Why are So Many Iranians Seemingly Indifferent to the War in Gaza?
Iranians who otherwise supported protests in the U.S. decided to remain silent in reaction to government propaganda and focused on their own plight
By Ali Afshari
Middle East & North Africa
May 13, 2024
Before the 1979 revolution, Palestine was a central issue in Iranian public concern.
The attention toward Palestine was partly a reaction of various opposition groups, including Islamic nationalists, liberals, Marxists, intellectuals, and students, to the warmer relationship between the Shah and Israel compared to other Islamic countries.
In fact, the Shah, while establishing de facto ties with Israel, often sympathized with Palestinian demands. Still, his opponents formed alliances with Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon and elsewhere and criticized the Shah for insufficient support for the Palestinian cause.
Forty-five years after the revolution that saw the Shah dethroned, there has been a significant shift in Iranian public opinion. While the Islamic Republic is considered the primary state enemy of Israel, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict does not appear to be a priority for the Iranian public, including various opposition groups, students, and intellectuals. This is reflected in the slogan “No to Lebanon, no to Palestine, my life only for Iran,” which appeared in 2009 during the Green Movement that followed fraud-tainted Iranian elections. This shift should be understood as a reaction to the official position of the state, which the Iranian middle class, in particular, perceives as ignoring the public’s demand for the pursuit of national interest rather than adhering to ideological foreign policies and expansionism through supporting Hamas and other members of the so-called “Axis of Resistance.”
The public response to government media’s portrayal of pro-Palestine protests on U.S. campuses highlights this point. Following the onset of the encampment and subsequent police intervention at Columbia University, as well as other universities across the United States, Iranian officials and state media seized upon the news to advance their own anti-Israel propaganda. On May 1, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, remarked, “American students neither destroyed anything nor broke a single window. But they are treated like this…it shows the validity of the Islamic Republic’s pessimism toward the United States.”
Earlier, on April 27, Mohammad Zolfigol, the Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, stated, “When we witness the suppression of the youth in U.S. academia, we feel proud that Iranian academics are safe and respected.” On May 4, the principal of Shahid Beheshti University, who is chosen by the government, claimed that “in 2022 [during the Woman, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran], police never entered Iran’s universities, and we didn’t suppress students even by one percent of what is observed in the United States.” The principal of Elm-o San’at University even offered to admit U.S. students expelled for taking part in the protests.
There was a strong and vehement reaction from the public on social media against the government’s propaganda. Many shared their experiences of being arrested, imprisoned, and beaten by police during protest movements, such as the Green Movement and the Women, Life, Freedom Movement, which began in September 2022 after the death in police custody of a young woman accused of wearing insufficiently conservative clothing.
Others mentioned the harsh and systematic procedures of oppression in Iranian universities, based on firsthand experiences. Additionally, some mocked Elm-o San’at University’s offer to students from Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, and Michigan universities. Even Iranians who otherwise supported protests in the United States decided to remain silent in reaction to government propaganda and focused on their own plight.
After the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the government initiated a significant purge of professors and students from universities. A faculty member from the University of Tehran reported that 40 faculty members were dismissed from the university’s medical school alone. Subsequently, the University of Tehran’s administration denied that any students or professors had been dismissed.However, former faculty members later spoke to the press, asserting that they had indeed been dismissed and expressed their willingness to provide interviews and share their experiences. Simultaneously, numerous students who participated in or otherwise supported various protests have been suspended or expelled. Some remain in prison, serving long-term sentences or even facing execution, while others await court verdicts.
Iranian public attitudes to the Israel-Palestine conflict should be understood in an international context. We can make sense of Iranians’ partial indifference toward Palestine in light of recent psychological literature on empathy and moral anger.
María Lugones, a distinguished philosopher at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn. explains how people are warranted in suppressing empathy when they feel that their empathy is systematically and intentionally exploited. Sukaina Hirji, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania, also discusses a sort of moral anger, namely “outrage anger,” which is compatible with victims’ closing off their empathy when they think it is misused and their voices are ignored or overlooked. According to Hirji, “the main function of outrage then, is a kind of self-protection function.” She adds, “The function of outrage is, primarily, to distance oneself from the dominant world of sense… from the hermeneutical space that trivializes or undermines the character of the harm one has experienced. A second function, at least in political contexts, is to help build a new hermeneutical space in which one’s experience is intelligible, to create a sense of solidarity amongst victims of abuse.”
Accordingly, what is not going on in Iran is the public supporting Israel’s war in Palestine. What is going on is people closing off their empathy with the Palestinians, angry that their empathy has been intentionally and systematically taken advantage of by their own repressive government for decades.
Meanwhile, the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023 against Israelis by Hamas only reminded the Iranian people of their government’s ideological, turbulent, and costly foreign policy.
Ali Afshari is an Iranian biomedical researcher, Middle East analyst, and pro-democracy activist. He is a former student leader and member of the Central Committee of the Office for Consolidation of Unity, the main and largest student organization in Iranian universities during the Reformist era. He got his Ph.D. at George Washington University, working as adjunct faculty, and contributes regularly on current Iranian political events to Persian and English-language media.
