Donald Trump and the US military, aided by Israel, are carrying out an aggressive campaign against the widely despised Iranian government, a regime that has enforced gender apartheid and marginalised minorities for decades. While we can all agree that the regime has to be removed from power, we cannot ignore the glaring neocolonialist overtones in the rhetoric surrounding Iran and its future, particularly where the lives of Iranian women are involved.
Across the Middle East, conflict is on the rise. In the aftermath of a US military operation in Iran that resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic has targeted American military bases in several nations across the Arab Gulf. In the midst of the turmoil, conversations about Iran’s future have arisen and are forming a deeply concerning binary. Rhetoric surrounds the outcomes of the regime remaining, or the US gaining control of Iran, even suggesting a reinstatement of the deposed American-backed Iranian monarchy. It is a binary that astroturfs the agency and voice of actual Iranians living in the country itself. As the theocratic regime faces the existential threat of its demise, many abroad are calling for the reinstallation of the Pahlavi dynasty. It was issued near absolute power by the US and UK in 1953 to curtail an indigenous elected government that sought to renationalise Iranian oil assets. This move aimed to benefit the country itself, and not Western economies. In the midst of this developing conversation is the use of women’s rights in Iran as a political football.
Women in Iran have lived under one of the most staunchly misogynistic examples of gender apartheid in recent history. The Islamic Republic has enforced strict social codes on the women of Iran for decades, sometimes even rivalling the treatment of women in neighbouring Afghanistan. The plight of Iranian women was brought to international attention in 2022 in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Amini by the country’s morality police. Following her death, the Women Life Freedom movement spawned protests across Iranian Kurdistan, where Amini was from, before spreading across the country and around the world. Hundreds of civilians in Iran were killed as a result, and the already socially fractured country was placed under a microscope on the global stage.
One thing is clear, demonstrated by the violence inflicted on Amini and thousands of other women across Iran, the regime needs to go. We cannot tiptoe around this reality. The theocratic leadership of Iran has oppressed women’s personal liberties as well as marginalised minority ethnic and religious groups. It has continued to destabilise the region and muddied the waters of liberation movements in Palestine and Lebanon. The problem is, many liberals are looking to a return to US-backed monarchy, or at least American oversight, as the only viable solution. We forget that the reality is neither option will result in what is best for Iran itself.
A quick history lesson
Iran is an ancient nation with a long and complex history. To understand what is happening today, we have to know how we got here. In the era of European colonialism, Iran was invaded in a joint operation by the British Empire and the Soviet Union in 1941. The result was heavy British economic and militaristic control over the nation, though it was never formally absorbed into the British Empire itself. A decade later, in 1953, the democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown, and powers were granted to strengthen the Iranian monarchy’s control over the nation. The coup d’état was backed by the US and UK in response to Iran’s desire to take control over its own oil resources. During the rule of the Shah, the country rapidly, but unevenly, westernised.
In 1979, the country experienced a major swing in the opposite direction, as the Islamic Revolution took place. Quickly, the social order of Iran changed from Western capitalism to Islamic theocracy, and social liberties were curtailed as a result. It is important to understand this, as the conditions that formed the foundations for the current regime were directly in response to the West controlling Iranian resources and the future of the country. It is also important to note that under the Shah, the nation was praised for its social developments, but this was uneven, excluding people in rural communities and of lower socio-economic standings. Key to this is Iranian democracy was actively destroyed by Western powers to preserve their own economic interests.
The current regime is extremely conservative and is one of the most oppressive to women in the world. Most notably, the regime utilises religious morality police who monitor social conduct and punish those who do not closely follow the restrictive laws of the country that control personal freedoms. One of the most well known examples of these laws is the enforcement of veiling for women. A majority of Iranians do not support the Islamic Republic. Over the years, the nation has seen various waves of protests and civil resistance against them and their abuses of human rights. Combined with continuous sanctions against Iran and geopolitical isolation, the conditions for a US-led offensive on the Islamic Republic have been in place for many years.
Neocolonialism and Iran
Donald Trump has left his bloody mark on global history with his international relations strategy this year. His government has already conducted an illegal invasion of Venezuela as well as fanned the flames of conflict in several other nations. In Venezuela, much like in Iran, the regime had to go. Venezuelans, much like Iranians, have suffered under the abusive regime that held a tight grip on the Latin American nation for years. As a result, the oil rich country has experienced financial inflation and resource mismanagement at historic levels. The conditions Venezuelans and Iranians have been living under warrant the removal of the iron-fisted autocratic leadership they have suffered under. This can still be true while acknowledging that the methods deployed by the US are destabilising and self-interested, clearly motivated by Trump’s personal ego and the pressure to plunder foreign oil reserves to make good on his election campaign promise to drop petrol prices for Americans. This is a blatant example of neocolonialism, the legacy of the brutally violent and racist history of how the West has interacted with the Global South for centuries.
