When the truce was announced and the Strait of Hormuz reopened, the sigh of relief that ran through European chancelleries was not for the Iranian people, nor for the populations of the Gulf countries hit by Tehran’s missiles and drones. It was for the bills. It was for liquefied natural gas futures. The reopening of the Strait was enough to reveal with brutal clarity Europe’s scale of priorities: bank account first, human rights second.

In an interesting article in the Jewish Chronicle, Matthew Robinson – director of the Euro-Gulf Information Centre – describes the Irish hypocrisy towards the Islamic Republic as an emblematic case of ‘performative indignation’: street noise without real moral courage . But the syndrome that Robinson diagnoses in Ireland is, on closer inspection, a continental evil. And the Hormuz crisis has brought it to the surface, with all its unpresentable evidence.

The European double standard

Europe has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to mobilise. Against Israel, against Trump, against American policies in the Middle East: the squares of Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome or Amsterdam fill with an ease inversely proportional to the difficulty of the causes embraced. Yet, as Robinson observes,‘the continent has remained comparatively silent on Iran‘ . It is a blindness that not only concerns governments and chancelleries: even Italian solidarity with the Women, Life, Liberty movement has often remained at the level of a symbolic gesture – convenient, without any risk or change of perspective, useful only to reinforce one’s moral identity in the West – without ever translating into real political commitment. No big march for Mahsa Amini. No European campaign for Iranian women imprisoned for showing their hair. No mobilisation for the gays hanged in the squares of Tehran.

The theocracy that does not disturb

The Islamic Republic is, in fact, one of the most brutal regimes in the contemporary world. Women and girls are detained, raped and beaten for violating the dress code. LGBT people are whipped or sentenced to death for merely existing. As Robinson notes, religious and ethnic minorities suffer systematic discrimination that ‘could amount to crimes against humanity‘. Yet European chancelleries have maintained a resounding‘diplomatic timidity‘ with Tehran. It was only in February 2026 that the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning the regime’s‘systemic oppression, inhuman conditions and arbitrary arrests‘, explicitly citing‘killings, torture, enforced disappearances and sexual violence‘ and estimating between thousands and 35,000 deaths during the recent protests. A due act, which came embarrassingly late.

The problem of the left (and not only)

Robinson identifies in the rhetoric of certain pro-European leftists the symbol of an ideology that frames every Middle East conflict through a single narrative scheme: on one side the imperialists, on the other their victims . This scheme leaves no room for complexity, and especially no room for anti-regime Iranians, Kurdish activists, and dissidents who flee Tehran and find in Europe not solidarity, but hostility or indifference from those who wave the flag of ‘global justice’. This is not just a left-wing problem: it is a ‘collective blindness’ that runs across the entire European political spectrum. This was forcefully recalled by Stefano Parisi, president of the Setteottobre association, in his speech at the opening of the national demonstration in Rome on 3 March 2026:‘We were stunned to see thousands of Iranians in the squares of Europe demonstrating alone for their freedom. They were demanding that European governments support the protest of their friends and family members who were being massacred by the thousands. There were only a few of us demonstrating with them‘.

Moralism as complicity

There is an even more uncomfortable point that Robinson raises, and it concerns the whole of Europe. Anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric often presents itself as ‘anti-imperialism’ cloaked in the language of human rights. But when this rhetoric leads to the defence – even by omission – of a theocratic, misogynist and openly anti-Semitic regime, the language of rights turns into its opposite and becomes a shield for prejudice. Il Foglio has described this contradiction plastically, speaking ofEurope’s ‘intolerable hypocrisies‘ in the face of the Iranian crisis: a continent that claims to be a champion of globalisation and freedom of movement, but which shows ‘annoyance’ whenever it is called upon to concretely defend them, even when vital energy interests such as the Strait of Hormuz are at stake. Robinson recalls how even 1930s Ireland was not immune to fascist and anti-Semitic elements; the point is not to blame the present for the past, but to recognise that anti-Semitism can wear local colours – even progressive ones, even those tinged with global solidarity.

What Europe should do

Europe must choose whether it really wants to be the continent of human rights or whether it prefers to remain the continent of selective indignation. First of all, it must recognise the Iranian diaspora as the legitimate voice of an oppressed people: as Parisi recalled in Rome, those demonstrators in the European squareswere ‘demanding that governments support the protest of their massacred families‘, and Europe left them alone. Second, it must apply the same standards of condemnation and diplomatic pressure to Tehran that it applies to other regimes, and stop treating relations with the Islamic Republic as a secondary variable in foreign policy. Third, it must make a clear distinction between solidarity with the Palestinian cause – entirely legitimate – and apologia for or trivialisation of the ayatollahs’ crimes, which is quite another matter and has polluted European public debate for too many years. As Robinson wrote, stop confusing one’s ideological narcissism with internationalism: recognising a Palestinian keffiyeh and being blind to the Lion and Sun flags of the Iranians in exile‘is not internationalism‘ . It is a political choice disguised as ethics.