The Tyrant’s Mirror

What Netanyahu Won’t Say About Iran and Democracy

If there’s one thing that’s really started to grate on me lately, it’s the way privileged Westerners look down their noses at “uncivilised” Palestinians or Iranians—without a single second of self-reflection.

We speak of these people in binary terms. Jew-haters. Theocracy. Axis of evil.

No history. No context. No recognition of our own roles in the story.

Watching Netanyahu explain his reasons for attacking Iran these past few days, I can’t help but feel: there is a special kind of hypocrisy reserved for the powerful. One that thrives not in silence, but in speech.

It cloaks itself in the language of democracy, freedom, and morality, while perpetrating the very crimes it claims to condemn. Few figures exemplify this inversion more clearly than Benjamin Netanyahu. These days, I find myself reversing the meaning of his words in real time. It would be almost funny—if he weren’t dragging the world to the brink of nuclear war.

Today’s headline is a perfect case in point: “Iran tried to assassinate Trump — twice.” No evidence. No detail. Just: trust me.

As if it’s a given that we should believe the man who has lied more times than we can count. The man currently standing trial for corruption in his own country. The man with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court hanging over his head.

And yet, again and again, Netanyahu takes the world stage to paint Iran as a tyrannical regime. A brutal theocracy that threatens regional stability, global peace, and the moral order of “civilised” nations. He speaks of repression, religious authoritarianism, nuclear ambition…

And yet, as he speaks, Palestinian children lie buried beneath Israeli rubble. Judges in his own country are stripped of their independence. Protesters flood Tel Aviv to warn of Israel’s descent into autocracy. And still, Western media and politicians repeat his words as if they don’t see through every one of them.

This is the age-old trick of empire: to frame resistance as danger, and domination as peace. To call your enemy a tyrant while you drop bombs, build walls, and silence dissent. It’s a psychological inversion so deeply embedded in the Western psyche that we barely even notice it’s there.

But what if we flipped the lens?

What if the real question isn’t what’s wrong with Iran, but what happened the last time Iran tried to be free?

Because behind every accusation hurled at Iran lies a story we’re not supposed to remember. A story not of fanaticism, but of democracy. Not of extremism, but of national self-determination. And it’s that story, not missiles or militias, that men like Netanyahu fear most.

It’s telling how few people know this story. But I guess that’s the point.

Because if the world remembered what happened in Iran in 1953, Netanyahu’s narrative would begin to crack. The whole Western moral high ground would begin to crumble.

Seventy years ago, Iran was not a theocracy. It was a democracy. And its Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was not some extremist cleric or anti-Western fanatic. He was a secular, educated reformer, widely respected across Iran and even in parts of Europe.

He was also deeply committed to one revolutionary idea: that Iran’s natural resources should benefit its own people.

At the time, British corporations controlled Iran’s oil—most notably the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—BP. Iranian workers lived in poverty while British elites reaped the profits. Mossadegh saw this for what it was: colonial theft. And so, in 1951, he did what any self-respecting leader should do. He nationalised Iran’s oil.

That act alone sealed his fate.

The British were furious. But with their empire waning, they needed help. So they turned to their postwar partner in global control: the United States. Together, the CIA and MI6 launched Operation Ajax, a covert coup that overthrew Mossadegh and restored the Shah—a Western-aligned monarch who ruled Iran with an iron fist for the next 26 years.

Yes, you heard that right. And no, this is not hearsay. It’s all publicly available to anyone who cares to look.

In the 1950s, Iran had a functioning democracy. It chose its leader through free elections. That leader acted in the interest of his people. And for that, the West crushed it.

Why? Not because of tyranny. But because of sovereignty.

Because a free Iran that controlled its own oil was far more dangerous to Western interests than a brutal regime that would play by empire’s rules.

So before we judge these countries as backwards or evil, maybe we should pause for a second. And do a bit of self-reflection.

Because Iran was not the only one.

Mossadegh’s overthrow was not an anomaly. It was a blueprint. A warning shot to any nation—especially resource-rich nations—that dared to imagine independence. Over the decades that followed, the pattern became unmistakable: whenever a country in the Global South tried to assert sovereignty, particularly over its own resources, Western powers stepped in. Not to defend democracy, but to dismantle it.

In Chile, it was Salvador Allende. Democratically elected in 1970, he moved to nationalise the copper industry—most of it controlled by U.S. corporations. Three years later, with CIA backing, the Chilean military staged a violent coup. Allende was killed. In his place, the dictator Pinochet took power, torturing and disappearing thousands. Washington called it a win for stability.

In the Congo, it was Patrice Lumumba. Young, charismatic, and committed to breaking free from Belgian exploitation, he was elected Prime Minister in 1960. Within months, he was overthrown and later executed—his murder orchestrated with CIA complicity. The country was handed over to Mobutu, a corrupt strongman who bled it dry for decades.

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was once armed and empowered by the U.S., until he turned against the empire’s interests. When he dared to sell oil outside the petrodollar system and hinted at regional leadership beyond American control, the WMD lie was born. The war was sold as liberation. It became occupation, chaos, and death.

In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi may have been a complicated figure, but one thing is certain: his proposal for a pan-African gold-backed currency posed a direct threat to the dominance of Western financial systems. Within months of pushing the idea, he was targeted, bombed, and brutally executed. His country has not known peace since.

