It's not progressive to back Iran over Israel

It’s 2025 and we teeter on the brink of war in the Middle East. Two hardline regimes with a long history of conflict are firing missiles at each other. The threat of nuclear obliteration hangs in the air. A seemingly hot-headed US president chooses profanities over di-plomacy. Israel over Iran. And so-called progressives go into meltdown picking a side that means they stand with a regressive state that champions an anti-Western agenda, rather than be seen anywhere near Team Trump.

It’s madness. But it’s also where the polarisation of politics and the ridiculous alignment on one thing that then dictates support for another thing, no matter how contradictory those positions might be, has taken us. And in times of global conflict when words matter and nuance and knowledge need primacy, this constricted view of the world, this shallow thinking and linear process of thought, has never felt more puerile.

And while the howls of injustice predictably come from the hard left, including sitting MPs, at the prospect that pro-Palestinian protestors face being deemed terrorists after they broke into an RAF base and caused millions of pounds-worth of damage to military planes in protest at the UK’s support of Israel over the war in Gaza, their ire simply morphs into a collective solidarity with Iran.  

And in a time when you can only be one thing or another, for or against, nothing quite sums up the wilful ignorance playing out in geopolitics than activists championing the cause of trans rights while marching to the drum of regimes where the rights of trans people, and more particularly gay men, lesbians and women in general, are brutally curtailed. 

Just days after the recent escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran, as bombs rained down on either side and while the hashtag #IStandWithIran was trending, at the 59th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, it was coincidentally Iran’s record on human rights that was laid bare.

According to a report presented to the Geneva-based Council at least 975 people were executed in Iran in 2024, the highest number reported since 2015.

Of the total, just over half were for drug-related offences, 43 per cent for murder, two per cent for sexual offences, and three per cent for security-related charges. At least four were carried out publicly. 

The number of women reportedly executed went up from 22 in the previous year to 31 in 2024 and of the 19 women executed for murder, nine had been convicted of killing their husbands in cases of  domestic abuse or forced or child marriage, areas in which Iranian women have no legal protections.

Some executions were reportedly linked to protests that began in September 2022 under the banner ‘Women, Life, and Freedom’.

Beyond executions, femicide cases surged, with 179 reported in 2024 compared to 55 the year before. Many stemmed from so-called ‘honour’ crimes or family disputes, often involving women and girls seeking divorce or rejecting marriage proposals.

In addition, of the 125 journalists prosecuted in 2024, 40 were women, many reporting on human rights and women’s rights issues.

And yet, so consumed by their hatred of Trump, the US, Israel and what they see as the complicity of the UK, in the minds of those on the left that believe in their own half-truths, the Iran regime is not a brutal religious theocracy and a sponsor of global terrorism, it’s a victim of oppression that deserves their support. 

We have basically reached a place where opposition to Israel is steadfastly seen as being on the right side of history no matter what the issue and it’s a playbook stuck on repeat. If you are pro-Palestine, you likely believe trans women are women, you probably see prostitution as a valid career choice, that surrogacy is a noble act of goodwill, that Israel is the global pariah and that J.K. Rowling is most definitely the devil incarnate. It reveals an infantilisation of debate that has infiltrated our political discourse and stymied real interrogation of thought. How else can you rationalise the liberal lefties who align themselves with the Islamic far-right?

Too much of modern political thinking is about knee-jerk responses where people take positions they think they ought to hold. That may feel like a safer place to be, as part of the crowd, but you can hold two thoughts at one time. You may oppose the abhorrent way Israel has acted in Gaza without having to support the Iranian regime. 

And it’s not just on the world stage that this denigration of thought occurs but in the minutiae of everyday domestic discourse where too often people are just unprepared to listen for fear it unsettles their particular world view. We live in a country where political leaders have legitimised this diminishment of debate. They have dismissed people with opposing views as bigots, shut down informed argument and while they talk about a national set of shared values, the consequence of a closed mind is a poorer nation.

Take the way the anti-drugs campaigner Annemarie Ward was chastised by parliamentarians for her ‘tone’ as she gave impassioned evidence on drug policies when, as a former addict who has lost countless loved ones to drugs, she is worth listening to no matter how high the volume. Or when asked about the involvement of the Tony Blair Institute in helping to improve the beleaguered NHS in Scotland, the convener of the health committee dismissed him as a “has-been” who took us into an illegal war in Iraq, no matter the enormous medical expertise within the TBI. 

We are currently wrestling with some explosive geopolitics, navigating complex 21st century problems and seeking innovative policy solutions in a time when even AI can contribute to that debate. In this environment, it’s not enough to abdicate your faculties to some predetermined set of artificially grouped rules that dictate if you believe one thing, you must believe another.

Empty and unquestioning minds become fertile ground for others to inhabit, including rogue states, and it is perhaps no coincidence that dozens of anonymous social media accounts, allegedly run by the Iranian secret service and back-ing Scottish independence, abruptly fell silent after Israel’s air strikes caused an internet blackout in Iran. These are dangerous moments and no time to be closing the door on the oxygen of questioning orthodoxies and critical argument in favour of groupthink.