When regime change is defended “at any cost,” moral boundaries collapse, violence is normalized, and human lives are turned into expendable political costs.
Many social media users were outraged by—and rightly condemned—the implicit suggestion of attacking Iran with an atomic bomb, an idea raised by Ali Hossein Ghazizadeh, a senior journalist at Iran International, the far-right, warmongering outlet.
Among them were also people who support the idea of “maximum pressure” on the Islamic Republic and military strikes against it. They are the main audience of this piece, because in my view they have not considered the logical consequences of their own political position.
To assess a political idea, one must consider all of its logical consequences.
The idea of attacking Iran with an atomic bomb—an idea Mr. Ghazizadeh raised in a tweet, which he later deleted and then tried to justify—is, as a friend put it, neither accidental nor a deviation. It is the inner logic and the next logical step for those who support war and military strikes on Iran in order to topple the Islamic Republic, even if some of them do not yet dare to say so openly.
Dropping an atomic bomb on Iran, massacring hundreds of thousands of people, rendering part of Iran uninhabitable, and devastating the country for the long term is the logical continuation of many propositions:
The logical continuation of “the Islamic Republic must go at any cost,” with the emphasis on “at any cost,” and by the same logic, “by any means”; the logical continuation of “Surrender, you sons of bitches,” addressed to IRGC commanders—who, as we have all seen, have not surrendered to this day, so by this logic they must be hit until they do; the continuation of “the Islamic Republic is just one push away from collapse, just one more bombing, just one more IRGC commander killed”; the logical continuation of waving Israeli and American flags at monarchist demonstrations; the logical continuation of the “Thank you, Trump and Bibi” crowd.
The logical continuation of the idea of R2P and the appeal for “humanitarian” military intervention by the United States and Israel—as in the case of figures like Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate—while ignoring the dark record and war crimes of those two countries in their military “interventions,” from Gaza to Vietnam and Afghanistan, and mistaking the act of calling for a foreign military attack for ordering food in a restaurant. As though, just as one can select some items from a menu and reject others, one could ask Trump or Netanyahu—or instruct them—to strike exactly as one wishes: hit this, not that.
The logical continuation of supporting Pahlavi and calling him “the only alternative”: someone who still, after more than a month of war, after more than a thousand civilians have been killed, and after a significant part of the country’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, is asking the United States and Israel to continue their “military operations” against Iran so that he can come to power, because he has no other path to power. Someone who offered condolences for the killing of three American soldiers, but remained silent about the children of Minab.
The logical continuation of calling the Islamic Republic “absolute evil.” As if it were not enough for the Islamic Republic to be evil—which it is—and to kill and execute—which it has done from the very first day it came to power, and still continues to do, through executions and repression, even in the midst of war. No: the Islamic Republic must be made into the “most evil” so that one may resort to any means whatsoever to overthrow it.
The logical continuation of calling the massacre during the January uprising a “Holocaust.” As if the massacre of thousands of protesters were not, in itself, horrific enough, not criminal enough, and had to be turned—through exaggeration and by calling it a “Holocaust”—into something exceptional in human history that must be met with a special response, at any cost and by any means.
The logical continuation of saying, “There is no path left; we have tried everything,” when in fact most of those who make this claim were never willing to pay any cost in the struggle against the Islamic Republic.
The logical continuation of “the war must continue until the Islamic Republic falls,” while ignoring the experience of this past month of war, which has shown that the Islamic Republic has not fallen because of this military attack, and that the goal of the attack is not the fall of the Islamic Republic.
The logical continuation of the proposition that “the Islamic Republic has occupied Iran.” As though the Islamic Republic had come from another country, or from Mars, and had no roots in any part of society. In confronting a force that has “occupied” your country, one can resort to any means. To any means.
