Yes, I Am Rooting for Iran

“The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” — Wole Soyinka

“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.” ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

“The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” — Simón Bolívar

There are moments in history when neutrality, however dressed, is nothing more than moral and intellectual cowardice dressed up as political sophistication. 

We currently live in one of those moments.

The unprovoked and illegal war now being prosecuted by Israel and its ever-faithful sidekick, the United States, the combo of Israel against Iran has confirmed what several sober military analysts have been saying for years. 

Among the most blunt of them is my GoTo military analyst, Andrei Martyanov, an ultra-brilliant if irascible figure. Mr. Martyanov’s writing has the irritating habit of turning out to be correct long after the Western press corps has moved on to its next fantasy.

He has spent years dismantling the myth of American and Israeli military invincibility, not with fanciful slogans or ideological theatrics, but with cold, brutal analysis using mathematics and physics. In four books, endless essays, and a steady stream of commentary, he has argued that the two imperial armies are specialists in what can only be described as expeditionary violence. 

Link to his blog: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/?m=1

USrael’s army excels at flying halfway across the world to bomb countries that cannot meaningfully fight back. 

They dominate when the enemy has no air force, no serious missile capability, and no modern air defenses. They are masters at flattening villages and occupied territories, terrorizing civilians, and presenting the smoking ruins as “democracy promotion.”

For these two rogue states, wars against real states, states capable of hitting back, are another matter entirely.

And this is where well-constructed mythology begins to unravel.

For decades, Western propaganda has trained its citizens to believe that the arrival of an American Carrier Strike Group is the geopolitical equivalent of divine intervention. Send one carrier, the story goes, and lesser nations tremble. Send two, and the heavens themselves will open in submission. Send five, and the enemy will collapse from sheer psychological terror.

Apparently, this theory was swallowed whole by the current occupants of the White House and their obedient chorus in Tel Aviv.

The assumption was simple: dispatch a flotilla of floating airports into the region, bark loudly on legacy and social media, threaten annihilation, and watch the Iranians fold like cheap canopies.

The Iranians, inconveniently, did not receive the memo.

Instead of trembling, the Iranians fought back. And not timidly either. They responded with a ferocity that clearly shocked Pentagon strategists who had grown accustomed to bombing shepherds and wedding parties in countries that possess nothing more threatening than Kalashnikovs.

Suddenly, the swagger has begun to look suspiciously fragile. We have seen both Pedo Trump and Tele-General Hegseth meltdown in real-time.

The tweets grow louder. The threats become more theatrically insane. The public relations machinery grinds into overdrive. Yet beneath the noise, one can detect something unfamiliar in the Western war narrative.

Uncertainty.

You see, the problem is not merely military. It is civilizational. The West has spent the better part of five centuries convincing itself that it represents the apex of human evolution, the pinnacle of political sophistication, and the ultimate paragon of moral authority.

This is the same civilization that colonized half the planet, enslaved millions, carved continents into artificial states, looted resources with industrial efficiency, and then wrote books congratulating itself for bringing “civilization” to the people it was busy exploiting and killing.

Arrogance on that scale eventually produces a very specific mental disease.

It convinces its victims that everyone else sees them the same way they see themselves.

But step outside the Western media echo chamber, and another picture emerges. Across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, vast numbers of people do not see Western power as a benevolent force. They see it as something far less flattering.

A parasitical leech.

A system that arrives with sermons about liberty and leaves with the mineral rights, the oil fields, the banking system, and occasionally the national treasury.

A civilization guided by a very simple economic philosophy: why pay for it when you can kill for it?

This mentality, combined with ignorance disguised as superiority, has turned Western power into a recurring plague in world history. It moves from region to region, leaving behind shattered states, wasted human lives, refugee crises, and endless lectures about human rights.

Against that background, my position is not complicated.

I oppose imperialism. Full stop.

I oppose it, whether it is wrapped in the language of democracy, national security, counter-terrorism, or divine destiny. I oppose it whether the aggressor speaks English, Hebrew, French, or any other imperial tongue.

And when a people find themselves under assault by powers that believe they possess a God-given right to dominate the rest of humanity, I know exactly where I stand.

I stand with the people resisting.

This does not require theological debates, ideological gymnastics, or academic seminars about geopolitical nuance. It requires only a simple moral instinct that every decent human being should possess.

If oppression is unacceptable when it is inflicted upon me, then it must be unacceptable when it is inflicted upon anyone else.

That is the only philosophy I recognize. My Ekiti people are known for our stubborn adherence to principles and fair play, even when it is detrimental to our interests. What is right is right, what is wrong is wrong. We insist on the correct thing being done at all times.

So yes, I am rooting for the Iranians.

Not because I share their religious doctrines, or because I romanticize their political system. But because they have chosen to resist the familiar machinery of imperial coercion that has crushed so many nations before them.

History teaches us that empires eventually collapse under the weight of their own hubristic arrogance. 

The question is never whether it will happen, but when.

And every person who refuses to bow, every nation that refuses to kneel under the imperial boot, helps bring that day a little closer.

For that reason alone, I wish the Iranians strength.

Because in their defiance, there is a reminder the empire desperately wants the world to forget: Human beings were not created to live under anyone’s jackboots.

“Non-European people, especially Africans and the Indigenous Americans in the Caribbean Islands, referred to as "Indians," initially attributed to the Europeans a humanity and spirituality that they did not have, and still do not have in their relationship with most of the non-European people of the world. This brings us to a conclusion that might be difficult for a lot of people to accept. Maybe the world outside of Europe didn't need the Europeans in the first place. Maybe in this fakery about spreading civilization, he destroyed more civilizations than he ever built and did the world more harm than good." - John Henrik Clarke

I dedicate this poem to the brave Iranian people:
“If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” - Claude McKay

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀ (1st Dan)
(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Satirist, Social Commentator, Geopolitical Analyst.)

My Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com