The Myth of Iran’s Moral High Ground

By Kayla Bartsch

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

 

Many strange horseshoes have formed in the wake of the “12 Days of War.” Or, more accurately, the war between Israel and Iran has revealed the strange coalitions that were already in place.

 

Of course, the leading voices of dissent against U.S. involvement in Iran on the “right” are well known — their deep-seated hatred of Israel inseparable from antisemitic pandering. Darryl Cooper, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens — the likely suspects.

 

Tim Walz asserted that America lacked the “moral authority” to arbitrate the fight between Iran and Israel. The folks over at the American Conservative have echoed their disdain of American leadership abroad; they’ve had their knickers in a twist over the conflict since it first broke out.

 

Their screeds against Israel have turned into screeds against America itself. So opposed are they to American involvement abroad that they condemn their own nation and make apologies to the ayatollah.

 

Zineb Riboua, an expert on the Middle East, named this group the “Panicans.” They are the class of pundits, policymakers, and politicians who respond to every use of American force with “the same recycled vocabulary of doom,” decrying “Vietnam all over again,” and “WWIII.” According to Riboua, the Panicans possess

 

a bizarre, almost masochistic worldview, one that holds the United States to a standard so impossibly high that action becomes indistinguishable from guilt, and inaction is treated as virtue. They speak of restraint and non-intervention, but their underlying assumption is Wilsonian: that legitimacy comes not from strategic necessity but from a kind of moral purification. In fact, they mirror the very liberal internationalists they claim to oppose and are ultimately detached from how the world actually works.

 

Some of the Panicans have so thoroughly waded into the hysteria that they are now professing Iran’s moral superiority over not just Israel, but the United States itself.

 

Chief among these is Douglas MacGregor, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served as senior adviser to the acting secretary of defense at the end of Trump’s first term. With over half a million followers on X, MacGregor has pinned his vocabulary of doom to the top of his profile: “War with Iran is likely to walk The United States directly into WW III. Let’s avoid this!” (Beneath the warning is a self-promotional video “starring Colonel Douglas MacGregor.”)

 

In a post from Sunday, MacGregor laments: “On the 21st of June, a day that will live in infamy, President Trump led the American People to War with Iran. . . . Washington has launched its own Pearl Harbor operation.” The Panican continues:

 

The world now waits for Iran’s response. Tehran’s leaders aren’t reckless or impetuous. Their counter-strike will be deliberate and likely decisive. And make no mistake, Iran will strike back. It will do so in ways Washington doesn’t expect. Why? Tehran controls the political and moral high ground. Israel violated international law. A program of mass murder in Gaza. Backing the murderous ISIS-led regime in Syria. Killing Christians. Killing other minorities. Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran. These are incontrovertible facts. Escalation is inevitable, but Iran, not Washington, will control it.

 

He ends the screed with a familiar antisemitic trope, arguing that Israel controls American politicians:

 

Washington’s ruling political class, not just President Trump, decided to unconditionally support Israel in its war against Iran. Going to war when and where Israel dictates and for reasons Israel decrees is stupid. It’s worse than stupid. It’s stupidity on stilts. Israel’s war for Jewish Supremacy in the Middle East will fail and Washington will now fail with it. The war against Iran will fail because the war is unjust and the world will ensure that it fails.

 

While MacGregor portrays himself as an “America First” realist, his position would be more accurately described as a “Tehran First” fanatic. He could do well to be reminded of the moral realities of Iran’s position, both internationally and domestically.

 

MacGregor is not alone. The woke right has been demonizing Israel and deifying Iran throughout the entire conflict.

 

Before the first strikes were even launched, the American Conservative published a piece on “Iran’s Christian Heritage” by Eldar Mamedov, “a member of the Pugwash Council on Science & World Affairs, a Nobel Peace Prize–winning Track II diplomacy organization committed to pursuing a world free of nuclear weapons” and former contributor to CNN and Al Jazeera.

 

In the piece, Mamedov romanticizes the lives of Christians in Iran (most of them of Armenian origin), warning that American intervention risks reducing the ancient Christian churches in Iran “to ruins.”

 

He fails to mention, however, that Iran needs no help in persecuting its own Christian community. Iran’s wrongful imprisonment of Christians surged sixfold in the past year alone. Any Iranians who convert to Christianity are at risk of death by hanging for “apostasy.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deems Christianity in Iran a “deviant sect” and a “national security threat.”

 

Mansour Borji, the director of a nonprofit dedicated to the advocacy of persecuted Christians in Iran, said “most Iranian churches that once offered services in the Persian language have now been closed down, and a lot of their leaders were either imprisoned or forced to leave the country, with the threat of long imprisonment. . . . The relentless pressure on the Church in Iran today means that most Christians worship in secret underground house-churches, for which they face the constant threat of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment on charges of ‘acting against national security.’”

 

But, sure, there are some beautiful old churches still standing in Iran.

 

In another article at the American Conservative, published before the first strikes were launched, Andrew Day writes that the U.S. was

 

dragged into war by Israel, whose leadership and lobbyists have continually obstructed Trump’s efforts to make a deal with Tehran that would exchange sanctions relief for limits on its nuclear program.

 

Ah, yes, because the ayatollah has so faithfully followed through on his promises to limit Iran’s nuclear program in the past.

 

Despite the crowing from certain chambers on the right, Iran remains a country diametrically opposed to American values. A place where women are arrested for “synchronized movements” in public. Where a young woman was killed by the “morality police” for an alleged head-scarf violation. Where protesters are executed for standing against the regime.

 

Despite what the Panicans preach, I, for one, believe the United States of America possesses greater moral authority than the Islamic Republic of Iran. I have a feeling most Americans are with me.