Guest Post: Twyford, Davidson and Socialist Aotearoa give comfort to Iran’s regime
A guest post by Samira Taghavi:
A public meeting held on March 11th in Mt Eden, under the banner of “Stop War on Iran” was presented by its organisers (Joe Carolan, of Socialist Aotearoa, et al) as a principled anti-war gathering. From the perspective of Iranians who have escaped the Islamic Republic however, the event possessed no legitimacy whatsoever. Accordingly, the meeting was not a serious conversation about peace but an ideological rally in which the Iranian regime was defended and the lived experience of its victims ignored.
Among Iranians, both inside the country and across the global diaspora, the case for confronting the Islamic regime is no longer controversial. For many, it has become an unavoidable conclusion. Many of us have experienced enough violence to understand the catastrophic consequences of war far better than those who approach the issue through ideological slogans.
The meeting, dominated by white leftists whose hostility toward U.S. and Israeli policies, involved no genuine engagement with those of us experienced in life under the Islamic Republic. It was a worldview infected with the grotesque romanticization of the Iranian regime, neatly packed into an “anti-imperialist” narrative.
The “progressive” tone was set when by socialist Suha Aksoy, for the Cuba Friendship Society no less, opined that “we do not have any option but to support Iran. This war must be won by Iran” – an invocation met with enthusiastic applause.
For anyone familiar with the reality of life under the mullahs, the moment was distressingly surreal. For forty-seven years the regime has ruled Iran through fear, imprisoning dissidents, executing political opponents, violently suppressing protests, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have not forgotten to also inflict barbarity abroad. Yet inside that meeting hall, the regime was not treated as the authoritarian theocracy it is, but as a misunderstood victim of Western aggression. This was not anti-war principle but instead ideological theatre.
What made the evening particularly troubling was the involvement of two sitting Members of Parliament. Labour MP Phil Twyford and Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson both spoke at the meeting, despite having been warned beforehand by members of the Iranian community about the nature of organisers’ sympathies for the regime. Both politicians had been told clearly that the event did not represent the voices of the Iranian diaspora. Both chose involvement anyway.
Twyford spoke after a speech that had praised Iran’s war effort, making no attempt to challenge such remarks or to address the applause that followed them. Instead, the contributions were something he had “really enjoyed listening to”, thereby legitimising those deplorable sentiments.
Davidson’s position was no surprise. While her party bleeds for Gaza, the bleeding of the Iranian people has now long been coldly bypassed by the far-left, her party in particular.
Outside the event, meanwhile, a great many more (mostly-Iranian) New Zealanders had organised a peaceful counter-protest precisely because the (mostly-European) attendees inside were attempting to present themselves as the voice of Iran. Hundreds gathered carrying the Lion and Sun flag, an historic symbol, now widely associated with the aspiration for a democratic and secular Iran, while many other New Zealanders joined us in solidarity. The contrast between the two gatherings could not have been clearer. Inside the hall stood “proud socialists” – and as Stalin might have put it, their “useful idiots” – who have never lived under brutal state control, explaining (absurdly) why the regime deserves support.
Iran appeared to be little more than a stage upon which to perform a familiar ideological drama over “imperialism”, capitalism and anti-Americanism. But for the Iranian diaspora, Iran is the country where our families have been imprisoned, tortured, or killed.
These socialists are not motivated by solidarity with the Iranian people, but by a worldview in which hostility toward the United States automatically produces sympathy for any regime that positions itself against it. Within that framework the Islamic Republic becomes a symbol of resistance rather than what it actually is: a violent theocracy sustained by repression.
Our region has only recently witnessed the horrific consequences of ideological extremism, with the Bondi attack in Australia. In this environment, political leaders should exercise far greater judgment about implicitly endorsing insanity.
The lesson from the Mt Eden meeting should therefore be unmistakable. The Iranian people have spent nearly half a century resisting a regime that governs through fear. Their struggle deserves solidarity grounded in reality rather than ideological distortion. There is also a practical step New Zealand should take without delay in designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization – which it most obviously is.
Iranians and New Zealanders must continue to challenge Joe Carolan and his comrades, who would apparently prefer to see both countries living under heavy state control. These “anti-imperialist progressives” do not speak for Iran, because they can never represent the real Iranian people who seek democracy, freedom and the end of state-instigated terror.
The post Guest Post: Twyford, Davidson and Socialist Aotearoa give comfort to Iran’s regime first appeared on Kiwiblog.