Predictions ageing poorly is an occupational hazard for journalists and commentators. But few have gone as sour as those made by Roger Cooper in this magazine, in February 1979, days after the last Shah of Iran had fled.
In a piece titled ‘Is Khomeini the leader for Iran?’, Cooper speculated that ‘the prospect… of an Iranian Islamic republic… must surely be more alluring to all but the most stubborn defenders of an ancient regime’. The Ayatollah, he suggested, offered Iranians ‘the chance to resume their true national and cultural identity’. No suggestion was made of imminent death squads, mass imprisonments or looming theocratic repression and economic hardship.
Cooper can be forgiven for failing to realise just how miserable the Islamic Republic would be. At the time, western commentators, most prominently Michel Foucault, were falling over themselves to celebrate Khomeini’s ascension. But what cannot be forgiven is those who, for the past four decades, have continued to defend the regime he established, long after its grim reality became apparent.
Take David Miller. The sociologist was dismissed from Bristol University in 2021 for his persistent fulminating against the evils of Zionism (he later won an employment tribunal case against the university.) He now plies his trade on Press TV, Iran’s propaganda channel, and attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah. His accusation that a Jewish primary school was radicalising children into supporting genocide meant the school required extra security, a year before the Manchester synagogue attack.
One of Miller’s Press TV co-hosts is Chris Williamson. Once, Williamson was the leader of Derby City Council and then Labour MP for Derby North. But after being caught suggesting his party had been ‘too apologetic’ about anti-Semitism accusations, Williamson was suspended and barred from standing. When an independent run flopped, he defected to the Workers Party, led by George Galloway, a fellow Press TV regular. He now hosts the show Palestine Declassified, with recent episodes focusing on ‘Zionist organ theft’ in Gaza and explaining the ‘Zionist takeover’ of the BBC.
If the Iranian regime falls, Miller and Williamson will be deprived of a platform for their exculpatory ramblings. Others would lose their reason for being. The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) is a London-based NGO with the mission of struggling ‘for justice for all people regardless of their racial, confessional or political background’; a 2023 report by William Shawcross, the Charity Commission’s former chairman, described it as ‘an Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime’ with a history of ‘extremist links and terrorist sympathies’.
Led by Massoud Shadjareh, a Brit of Iranian origin, the IHRC is surprisingly quiet on the question of the human rights of Iranian Muslims. When asked in 2010 about protestors being mistreated, Shadjareh said he did not know what his interviewer was referring to. Recent X posts by Shadjareh and the IHRC make no mention of the thousands thought to have been killed protesting. Instead, they promote an upcoming demonstration on ‘Genocide Memorial Day’, provide backing to those campaigning for slavery reparations and advertise a book with the intriguingly impenetrable title Islamic Metaphysics of Racism.
Nonetheless, not all the regime’s excusers are so murky. Sir Richard Dalton, for example, is a former ambassador to Tehran turned Chatham House fellow. Last year, he claimed he has ‘always believed that the US and Israel together constituted a greater threat’ to Middle East stability ‘than Iran’.
The regime’s cheerleaders remain a serious problem – and their silence will be all the more golden if the Islamic Republic falls. Once the internet blackout imposed upon Iran lifts, and we can see how the Ayatollah really treats his flock, the useful idiots who have been shilling for his regime will be exposed for what they are. Apologists for evil deserve to be named and shamed.
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