They who damn Tehran and Washington

The Guardian, January 12 2026

When you overthrow a government you leave a power vacuum, and somebody’s going to step into it. There is no clear movement, faction, or successor in Iran strong enough to secure power against whichever group the empire throws its support behind, besides the government that presently exists. This means the US empire would necessarily have a very prominent seat at the table in whatever system of government might replace the current one. Caitlin Johnstone today

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It’s been a week of grotesque moral equivalence. I’ve had a comment on Renee Good’s killing imply – I’m charitable enough to think unintentionally – that by blocking the road with her car (even assuming, prematurely, this is what happened) the woman invited her own execution.

Meanwhile the kindest thing I can say of liberals who damn in equal measure the theocrats in Tehran, and empire criminals in Washington who imposed decades of suffering on that country after it ousted the puppet Shah, is that they are being very, very obtuse. ¹

I had the same issue with those who demanded Assad’s ouster, as if some benign third force in the wings was poised to take power and steer Syria towards the sunlit uplands of democracy …

Q: … [to] support a despot that oversaw a regime as extraordinarily brutal as Assad’s, seems inhumane to me. What are the ‘bigger issues’ – geo-politics?, ideological positions?

A: Doesn’t matter what I think of Bashar al-Assad. Doesn’t matter what you think. He’s gone, Israel wins, US wins, Turkey wins. For now at least. Them’s the bigger issues …

That was shortly after Assad was ousted by Western backed jihadists in late 2024, a former ISIS commander having appointed himself the new president. Later in the same exchange, Johnny Conspiranoid weighed in with admirable precision …

You should support anybody over a US backed regime change because that is always the greater evil.

… to which I replied:

Yours is not a view that plays well with those blind to empire, but I can’t offer a single instance where I wouldn’t agree. In the context of Syria, I stand by my words of more than seven years ago:

“Suppose every word our media say about Assad to be true: a huge stretch, I know, but stay with me. Could he inflict a fraction of the death, misery and mayhem the US and its partners in crime have?” 

BTL exchange after Assad’s ouster by Western backed jihadists

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For the second day running let me hand over to Caitlin Johnstone, in response to such empire-friendly idiotics. The post is worth reading in full but here’s a taster:

I see some lefty types going “I oppose the US empire AND the Iranian regime!”

No, you support the US empire. If you desire the downfall of the Iranian government in today’s present geopolitical reality, then you desire the expansion of US imperial power. It doesn’t matter how much lip service you pay to opposing the US murder machine if in practice you are promoting the agendas of the worst warmongers in the DC swamp.

There is at this time no way Tehran can be toppled without the US-centralized empire inserting its rapey fingers into whatever power structure emerges from the wreckage. When you overthrow a government you leave a power vacuum, and somebody’s going to step into it. There is no clear movement, faction, or successor in Iran strong enough to secure power against whichever group the empire throws its support behind, besides the government that presently exists. This means the US empire would necessarily have a very prominent seat at the table in whatever system of government might replace the current one.

If you are a western imperialist this is no problem for you; if you believe the US and its allies should rule the world there is no contradiction in your desiring regime change in Iran. But if you identify as a leftist, an anarchist, or an anti-imperialist there is no way to reconcile your worldview with a desire to fulfill the wildest regime change fantasies of every sociopathic intelligence agency and warmongering think tank in the western world.

The only way for such a person to avoid the cognitive dissonance of these contradictions would be to pretend they live in an imaginary fantasy land where the Iranian government could be overthrown without benefitting the US empire. The Iranian people just oust their government all on their own, and set up a free liberal democracy entirely sovereign and independent from any external power structure. That’s a fantasy. We do not live in that kind of world. We live in the world that actually exists.

It’s not okay to avoid addressing reality like that. You can’t just close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears and pretend the reality of our situation is different from what it actually is while helping to advance immensely consequential agendas driven by the most powerful people in the world. Being an authentic person means being real about reality and having a truth-based relationship with the world as it actually is.

I am not suggesting that Iranians do not have legitimate and organic grievances against their government, nor am I suggesting that they should not desire a different system of government for themselves, nor am I suggesting that they should refrain from doing whatever they think is best in their own country. What I am saying is that the westerners who are cheerleading for regime change in Iran are cheerleading for the advancement of the power structure under which they live, which also happens to be the most powerful empire that has ever existed, which also happens to be the most murderous and destructive power structure on earth.

Enough with the phony neutrality. As Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

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1. Most of the liberals I know, some of them claiming anarchist or Marxist affiliation, who in effect side with empire agendas as described here are neither stupid nor cowardly. They have simply been gaslit – as I had been gaslit; as even those who in part recognise they are being gaslit continue to be gaslit – in the manner skewered by the late Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Acceptance Speech:

   The crimes of the USA have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few have talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.