Log in
I find it absurd that this even needs to be said, but the moment demands clarity: the Islamic Republic of Iran—despite being in the crosshairs of the criminal agendas of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump—is not, and has never been, an ally of the left.
I can oppose U.S. and Israeli imperial aggression without suspending my judgment about the nature of the Iranian state. Yet too often, parts of the left seem incapable of holding both truths at once. Some so-called “anti-imperialists” defend the Iranian regime not out of solidarity with its people, but out of a reflexive, almost theological opposition to the United States. Hatred of American imperialism—however justified—becomes politically useless the moment it blinds us to oppression carried out by others. Anti-imperialism that excuses repression, patriarchy, clerical domination, and capitalist exploitation is not principled internationalism; it is campism, emptied of ethics.
At the same time, any serious leftist position must unequivocally reject the sanctions imposed on Iran. Sanctions are not a humane alternative to war. They are collective punishment. They have devastated ordinary people—fueling inflation, destroying purchasing power, hollowing out public services—while leaving the political and economic elite largely untouched, or even strengthened through corruption and black markets. Sanctions do not liberate societies; they suffocate them. A left that ignores this reality abandons material analysis in favor of moral posturing.
The Islamic Republic is adept at performing resistance. It invokes Palestine, denounces Western domination, and wraps itself in the language of revolution. But behind the rhetoric stands an ultra-conservative, authoritarian state, fully compatible with neoliberal capitalism. Workers are repressed, women are disciplined, minorities persecuted, unions crushed, journalists imprisoned. This is not a temporary distortion of the system—it is the system.
History makes this impossible to deny. Within months of taking power, the newly formed Islamic Republic moved to eliminate any independent left-wing opposition. The Tudeh Party—the historic communist movement that played a central role in Mossadegh’s oil nationalization and suffered brutal repression after the coup that restored the Shah—was among the first to be destroyed. This was not an accident, nor a later betrayal of revolutionary ideals. It was foundational. The left helped overthrow the monarchy; the clerical state ensured it would never rise again.
This is why comparisons between Iran and Venezuela collapse under even minimal scrutiny. One can defend the Chavista process as a leftist project—rooted in mass participation, redistribution, and popular sovereignty—while still engaging critically with its contradictions and failures. Whatever one thinks of its current trajectory, Chavismo emerged from a popular, explicitly left-wing tradition. It did not define itself through the extermination of the left. To conflate that history with a theocratic, anti-communist regime like Iran’s is not internationalism; it is historical illiteracy.
None of this means ignoring the obvious: the United States and Israel are actively seeking to weaken or topple the Iranian regime for their own strategic gain. They have no interest in Iranian liberation, women’s freedom, or democracy. They would gladly replace clerical authoritarianism with a compliant client state, sanctions with privatization, repression with “stability.” Their concern has never been the Iranian people—only power.
Which is precisely why the only honest position is to center those people themselves.
What we are witnessing today—strikes, protests, acts of refusal, everyday courage—is not a geopolitical chess match. It is a society that has been suffocating for decades asserting its right to breathe. This is not a Western-manufactured uprising, nor an imperial proxy war. It is a deeply rooted revolutionary energy, led by women, workers, students, and youth who are demanding dignity, freedom, and a future repeatedly denied to them.
While thinking through these tensions, I found myself returning to The Man Who Loved Dogs. Padura’s novel stayed with me not simply as a story about Stalinism and betrayal, but as a meditation on how the left loses itself when it begins to justify repression in the name of history, necessity, or strategy. It raises uncomfortable questions: when does loyalty replace ethics? When does dissent become treason? And how many revolutions have been destroyed not by external enemies, but by an internal fear of disagreement?
What the novel makes painfully clear is that leftist authoritarianism is not somehow more tolerable than any other kind and leftists must always be weary of power. A political regime/ideology that cannot tolerate pluralism, dissent, and internal critique will always turn inward. It will always end up reproducing the very domination it claims to oppose.
A left that cannot argue with itself honestly—one that demands silence in the name of unity—does not build solidarity; it hollows it out.
Politics is not a collection of well-polished slogans or perfectly sanitized positions. It cannot be reduced to moral binaries or comforting certainties. Reality is more complex, and pretending otherwise does not make our politics clearer—it makes them brittle.
A genuine leftist position is grounded in deeds, not rhetoric. It exists in struggle, in contradiction, and in movement—always with the working classes, the oppressed, and the exploited, never speaking *for* them or demanding their silence. Emancipation is not a script written in advance; it is something forged collectively, through disagreement, debate, and lived experience.
Positions so “clear-cut” that they require silence are not radical—they are fragile. A left that cannot tolerate complexity or dissent does not protect liberation. It obstructs it.
Niall Ricardo is a Montréal-based lawyer and writer writing from the left, concerned with racism, state power, and the defense of the social commons.