And these are just a few of the well known examples.

Again and again, the script of empire repeats itself. Leaders who serve Western interests—no matter how brutal—are tolerated, even propped up. But those who challenge the economic order, who claim control over their own oil, water, land, or currency, are labelled madmen, extremists, or terrorists. Their democracies are destabilised. Their countries are sanctioned, invaded, or reduced to rubble.

This isn’t about freedom. It never was.

This is about obedience.

And so we arrive back in the present, where the script is still being followed, nearly word for word. Although, maybe finally, it’s beginning to fray at the edges.

Iran is once again cast as the great villain. Netanyahu, Trump, Western politicians, and media outlets speak in near-perfect unison. Iran is a rogue state, a destabilising force, the world’s leading sponsor of terror. Israel conducted a “preemptive strike.” It has the right to defend itself. The world must defend Israel against the vicious theocracy that lives only to destroy it. The language is clinical. Rehearsed. Unquestioned.

But pause for a moment.

What, exactly, has Iran done? Has it invaded a neighbour? Toppled governments? Carried out targeted assassinations on foreign soil? Deployed bombs in hospitals and schools?

Or is its real crime something else entirely—something far more familiar, and far less forgivable?

Iran supports Palestinian resistance. It was one of seven countries named in the now-infamous Pentagon plan to be ‘taken out’ after 9/11. The only one still standing…

Iran refuses to bow to Israel. It won’t roll over for the United States. It holds vast oil and gas reserves and has insisted, time and again, on charting its own course. And for this, it is cast as the great danger to world peace.

Meanwhile, Israel—a nuclear-armed apartheid regime committing an unapologetic genocide—is somehow seen as the responsible actor.

This is the inversion at an almost incomprehensible magnitude.

This is tyranny being sold as democracy. Resistance branded as terror.

Ask yourself this: if nuclear war were truly the concern driving Israel’s actions, why is no one concerned about Iran’s defence pact with one of the two largest nuclear powers on Earth—Russia?

Or is it, perhaps, that nuclear threats are only threats when they come from those who won’t follow orders?

And all the while, Netanyahu—who has spent decades gutting Israel’s democratic institutions, inciting racial hatred, and dragging his people into an unending state of war—stands at a podium and lectures the world about freedom.

It would be satire if it weren’t so deadly.

The deeper truth is this: the West does not fear religious extremism. It doesn’t fear authoritarianism. If it did, it would have sanctioned Israel long ago. What it fears—what it has always feared—is independence. A nation that thinks for itself, defends its dignity, and refuses to sell its soul to empire.

That is the real threat here.

And maybe the most important question we need to ask is: who gets to be free?

Because that’s the question at the heart of all this. Not just in Iran, or Gaza, or Libya, but everywhere the boot of empire has crushed those who dared to dream something different.

Who gets to claim sovereignty? Who gets to nationalise their oil, their water, their land? Who gets to speak back to the powers that dominate the world?

Do I really live in a democratic country if merely asking these questions puts me in danger? Is that what we pretend freedom is?

Because the evidence is clear: the West will applaud a dictatorship so long as it plays by its rules. And it will crush a democracy the moment it steps out of line.

Iran did not become a dictatorship because it was tyrannical. It became what it is because it dared to be free. Theocracy rose from the ashes of a dream that was never allowed to manifest.

None of this is to romanticise Iran’s current regime. It is brutally repressive. Dissidents are silenced, women are subjugated, and state violence is real. But if we stop there—if we isolate that truth from the context that birthed it—we’re not engaging in honest reflection. We’re engaging in selective morality.

The Islamic Republic didn’t arise in a vacuum. It rose from the rubble of a democracy crushed by the West—like many dictatorships that followed it. And until we’re willing to ask how we got here, we will keep making the same mistake: reacting to the flames while ignoring the spark.

And the same is true when it comes to October 7. That day was horrific. Innocent lives were taken. But to isolate it—to treat it as some inexplicable eruption of evil—is to participate in narrative amnesia. Because horror never occurs in isolation. It erupts from pressure. And if we speak of the blood spilled that day without speaking of the siege, the occupation, the dispossession, the decades of dehumanisation that preceded it—we are not seeking truth. We are preserving power.

Netanyahu can talk about threats all he likes. He can beat the drums of war, wrap himself in the language of liberty, and call down fire in the name of civilisation.

But he doesn’t fear Iran because it’s a theocracy. He fears it because it’s the wrong kind of theocracy—one that won’t play by his rules or bow to his agenda.

And in the end, it always seems to come back to Palestine.

In 2001, there were seven nations in the region that openly stood with the Palestinian cause. Today, only one remains—and it’s now firmly in Israel’s crosshairs.

It’s hard not to wonder: if the world had acted sooner—if it had confronted the injustice at the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict instead of enabling it for decades—would we be here now? Would this war, too, be necessary?

Because maybe, just maybe, resolving the longest-standing wound in the Middle East could begin to heal others.

History will look back on this moment with far more clarity than we can muster in real time.

But I can’t help but think, we might have the luxury of hindsight.

The future of humanity might just require us to get right to the heart of all this—now.