It is precisely the discourse of “authoritarian repression”—deployed at the historical moment when the Islamic Republic of Iran is fighting a war for national survival—that reveals the material function of imperial feminism. The language of women’s rights reaches its highest pitch not during decades of sanctions, assassinations, and economic strangulation, but at the moment when the state targeted for destruction is mobilizing to defend itself—and its people—from military aggression.
Greg Shupak documents the logic openly at work in U.S. media. Leading newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post advocate bombing Iran while presenting military force as a means to “help” Iranian protesters and “free” them from “bondage” (Shupak, 2026). The discourse of authoritarian repression becomes the ideological cover for imperial violence. Outrage over the Iranian government’s actions is converted into justification for the U.S. government to inflict more violence on Iran—a formula for devastation presented as solidarity.
What does ‘opposing authoritarianism’ mean materially?
Abstract invocations of “authoritarian repression” detach a legitimate analytical category from the historical structure in which it operates. Once severed from the reality of imperial war, the concept becomes politically functional: it legitimizes the destruction of the very institutions capable of organizing collective defense.
The contradiction becomes visible when we ask a simple material question: what is the actual alternative being offered? Those invoking the language of liberation from positions of imperial power have supported authoritarian client regimes across the region for decades—from the Shah to the Gulf monarchies to Israel’s apartheid state. What does it mean for supposedly radical or revolutionary figures and organizations to wield the same discourse?
The question imperial feminism cannot answer is straightforward. Is there a concrete political force capable of taking power in Iran while simultaneously defending the country from U.S. and Israeli aggression? Since February 28, no such force has appeared on the ground.The current opposition promoted in Western media is not a liberation movement but a restoration project aligned with the very powers conducting the bombing. Voices opposed to “authoritarianism” celebrated abroad possess neither a mass base among Iranian workers nor the institutional capacity to defend Iran’s national sovereignty at this critical moment.
The outcome of such politics is already visible elsewhere. Where sovereign states have been destroyed under the banner of liberation, the result has not been democracy but devastation. History has shown this repeatedly—from Iraq to Libya to Syria. The collapse of the state exposes the population to fragmentation, militia rule, and foreign domination.
The ground refuses abstraction
Events on the ground tell a different story.
Consider what Professor Mirandi reported just days ago: when the bombs fell on Tehran—while thousands filled the squares to mourn and protest the U.S.-Israeli attacks—the crowd stood still. No one panicked. No one ran in fear. That stillness was not passivity. It reflected the political knowledge of a people who understand a fundamental truth: their survival—and any possible future freedom—requires defending their sovereignty against the empire that seeks their destruction.
These Iranians refuse the false equivalence imperial feminism insists upon. They reject the demand that while U.S. and Israeli bombs are falling, one must balance opposition to “authoritarian repression” with opposition to imperial war—as if these were symmetrical moral choices rather than a life-and-death struggle for national existence.
The South Pars workers demonstrated the same clarity. As Iranian scholar Helyeh Doutaghi documented through fieldwork during the December 2025 protests, when workers struck against wage theft and exploitation, they did not attack the legitimacy of domestic security institutions. They recognized that in a nation subjected to decades of sanctions, assassinations, and foreign-backed destabilization, doing so would play directly into the hands of those seeking to justify external intervention (Doutaghi, 2025). Their struggle for better conditions was inseparable from their defense of national sovereignty. They understood what imperial feminism cannot: that the state imperialism seeks to destroy remains the indispensable terrain on which any future working-class victory must be won.
Material reality of imperial war and international solidarity
When a nation is under siege, the survival of the population becomes bound to the survival of the state. That is not a matter of opinion but of political gravity. The structural logic of imperialism targets sovereign institutions precisely because in times of war they are the only force capable of organizing collective defense.
The human cost falls overwhelmingly on the working class. When sanctions block medical supplies, when infrastructure is bombed, when scientists and engineers are assassinated, those who suffer and die are the ordinary men and women whose liberation imperial feminism claims to champion. The destruction of sovereignty does not free them. It kills them.
Solidarity begins with recognizing the conditions people actually face. Do Iranian women need more sanctions? More bombs? More destabilization carried out in their name? Or do they need the violence of imperialism to stop so that their own struggles—against internal repression and external domination alike—can unfold on their own terms?
The people gathered in Tehran’s squares have already answered.
Defending sovereignty in the face of imperial war does not imply endorsement of every internal policy of the Islamic Republic. It reflects a simpler political reality: without sovereignty, there is no terrain on which struggles for democracy, workers’ rights, or women’s liberation can occur.
Imperial feminism obscures this reality by converting legitimate grievances into ideological instruments of war. Military aggression is then reframed as humanitarian intervention. When bombs are falling, the discourse of “authoritarian repression” does not liberate. It provides moral cover for the forces inflicting the violence.
The abstraction costs nothing to those who deploy it from afar. For those living under sanctions and airstrikes, the cost is measured in lives .Under conditions of siege, the survival of the people and the survival of the state are inseparable. Pretending otherwise is not nuanced analysis. It is complicity disguised as solidarity.
Solidarity with Iranian women therefore requires refusing to let their struggles be weaponized for imperial ends.
References:
Doutaghi, H. (2025, January 6). Iran’s Indigenous Labor Movement and Working Class Sovereignty. Progressive International. https://progressive.international/blueprint/e57562a0-4dbd-479f-b77d-ed23bee16394-irans-indigenous-labor-movement-and-working-class-sovereignty/en/
Marandi, S. M. (2026, March 8). Iran rejects ceasefire – demands new status quo[Interview]. Interview by G. Diesen. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0bjW0uh1J60
Shupak, G. (2026, February 10). Leading Papers Call for Destroying Iran to Save It.https://fair.org/home/leading-papers-call-for-destroying-iran-to-save-it/
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