Colonialism is the manifestation of the very worst aspects of Western patriarchy and White supremacy. In the acts of colonial aggression, both of the far past and the violent present, is a brutalistic dismissal of indigenous peoples to decide their own futures for their own nations. Centuries of colonial violence have heavily impacted the development of nations around the world, often it is directly responsible for the allocation of lands and the formation of borders. The carelessness, and sometimes strategically damaging ways, in which colonial powers relinquished control of their occupied territories have manufactured decades of development barriers and sectarian conflict.
A key aspect of colonialism, apart from the theft of natural resources and exploitation of indigenous peoples for cheap or unpaid labour, was the suppression of indigenous cultures. Central to the era of direct European colonialism was the spread of Christian missionaries across Africa and Asia, and the harsh repression of indigenous languages and practices. The aim was not simply to drain regions of their wealth, but to salt the earth culturally and malign the ancient ways of life that underpinned non-White societies. While many cultures survived colonialism, many also were wiped out by it, and those who survived suffered significant damage.
Women’s rights as a shield for neocolonialist violence
The Women Life Freedom movement is one that was founded in Iran by Iranian women. With the limited agency that they have in the oppressive gender-based apartheid of the theocratic regime, they risked their lives to make a stand for personal liberty on their own terms. How great an insult it is to their bravery that a man like Donald Trump, a sexual predator mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein Files, is being praised by some as a defender of women’s rights in Iran. The fight for dignity and freedom for Iranian women is one they have led themselves, and one that does not warrant the involvement of or the praise of a president who is a known sex offender. By suggesting it does, we completely dismiss the courage of women in the country who have given their lives so that others may one day enjoy freedoms never known to a generation of girls who have lived and suffered through the Islamic Republic’s control of their bodies and their behaviours.
It furthers an old playbook of colonial aggression being justified in the guise of saving the lives of women or safeguarding human rights in the Global South. In India, this was used by the British to justify their control of the nation, arguing that the British would curtail violence against women on the margins of society (namely, widows), while ignoring the fact that colonial laws around inheritance exacerbated such practices. This is how colonialism is rationalised to the broader public; instead of focusing on violence and the White supremacy that upholds it, a microscope is fixed firmly on top of the existing problems in a nation. The irreversible damage inflicted on people, cultures, and nations is framed as moralistic and just. For too long, orientalist images of the non-Western world, particularly the Islamic world, have been utilised by colonialist White supremacist bad actors to portray the Muslim world as a savage and unilaterally dangerous place for women. In doing this, the actual realities, nuance, and experiences of people in these cultures are ignored.
Mirroring these sentiments, here in the UK, the far right uses similar narratives to justify their obtuse racist rhetoric. By claiming their outrage stems from the perceived monolithic misogyny of non-White cultures, instead of deeply held White supremacist beliefs, they aim to sanitise the immorality of their cause. We know that the individuals and organisations who espouse such views do not care about women; the bodies and lives of women of colour, particularly of Muslim women, are treated as collateral to further the idea that immigrants are dangerous. Transfer this from women in our own country to the women of Iran, and here we are.
This does not negate the realities of misogyny in a country like Iran, nor does it ignore the reality that misogyny exists in every community in the UK. This point stands even without raising the fact that several figures in the far right have criminal records for violence against women, sometimes against women of non-White communities argued to pose a threat to their safety themselves. What it does do is drown out the actual voices of women in these communities, or in Iran itself, who are forging their own path of resistance that is entirely divorced from neocolonial violence and oppression. We have a responsibility as feminists to sift through the noise and listen to them, not the arbiters of colonial patriarchy who happily use their issues as a justification for violence and racism.
Equally, the perceived liberal rights of queer people in Western countries are used to justify violence against Muslim communities and countries based on defending LGBTQ+ individuals against homophobia. Most prominent is the idea that the Gaza Genocide is justified by the perception that Palestinians are inherently homophobic and violent toward the gay community. Despite the fact that queer Palestinians do have different challenges to their straight counterparts, the reality is that genocide is entirely unjustifiable. Frankly, to even begin to use my rights as a queer person to justify the murder of innocent people is disgusting, offensive, and deeply amoral. The continued bloodshed of Gazans will not result in a healthy or productive environment to even begin to consider the safety and social mobility of LGBTQ+ Palestinians.
Colonialism is still here
The recent behaviour of the US on the global stage, aided by allies such as Israel (a settler-coloniser state) and the UK (one of the historic leaders in colonial aggression) show us that colonialism has not gone away. While many considered the surrender of Hong Kong back to China in 1997 as the end of the British Empire, the legacy of this era is felt deeply to this day. What is happening in Iran and Venezuela is just the most recent examples in a long history of protracted Western involvement in postcolonial societies. Even after powers like the UK, France, or the US officially leave a country, their legacy is felt deeply and painfully. Through artificial borders these countries draw, to the exploitative ways colonial powers remove themselves from the countries they illegally occupied, breed further problems for nations as they try to forge their own paths.
