Americans who love Trump and Americans who hate Trump are making the same mistakes about Iran

It's important to challenge the US military complex. But it's also too common for anti-war protesters to chant 'hands off' or 'get out' without thinking about what that really means

So far, 2020 has proved to be a hellscape for global peace and stability. The killing of the head of Iran’s Quds Force, General Soleimani, in a US airstrike was strategically reckless and legally questionable. Iran’s military response, which resulted in the downing of a commercial aircraft in its own airspace, killing all 176 civilians on-board, was tragic and potentially a criminal act. Add to this the threats to bomb cultural sites, disputed violations of Iraq’s national sovereignty, and the arrest (then release) of a diplomat and it has been a punishing couple of weeks for international law violations.

So what to do in a time where both Iranian and US authorities have demonstrated little care for the civilians caught in the escalatory crossfire? We can start by not forgetting that the lives of actual people hang in the balance and that the world has a duty to support them, not abandon them.

In the US, it’s tempting to stay in your usual ideological lane: to criticize the Trump administration for its rashness or its communications, and hesitate to show solidarity with Iranian protesters for fear of Trump-style meddling — or, if you’re a Trump supporter, to jump to call for war with Iran in supposed support of “liberating” the population. Americans are prone to casting events in the Middle East in those reductive terms. But choosing to see Iran through a lens colored by US domestic politics means choosing not to see the truth. Trump supporters and Never-Trumpers alike are guilty of this.

Are you an American furious with the Trump administration and its aggression towards Iran? Channel some of that energy into questioning whether the US pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council was the right strategic move when it could have used that membership to convene a special session to probe the Iranian regime on its violent crackdown on a previous round of protests last November in which up to 1500 people were reportedly killed. Remember that if it were not for the involvement of Canada, Ukraine and the global community in demanding answers on what happened to downed Flight 752, the Iranian state would likely still not have admitted responsibility for the tragedy to its own people. Engagement is not intervention, but it is not appeasement either. Engagement through a collective, multilateral process works, as long as the international community continues to strengthen the multilateral institutions that hold them and not gut them from the inside.

Too often, in challenging US militarism, the slogans from anti-war movements in the West are “hands off” or “get out”. While I understand the spirit, I believe we can evolve that message so that it does not result in a false binary where supporters believe they must choose between a bloody interventionism or turning a blind eye to abuses around the world.

In order to truly live in a world at peace, we must not only combat the evils of the industrial military complex and endless wars. We must remember that violence also comes in the form of the daily brutality of governments that are prepared to kill their own people to stay in power. To advocate for anything less than the end of these regimes is a false “peace” as it does not account for the lived realities of people on the ground in an oppressive state.

In the case of Iran, the clearest example of how the world can positively engage to support those currently protesting in the streets for their freedoms is by continuing to seek justice and accountability for those killed and detained by state security forces in November 2019. The families of killed protesters were forbidden from publicly mourning their loved ones, and silenced and even arrested as they sought justice for the murders. Thousands of protesters who were arrested remain detained, have been denied access to counsel and may face national security charges that carry the death penalty. There are fresh concerns the detainees will be subject to torture or execution in the heightened security environment.

Despite these horrors, the world has been largely silent on the dead and detained protesters. Some who are worried the US is on the war path with Iran are hesitant to draw attention to the abuses of the Iranian authorities, out of fear that painting a negative image of the Iranian leadership will provide fodder for the justification for a military intervention. But this crippling fear does the pro-peace movement a disservice by preventing it from challenging authoritarianism with the same vigor it challenges the politicians who perpetuate wars. Worse still, it invites in apologist-style polemicists, who, in their zeal to challenge US hegemony, overlook the imperial ambitions of Russia and China and go so far as to minimize Bashar al-Assad’s responsibility for war crimes in Syria, deny the Chinese state’s oppression of its Uighur minority, and support Iran’s leadership as a bulwark to US empire, no matter how brutally these regimes treat their own people.

So, please, do hold your elected officials accountable. Do support efforts to limit the US President’s war powers so that the US does not enter another needless war, waged far away from its own soil but killing scores of people on another continent. Do challenge the poison of the homegrown US military industrial complex head-on.

But do not forget that when the Iranian regime uses extreme measures to silence its people through internet shutdowns, violent crackdowns and intimidation campaigns, it means it is at its most vulnerable. That vulnerability is an opportunity for the international community to press the Iranian state on human rights reforms and to hold firm.

Iranian protesters are currently risking their lives to show their dissent. The least we can do is not deny them their agency, and the better we can do is show them real global solidarity — through our words and our actions that seek a true peace, not a false one.

Gissou Nia is a human rights lawyer and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington DC