Log in
The reported killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in coordinated strikes on Iran marks a historic rupture. But history did not begin this week, and it will not end with the death of one man. What we are witnessing is the culmination of decades of militarism, sanctions, proxy wars, and Western impunity masquerading as moral clarity.
The Iranian people have endured repression under the Islamic Republic for generations. They have filled the streets demanding dignity, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and democratic accountability. They have paid in blood for the simple demand to live free. They deserve the fall of authoritarian rule.
But freedom has never arrived on the wings of Western bombs.
We have seen this script before: Iraq. Libya. Afghanistan. Regime change dressed up as liberation, followed by collapse, chaos, warlordism, and foreign extraction. The language of “stability” always seems to follow the destruction of sovereignty.
And before the bombs came the sanctions.
Western sanctions—imposed in the name of democracy—have devastated ordinary Iranians far more than they have weakened elites. Sanctions crush currency values, hollow out public services, restrict access to medicine, and entrench black markets controlled by the very security apparatus they claim to undermine. Collective punishment has never been a strategy for emancipation. It is a strategy for desperation that strengthens hardliners while suffocating civil society.
Here in Canada, we are told that we represent a principled alternative—a “middle power” capable of bridging divides. Yet under Mark Carney, that language of “middle powers” rings hollow. What is presented as balanced diplomacy looks increasingly like reflexive alignment with Washington. When push comes to shove, Ottawa falls in line.
A true middle power acts as a mediator, not a megaphone. It insists on international law, not selective outrage. It does not provide diplomatic cover for allies while condemning adversaries for similar conduct. What we are seeing instead is the posture of a subordinate—Canada as the polite amplifier of U.S. strategy.
That hypocrisy becomes glaring when we consider Palestine. Israel stands accused before the world of committing genocide in Gaza, yet our political leadership offers carefully worded concern without consequences. We cannot condemn repression in Tehran while rationalizing mass civilian death in Gaza. We cannot speak of human rights while shielding allies from accountability.
The destruction of international law did not happen overnight. It happened when we collectively failed to prevent and punish the genocide in Gaza. When mass civilian death became normalized. When Muslim lives became negotiable. When “security” replaced justice.
Islamophobia—inside our borders and abroad—has been the ideological engine of this descent. It has justified wars, sanctions regimes that collectively punish populations, surveillance states, and endless suspicion. It has fueled the global rise of authoritarian populism, including the politics embodied by Donald Trump. When entire populations are portrayed as civilizational threats, fascism finds fertile soil.
None of this excuses the brutality of the Islamic Republic. It does not absolve its repression, its censorship, its prisons, its violence against women and dissidents. The Iranian people deserve its end.
But what must follow cannot be a restoration of monarchy—a nostalgic return to the Shah, trading one autocrat for another draped in Western approval. Nor can it be the installation of a pliable government whose first loyalty is to foreign capitals and oil markets rather than to its own people.
The path forward must belong to the Iranian people.
The women who chanted “Woman, Life, Freedom” must define what freedom means in practice. Workers who strike must shape the economic order. Students, unions, feminists, minorities—these forces must chart the future. It will be revealing to see whether those internationally who rallied behind “Women, Life, Freedom” are prepared to support a new Iran that preserves both political freedom and sovereignty over its oil and resources—or whether their solidarity ends where Western economic interests begin.
The test will be whether freedom is understood as self-determination or merely as geopolitical realignment.
Iran’s future must not be a choice between theocratic repression and neoliberal subordination. It must not be a transition from domestic tyranny to foreign tutelage.
If there is to be a new Iran, it must be built by Iranians, accountable to Iranians, and protective of both liberty and sovereignty.
Anything imposed from outside will only reproduce the cycle of domination.
And the world has had more than enough of that cycle.
March 1, 2026
.jpg){kind=link}