Since the withdrawal of Western nations from postcolonial nations, the approach has changed. Strategic destabilisation of former colonies and zealous military involvement have continued to impact nations that were subject to the violence of colonialism. This isn’t accidental; by continuing to meddle in the affairs of postcolonial nations, the West has been able to continue to exploit the natural wealth and strategic benefits such nations hold. Especially as capitalism continues to over-exert itself, the pressures to control the wealth of others remain a driving factor in military aggression in places like Venezuela and Iran. We cannot ignore that all these factors are interlinked. Colonialism is a tool of patriarchy, just as capitalism is. It remains in the interest of capitalistic, violent Western powers to further subjugate and warmonger in the nations they had a major hand in both forging and fracturing.
Where are the Iranian people in all of this?
While there is considerable support for Trump’s plans for Iran from expat Iranians in the West, on the ground in the country, things are not as clear. On the 28th of February, as the US and Israel began their offensive on Iran, one of the most notable targets was Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the city of Minab. The death toll of the attack reached 165 people, the majority were school girls aged between seven and 12. An Al Jazeera investigation has found that the school was likely deliberately targeted by either Israel or the US. Given Israel’s track record for murdering children in Gaza, this is not a surprise. In the aftermath of this attack, real people with no involvement in the regime or its continued track record of violence and human rights abuses lost their lives. It is hard to argue that the protection of women and girls is a motivation behind the ongoing violence in the region when we know what we know.
So it poses a question, amidst the fire from both the US and Israel, and the Iranian government, where does this leave the actual people of Iran? In headlines covering the ongoing situation, they are rarely mentioned. Their agency is not being respected, and their voice is not being heard. This is the same story we have seen time and time again in the long list of American led bloodshed in the Middle East. Proclamations of spreading democracy and human rights in the region are just that, hollow proclamations designed to ease the criticism from within the voter base in Western nations. Protracted wars of attrition in the Middle East are a lot easier to swallow if the supposed reason is to protect human rights. The problem is, this is simply not true. If it were, the Shajareh Tayyebeh school would still be standing, and 165 girls would still be able to dream of a future free from both the theocratic government that has abused the Iranian people for decades, and the US imperialism that laid the groundwork for it to emerge in the first place.
I am reminded of the process the British undertook when formalising the border between Pakistan and India as the two nations sought independence. The borders were drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a man who had never been to India before, and were drawn with very little input from the communities who would find themselves immediately on either side of them. The result was one of the largest human migrations in history, and the death of over one million people as a result of sectarian violence across the borders. Equally, Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza involved zero Palestinians in its formulation. The outcome is a solution that is not considerate of the actual people who have to live with its impacts. Once again, as we talk about the future of Iran in the wake of the possible collapse of the Islamic Republic, indigenous voices who have the largest stake in what happens are not being considered.
Women, Life, Freedom
Agency is everything, and in viewing the future of Iran as either one led by theocracy or the interests of American and Israeli neocolonialism, we are robbing the people of Iran of theirs. It is not for the West to decide, or rather dictate, the future of the Iranian people. We can look to the women of Iran who have bravely spearheaded internal rebellion against the theocratic government as an example. In Iran, under acute gender apartheid, they took up the mantle without the support of the West and without its neocolonialist patriarchal paternalism, to lay the groundwork for a nation run on their terms. The nuances of their experiences, across generations, religious identities, ethnic backgrounds, and socio-economic standing, are the factors that need to be considered in forging the future of Iranian society, not how much oil Donald Trump can steal from Iran’s petroleum reserves.
For far too long, Western nations have used countries in the Middle East and elsewhere in the postcolonial world as their personal resource banks. It is no surprise that Iran, a nation that holds a third of the world’s oil supply, is at the heart of this latest chapter of American imperialism and neocolonialist violence. Make no mistake, this has never been about human rights or ideological difference for the US or Israel; it is about control and theft of resources. Colonialism has always been, and will always be, an act of violence and an act of theft. In the crosshairs are real people living real lives who deserve to lead them in peace and dignity.
When Mahsa Amini lost her life, her city responded, then her nation, then the world. In her sacrifice, a conversation returned to the fore about the realities of being a woman in one of the most oppressive nations on earth. Many turned to images of women in the country before the Islamic Revolution as examples of what could be, but these too ignore the nuances of experience in Iran. We cannot risk reducing Iran, its people, and especially its women into a single story. As the future remains unclear for the future of Iran, we must remember that Iranians need a seat at the table; to deny agency to them is to continue the centuries of colonial violence that have denied the dignity and humanity of people living in postcolonial societies. Freedom has got to be on their terms, not ours.
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