The logical continuation of “we will rebuild the infrastructure” and “with Pahlavi, within ten years we will go from the Stone Age to the modern world”—another of Mr. Ghazizadeh’s pearls of wisdom—the logical continuation of “every war has costs,” the logical continuation of “we had no real infrastructure even before the war,” and the refusal to see the importance of infrastructure for sustaining the possibility of life in Iran. The refusal to see that without refineries and power plants, we will be set back by decades, suffer for decades, and die for decades from shortages of medicine and energy.
The logical continuation of “we are already living in the Stone Age” or “our laws are from the Stone Age,” as though those saying this had any idea what the Stone Age was, and the refusal to see the reality of civil society and the dynamism of the people of Iran.
The logical continuation of “yes, innocent people die in war, but under the Islamic Republic people are killed too,” and reducing human lives to numbers that can simply be weighed against one another.
The logical continuation of “bringing down the Islamic Republic has costs,” while ignoring the fact that someone who takes to the streets for a revolution against the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic and is killed has consciously and courageously made a decision about their own fate and life, whereas someone killed under wartime bombardment had no part in that war and most likely never consented to their life being turned into a “cost.”
The logical continuation of the idea that “the Islamic Republic is to blame for this war,” while ignoring the obvious fact that although the Islamic Republic, through its disastrous foreign policy, played a role in bringing about the war, the principal responsibility for any bombing lies with the one who drops the bomb.
The logical continuation of “because the Islamic Republic was responsible for the war,” therefore “any” reaction against it is permissible and the responsibility for that reaction lies only with the Islamic Republic; while ignoring the fact that Israel used precisely this logic in Gaza, arguing that because Hamas attacked us on October 7, we can do whatever we want—and “whatever we want” came to mean war crimes, genocide, and the razing of Gaza to the ground.
The logical continuation of rejoicing over Gaza being “ground to dust”—another gem from Pouria Zeraati, another journalist at Iran International—dehumanizing entire populations, and then acting surprised when Trump explicitly says that he has the right to commit war crimes in Iran because Iranians are “animals.”
Dropping an atomic bomb on Iran and on Iranians is the logical continuation of all these propositions, and many others besides. An atomic bomb undoubtedly conjures a horrifying image in our minds and shocks us deeply. But why is it, really, that the destruction of Iran’s vital infrastructure—from bridges, power plants, refineries, and desalination facilities to universities, research centers, and hospitals—does not shock and terrify us to the same extent? Why do we still write, rightly, about internet shutdowns in Iran, yet think less about the fact that without power plants there would be no internet at all for the Islamic Republic to shut down or not shut down? Without infrastructure, life in Iran—if Iran remains Iran—will become extremely difficult for decades. The lives of a large part of society will be shattered, and many Iranians will lose their lives, directly and indirectly, because of the absence of that infrastructure.
Anyone who still, after one month of war, thinks that by continuing on this path—bombing Iran in the hope that the regime will fall—one can topple the Islamic Republic, cannot logically have a problem with dropping an atomic bomb on Iran under the pretext of confronting the Islamic Republic. In this logic, if the Islamic Republic has not yet collapsed, then the pressure and the attacks have simply not been sufficient; therefore their intensity must be increased, and in that escalation no ethical boundary remains.
The tweet by Iran International’s senior journalist was neither accidental nor exceptional. It expressed the inner logic—and the next logical step—of those who support war and military strikes on Iran. Mr. Ghazizadeh simply dared to carry that logic to its endpoint. The others are still being evasive with themselves and others, or have not yet thought through the full consequences of what they are asking for.
In the end, the issue goes beyond a single tweet or a remark by Ghazizadeh or another Iran International television journalist. The issue is a path that, if followed to its end, could lead to irreversible catastrophe. The central question is this: are we willing, in pursuit of a political objective, to cross every boundary? If the answer is yes, then no distinction remains between “pressure,” “war,” and “total destruction.” That is the point at which politics loses ethics entirely, human beings are reduced to numbers in the calculations of power, and the land of Iran is reduced to a playground for domestic and foreign powers.
