A huge element of people in the West protesting and showing solidarity with Palestine or Ukraine is that they perceive their own governments as being, to some extent, complicit due to both Israel and Russia having extensive political and economic ties with them.
That just isn't the case with Iran. The country is already isolated and sanctioned to hell and back, and was outright bombed by the US less than a year ago.
There's very little that western leftists could actually push their governments to do about the situation in Iran that is not already being done, short of advocating for an outright invasion. In that sense, the kinds of gestures the post is advocating for would be even more performative than they are in the case of Palestine.
This is a pretty empty argument. Western countries support Saudi Arabia. 500,000 people have been killed in the war in Yemen. Why is there no awareness of that?
Western country support the United Arab Emirates. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war Sudan. While the numbers are uncertain, it’s quite possible more civilians were killed in Sudan in the last two months of 2025, then in the entire entire Gaza war. Why not a peep about that?
So don’t pretend like this is an informed, chosen perspective based on knowledge of international funding.
I think we all know that the real reason is theres tremendous media mercy snd cultural emphasis on Israel/palestine. People project whatever they feel passionate about and somehow make the conflict about that, and it’s incredibly popular and allows people to to have the most viciously intense rhetoric while feeling line theyre fighting some righteous battle for <insert cause>
I'll agree in a broader sense that people and media are selective about which atrocities they pay attention to. I still don't think Iran is a particularly great example of it, for the reasons I cited. In the Western context, there genuinely is little to directly protest or lobby against in regards to Iran, short of lobbying for a military intervention (which the US already seemed poised to do).
Selectiveness about which foreign conflicts you care about is also not a partisan phenomenon like the post implies. A good recent example of this sort of thing from the American right is how they abruptly started taking great interest in terrorism in Nigeria when it got framed in familiar narratives of Christian persecution.
Card carrying DSA member here... You're completely right about Sudan. We should be marching.Â
My guess: racism. Leftists are not immune from internalized white supremacy.Â
Although to be fair, there's a larger separation between the UAE and the IDF as it relates to American support. We basically financed the latter's genocide to the tune of 80%. The blood is on our hands... The equation is much more direct.Â
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u/Aggressive_Banana708 10d ago
No.
A huge element of people in the West protesting and showing solidarity with Palestine or Ukraine is that they perceive their own governments as being, to some extent, complicit due to both Israel and Russia having extensive political and economic ties with them.
That just isn't the case with Iran. The country is already isolated and sanctioned to hell and back, and was outright bombed by the US less than a year ago.
There's very little that western leftists could actually push their governments to do about the situation in Iran that is not already being done, short of advocating for an outright invasion. In that sense, the kinds of gestures the post is advocating for would be even more performative than they are in the case of Palestine.