause making it mandatory to set aside funding
for liberation movements. This is something not understood by the West and most
Westerners who absorb all the conflated anti-Islamic propaganda of the Western
Mainstream Media.
The accusation that Iran is the greatest sponsor of global terror is untrue.
Most terrorist acts committed by militant Muslim groups are by Sunni
organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Iran's Shia ally -not proxy- in
Lebanon, Hezbollah exists simply because of Zionist Israel's coveting of
Lebanese territory up to the River Litani.
The West cannot digest the fact that far from introducing a regressive and
unenlightened culture as they believe all Islamic societies do, Iran has
maintained a scientific culture alongside the culture of poetry and philosophy.
The educational qualifications of many of their political leaders attests to
this. The late Ali Larijani for instance was a scholar who wrote three books on
Immanuel Kant's philosophy including one which focused on the mathematical
method in Kantian philosophy.
Iran's contemporary achievements in science can be ascertained from the amount
of patents registered by its citizens, the contributions of its academic
community to journals on physics, and of course from its ballistic missile and
drone-making programmes.
Iran has a multi-layered moral base which is simplistically distorted in the
West as a medieval hardline attitude against females and gays. They have no
idea that Iranian women undertake almost the full gamut of occupations from
taxi drivers to university professors. They do not all wear hijab and are not
forced to. Their literacy rate is far in excess of the time of the Shah when
rural illiteracy was widespread.
The West refuses to believe that Iran has for decades declined to make a
nuclear bomb just as it refused to retaliate against Iraq's use of chemical
weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilian populations during the Iran-Iraq
War of the 1980s. Both decisions, fatwas respectively by Ayatollah Khomeini and
Ayatollah Khamenei, were based on the view that usage of both in war is un-islamic.
Iran may be a theocratic state, but it has layers of democratic institutions
and decision-making processes which cannot rationally have it pigeonholed as a
despotic state ruled by a single dictatorial cleric. It is certainly more
democratic than the absolutist monarchies of the Gulf region who are allies of
the United States and subservient to Israeli interests.
Iran's lengthy heritage goes back to the Achaemenid Empire and its famous kings
such as Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius. Persia also produced many scholars and poets
during the highwater mark of Islamic achievement. They include the polymath
Omar Khayyam.
Belatedly, Iran is now being acknowledged in Western media as a
"civilizational state" -not only because of the aforementioned
history, but because of the resilience of its political and military leadership
in the face of a criminal war of aggression launched on it by the United States
at the behest of the State of Israel and its lobby.
Its people -including many who are not supporters of the Islamic form of
government- have also been resilient and have rallied to their leaders as they
have seen scores of innocent civilians killed by American and Israeli bombs in
deliberate attacks on population centres and non-military infrastructure.
This rallying around the flag in the face of an external aggressor is not a new
phenomenon. But the resilience of the Iranian population who have staged
rallies at squares, thoroughfares and bridges in defiance of American and
Israeli bombing ought to inform Western audiences about a national psyche that
is infused not only with a pride in being Persian but also from being a Shia
nation for hundreds of years.
The resultant synthesis of Iranian culture and Shia Islam has imbued the
country's people with the spirit of martyrdom for the cause of honour and
liberation.
They are after all the "children of Imam Husayn", the grandson of
Islam's Prophet, who sacrificed himself and his followers at the Battle of
Karbala against an unjust ruler.
And in this existential war against what they consider to be the
"unjust" regimes of America and Israel, they are willing to endure
sacrifices which the average Westerner is unable to comprehend.
© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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