Politics, People and Power :

Some Iranians, especially in exile and far from the blast radius, have spoken about war on Iran as if it were an unpleasant but necessary shortcut to change. Some openly welcomed bombing. Some convinced themselves that foreign missiles could do what internal political struggle had not yet done. But asking for war against your own country in order to remove an oppressive state is like inviting two serial killer rapists into your home to protect you from a thief-murderer already inside.

The threat inside the house is real. It is coercive, feared, and deeply damaging. It has narrowed ordinary life, crushed hope for many, and made the future feel hostage to force and control. No one should romanticize that reality. But the answer to a dangerous figure inside the house is not to unlock the front door and invite in predators with even greater destructive power. That is replacing one form of danger with something larger and far less controllable.

War kills the apolitical neighbor, the child in the next apartment, the nurse on the late shift, the student on the bus, the old parents who cannot run fast enough. And when the destruction begins, those who demanded it from a safe distance do not absorb the consequences equally.

Worse still, those who called for war misjudged not only its human cost but also its political effect. They imagined that foreign attack would weaken the standing of the Iranian state. In reality, war can do the opposite. A state that is heavily criticized at home can still gain stature when it is seen standing up to external assault. Across much of the world, especially beyond the western media bubble, the US-Israeli war was read less as liberation than as another act of coercion by powers already associated with impunity, double standards, and domination. In that setting, Iran does not suddenly become innocent, but it can begin to look defiant, resilient, even heroic to people who want to see American supremacy challenged and Israel punished.

That is one of the ugliest ironies of war: those who invite it in the name of freedom may end up helping the very state they oppose appear larger, stronger, and more legitimate than before. Instead of isolating it, they may help wrap it in the language of resistance.

That should not have been surprising. Foreign powers do not wage war out of love for your people. They act from strategy, domination, revenge, prestige, regional leverage, and interests they do not bother to hide for long. They may speak the language of liberation, but their bombs do not distinguish between state and society as neatly as their speeches do. Even when they weaken a government, they often leave behind ruins, factionalism, and a generation forced to rebuild from ashes.

There is also something morally disfiguring about cheering this on. Hatred of a state can become so intense that it hollows out judgment. People begin to accept any alliance, any instrument, any atrocity, so long as it is aimed at the enemy they despise. But once you reach the point where you are asking mass killers to save you from a coercive order at home, you are no longer thinking politically. You are thinking desperately, and desperation is easily manipulated.

A country is not freed when it is broken open by those who do not value its people. It is merely handed from one form of violence to another. And those who call that liberation are confusing vengeance with freedom.