Iran through a glass darkly

Reactions to the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei

“For many, the conflict has become a synecdoche for larger political programs, specific values, or religious worldviews. Those who support Arab Palestine and the Axis of Resistance usually support the downfall of US capitalism, and then either the global extension of Islam or socialism. Those in favour of a two-state solution are generally Western liberals, who would like to see human rights and a liberal order extend across the globe. Conservative supporters of Israel would like to see a defeat of Islamism and a reinvigoration of the West under an ascendant American hegemon.”

From Antizionism to a New Middle East - Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki (2025).

News of the strike on Khamenei’s compound was met with preordained reactions.

The same outlets who lamented Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders sheltered in Qatar fell silent on the Iranian regime’s strikes against Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates. Hotels and airports were struck, neither of which were being used to shelter terror cells.

War is not a spectator sport.

It feels inappropriate to jump for joy at the news of ballistic missiles being exchanged over the heads of hundreds of millions of civilians.

Reactions in the West fall neatly along the lines articulated by Kirschbaum-Shirazki, whose diagnosis of prevailing attitudes towards the Arab-Israeli conflict demonstrates that these wars occupy symbolic significance to those of us so far removed from the terror of an explosion on our city streets.

This was posted by Australian poet and Greens candidate Omar Sakr.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese released a joint statement with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles saying Australia “stood with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against ­oppression”.

“We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security,” the trio said in their statement.

“It has long been recognised that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to global peace and security.

“The international community has been clear that the Iranian ­regime can never be allowed to ­develop a nuclear weapon.”

The ABC’s John Lyons responded:

“Another interesting thing about Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and Richard Marles’ statement; that first sentence, ‘Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against ­oppression’, to me, that is political propaganda,” Lyons pronounced during the ABC’s live coverage.

“What they actually mean, they don’t say it, but what that sentence should say, if they’re being accurate, if the Prime Minister of ­Australia is telling the truth, it should say: ‘Australia stands with Israel and the US in their new war on Iran’. So that is absolute, in my assessment, political ­propaganda.”

I think that says it all, doesn’t it?

My thoughts today are with the people of Iran. Unlike those who ran downhill with paper kites of propaganda and ideological fervour in the aftermath of October 7, the adults at the table have a responsibility to listen carefully to what people on the ground need.

To weaponise the people of Iran feels wrong, just as it felt wrong to watch my contemporaries salivate with “resistance” in the days after October 7. Israeli civilians had been murdered, mutilated, raped, and burned alive. Thousands of Gazan civilians were about to die. I felt sick, while the antizionists licked their lips.

Imposing personal narratives, aspirations, and ideological scaffolding onto the lives and livelihoods of those who now face a new terror—not of Ayatollah rule, but the terror of the unknown—is to repeat the mistake of those lip-lickers.

From so far away, I’m seeing Persians cheering in the street. Statues being toppled. Glee.

But to mistake these social media snippets for a window into the lived experience and the tumult that awaits would be tone-deaf and crude.

That my algorithm may be offering up only what it expects I might align with gives cause for pause. It is imperative that solidarity with those who are celebrating the toppling of this monster does not cross over into tokenism.

I am happy that Khamenei is gone, and I feel a pit in my stomach given the unknowable direction in which the dominos may now fall. I understand war as a last resort. It can only ever be moralised as a desperate measure—one that seeks only to measure imminent violence against a probability of something worse. The moral philosophy of violence is a shocking space. And when that violence concerns only the lives of others, it rings metallic and obscene.

There are many in the world with great reason to celebrate—many who feel relief at the removal of Ayatollah Khamenei from the face of the earth. I share that relief.

But in war, how appropriate is joy for someone so far away? Someone who will not have to run to a bomb shelter, or worse, have no shelter to run to?

From the other side of the planet, the ethical implications of armed conflict must be treated not with ideological opportunism, but with extreme moral seriousness.