When prudence becomes an alibi

There are situations where foreign policy stops being a question of balance and becomes a moral issue. Iran is one of them. For over forty years, the West has been observing, condemning, saying it is ‘concerned’ and then going back to business as usual. Prudence, dialogue, de-escalation: important words, certainly, but which over time risk turning into an elegant alibi for doing nothing while a people continue to live under a regime that represses all forms of individual freedom.

A regime that does not govern, but oppresses

The Iranian regime is not built on consensus, but on fear. It is a theocracy that controls the body, mind and daily life of its citizens. It does not just repress political opposition: it represses the individual as such. The protests of recent years clearly demonstrate this. Women and young people are not asking for cosmetic reforms, they are not asking for a more ‘humane’ version of theocracy. They are asking for freedom. They are asking to be able to live without being punished for how they dress, for what they think, for what they are.

Rights are not a western export

Those who say that democracy and Western values cannot be exported should be reminded that freedom, dignity and equality before the law are not exclusive to the West. They are natural rights, full stop. Defending them does not mean imposing a cultural model, but recognising that there are minimum standards below which no society should be allowed to sink. Repression is not culture. It is organised violence. And justifying it in the name of relativism means accepting that anything goes, as long as it happens far from home.

The Persia that the regime stifled

Iran was not born with religious fanaticism. Before 1979, it was a country with a dynamic society, a strong middle class, a central role for women and a national identity projected towards modernity, in tune with the United States, Europe and Israel. The regime destroyed all this, but did not erase it. That Persia still exists, beneath the surface, and that is precisely why the power is so afraid of its own people. We are not talking about creating something artificial, but about restoring space to what has been forcibly suffocated.

It is not just an internal matter

Those who see Iran only as a domestic human rights problem are wrong in their analysis. The Iranian regime is also a destabilising actor internationally: it finances militias, fuels proxy wars, threatens other states and openly works against the international order. History teaches us that regimes that oppress internally sooner or later attack externally. Thinking to solve everything with agreements and appeasements is an illusion that the West has already paid dearly for.

Europe must stop delegating

Then there is a point that directly concerns us Europeans. For too long we have left it to the United States to intervene, to provide security, to ‘do the dirty work’. Then, in retrospect, we criticised. This attitude is no longer sustainable. If Europe wants to be more than an indignant observer, it must take responsibility, even when it is uncomfortable.

An intervention in Iran should not be aimed at occupation, but at liberation: breaking a regime that relies only on force and allowing a people to choose their own future. In the end, the question is simple: do we really believe in what we say we stand for, or has freedom become just a good word for official communiqués?