By Alan Kessel, January 16, 2026
Something decisive has happened – not just on the streets of London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Toronto, or Montreal – but across the moral architecture of the West.
As Iranians rise up against a theocratic regime that shoots unarmed protesters, cuts internet access to conceal its crimes, and declares dissenters “enemies of God” punishable by death, the silence from those who once claimed to speak for justice, particularly regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is deafening. The campus encampments have vanished. The professional activist class that occupied public spaces, disrupted institutions, and moralized incessantly has simply disappeared.
What has replaced them is telling. At rallies in Canada supporting the people of Iran, there are no Hamas slogans, no chants about “resistance,” no ubiquitous Palestinian flags. Instead, one sees the tricolour of pre-revolutionary Iran – an emblem of a country that existed before clerical rule, before theocracy, before terror became state policy. The symbolism is unmistakable. These gatherings are not about ideology. They are about freedom.
That contrast speaks volumes.
This silence is not accidental. It is a confession.
What is unfolding in Iran is not a war. It is not “economic unrest.” It is a regime exterminating its own people to survive. Students, women, doctors, workers, civilians, are being shot in the streets, dragged from hospital beds, and threatened with execution for demanding basic freedoms. Yet the same international institutions, media outlets, celebrities, and political leaders that mobilized with extraordinary speed and certainty over Gaza now hesitate, minimize, or avert their gaze altogether.
We have seen this pattern before – clearly, unmistakably, and recently.
On October 17, 2023, within hours of an unverified claim by Hamas that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of people, much of the global media ran banner headlines. The claim was treated as fact. No forensic analysis. No verification. No pause. International outrage followed almost immediately. Protests erupted across continents. Diplomatic pressure mounted within hours.
Days later, the facts emerged. U.S. and allied intelligence assessments concluded that the explosion was caused by a failed rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not an Israeli strike. The death toll was far lower than claimed. Major outlets, including the New York Times, eventually issued corrections or editor’s notes acknowledging that they had relied too heavily on Hamas’ assertions.
The damage was done. Yet the lesson learned was not universal caution, rather selective skepticism.
When it comes to Iran, skepticism suddenly operates in only one direction.
As protests spread across Iranian cities, the regime imposed nationwide internet blackouts – an unmistakable signal of mass repression.. Iranian doctors worked under dire conditions to provide aid. Hospitals were reportedly stormed, medical staff beaten, injured protesters dragged away. Yet for nearly two weeks, much of the early coverage was framed around supposed economic unrest. Only belatedly did some outlets begin to describe what was plainly occurring: a massacre.
This is not journalistic prudence. It is a pattern.
The United Nations mirrors the same moral asymmetry. An emergency session of the General Assembly was convened within weeks of October 7. Resolutions followed. Statements multiplied. Yet as Iran’s body count rises, the institutional response has been cautious to the point of paralysis. A Security Council meeting will now take place, but no one should mistake it for accountability.
With Russia and China as traditional supporters of Tehran, the outcome is predetermined. Any meaningful action will be vetoed, diluted, or buried in procedural language. The meeting will serve as diplomatic theatre, not justice. The Iranian people will learn, once again, that the world’s highest body charged with maintaining peace is structurally incapable of confronting certain crimes, depending on who commits them.
Civil society tells the same story. Universities erupted within days over Gaza. Encampments spread across campuses in North America, Europe, and Australia. Classes were disrupted, buildings occupied, demands issued. Iran, meanwhile, meets every criterion these activists claim to care about: extrajudicial killings, systematic repression, persecution of women, suppression of speech, and lethal force against civilians. And yet – silence.
Not a tent. Not a chant. Not a demand.
The reason is increasingly clear. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not merely another authoritarian regime. It is a key financier and enabler of Hamas and other terror organizations lionized by much of the pro-Palestinian protest movement. To stand openly with Iranians demanding “freedom for Iran” is to confront the reality that the same regime underwriting violence against Israelis is now slaughtering its own people in the streets.
That truth is anathema to a movement built on ideological binaries. It collapses the moral fiction that one can celebrate “resistance” abroad while ignoring tyranny at its source.
So too with the arts and cultural elite – the self-appointed conscience of the international community. Where are the voices that flooded social media feeds, organized open letters, and dominated award-season podiums? Where is the Hollywood influencer class that spoke with such moral certainty only months ago? Now, the cultural guardians of human rights have nothing to say.
The same question applies to the international legal and human-rights establishment. Where are the emergency filings, the urgent op-eds, the press conferences invoking crimes against humanity? Where are the lawyers who so readily appear before cameras and courts when Israel is accused, often on the basis of contested or false claims, but now fall silent when a regime openly declares its own citizens “enemies of God” and executes them? If international law is meant to protect civilians from systematic state violence, why has no action been taken?
This is not ignorance. It is selective morality.
Iran exposes the lie at the heart of much contemporary “progressivism.” If the cause were truly human rights, Iran would be the central case. If the concern were women’s rights, Iranian women, leading these protests and dying for them, would be impossible to ignore. But Iran does not fit the ideological script. Israel does.
And so the movement goes quiet.
This matters because Iran is not merely another dictatorship. It is a leading sponsor of global terror, financing Hamas, Hezbollah, and other proxies while brutalizing its own population at home. When Iranians rise up against this regime, they are not only fighting for themselves. They are standing on the front lines of a struggle between repression and human dignity.
Their courage has stripped away every pretense.
The emperor is not wearing any clothes. The veil has been lifted. The world can now see, with painful clarity, which institutions, leaders, and movements are guided by principle and which are guided by politics.
If this moment does not wake the world, nothing will.
Silence now is not neutrality. It is complicity. And history has never been kind to those who looked away when the truth was this plain.
Alan H. Kessel served in the roles of assistant deputy minister for legal affairs and legal adviser at Global Affairs Canada. He led the coalition of states suing Iran for the downing of Ukrainian Airlines PS752. He is currently a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
