Iran – bombing democracy and human rights is very difficult

Air raid sirens cut through the night in Tehran. Missiles strike a country where people have long lived under severe oppression, economic pressure and geopolitical vulnerability. In the West, leaders and commentators once again talk about freedom, security and perhaps democracy. But historical experience points in a different direction. War has almost never built human rights. War has more often shattered states, driven civilians into exile and strengthened the most ruthless actors.

That is where this story must begin. Not in slogans, but in experience. Democracy requires legitimacy, organization, institutions, and a social force of its own in the country. Bombs do not build courts. Missiles do not create free media. Airstrikes do not teach political trust.

Libya, Afghanistan and the old lie

Libya shows how quickly talk of humanitarian rescue can slide into disintegration. Before the NATO intervention in 2011, the country ranked relatively high in Africa on the UN Human Development Index and had, by regional comparison, a fairly high standard of living. After the war, the state collapsed. Militias, people smuggling, divided power and rival governments took over. A society with clear authoritarian features did not move towards stable democracy. It descended into prolonged chaos.

Afghanistan provides the same basic lesson. The United States overthrew the Taliban in 2001, saying it wanted to build stability, institutions, and democracy. After twenty years of war, the Western-backed state quickly collapsed. The Taliban regained power. The country did not become freer from the war. It became more divided.

Yugoslavia is sometimes held up as a counterexample. There, NATO stopped ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo. But even there, stability rests partly on long international monitoring, and ethnic conflicts remain. The change did not come only from foreign bombs. It also rested on local military and political forces that were already fighting the regime.

There are two classic exceptions that are often mentioned: Germany and Japan after 1945. But they were built on completely different conditions than today's interventionist wars. There was total surrender, full military control, long-term occupation and an enormous economic reconstruction. The West has neither wanted nor been able to repeat that model in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia.

Iran before the bombs

Iran is not a democratic state. Women's rights are limited. Oppositionists risk harsh reprisals. At the same time, the reality is more concrete and less propagandistic than the war rhetoric usually allows. Women have long had a high level of education and worked in several qualified professions. The protests in recent years have pushed for some small social changes. So there is a real internal struggle in Iran, carried by the people of the country themselves.

That is precisely why the question becomes crucial: what happens to that struggle when the bombs start falling?

Iran was actually participating in nuclear negotiations and, according to mediators, had made progress, including through offers of a pause in enrichment and greater transparency. The talks were suspended when the bombings began. Whether that path was still difficult, incomplete, or fragile does not change the main point: the war broke a diplomatic process in a situation where political avenues were not yet exhausted.

It is important. The public image in the West has often been that the war came because Iran left no alternative. But the core of the document is that that image is too simple. When negotiations are underway, and when war is chosen anyway, other driving forces must be included in the analysis.

1953: how the West created part of the problem

To understand today's Iran, it's not enough to start in 2025 or 2026. You have to go back to 1953. That's when Iran's elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup organized by the CIA with the support of British intelligence. The coup protected Western oil interests and strengthened the Shah's autocracy.

The Western-backed regime then deepened repression for decades. Arms supplies and security cooperation continued, despite the brutal persecution of the opposition. When the revolution came in 1979, it thus grew out of real experiences of oppression, foreign interference, and national humiliation. The paradox is central: the West helped create the historical conditions that later brought about the regime the West now claims to fight.

That's why history doesn't just serve as background. It serves as evidence. When great powers say they now want to save Iran, their own role in shaping Iran's tragedy must be included.

Gaza, Hamas and the Road to a Major War

There is another central thread: Israel's long-standing double game with Hamas. For years, Benjamin Netanyahu and his governments have systematically weakened the Palestinian Authority while effectively empowering and indirectly strengthening Hamas. The aim has been to keep Palestinians divided and thereby block the path to a united Palestinian state.

This is no small detail. It shows how right-wing nationalist power politics often breeds the threat it then refers to to justify even more violence. When Hamas then struck in the disastrous attack on October 7, 2023, the same Israeli leadership was able to use this as the basis for a much larger war, in Gaza but also in the broader confrontation with Iran.

In this way, Gaza and Iran are tied together. Not through simple moral logic, but through regional power politics where extremism, division and repression are often exploited to justify new military projects.

War as a domestic political lifeline

Both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu appear in the material as leaders with strong domestic political reasons to benefit from an escalation.

Netanyahu entered the broader confrontation weighed down by deep problems at home. Mass protests against his assault on the rule of law had shaken Israel. At the same time, he himself was on trial, accused of corruption, bribery and disloyalty to a principal. War changes such game plans. An external threat mobilizes public opinion, shifts focus from legal processes and can temporarily save a leader who has lost ground.

Trump, on the other hand, had political motives of a different kind. Budget battles, unpopular cuts, the Epstein scandal, and weak public opinion polls created pressure at home. In such a situation, a war can serve as a distraction, mobilization, and national unification. This does not mean that wars are always started for purely cynical reasons. But it does mean that domestic politics often interact with geopolitical goals.

When those in power give many different explanations in a short period of time, it is rarely due to clarity. It is usually because the real purpose is not stated openly.

Oil, trade routes and a world beyond the dollar

There are also material interests behind the lofty words. Iran has large oil and gas reserves. The country is located at crucial energy flows through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. It has deepened trade with China and joined BRICS, a bloc that strengthens economic relations outside of Western dominance.

This points to something bigger than just Iran. As Western states dismantle industrial policies, pursue austerity, and increase their dependence on cheap energy, raw materials, and external markets, foreign policy becomes more tightly tied to supply and control. Wars are then not just about security in the narrow sense. They are also about trade routes, investments, currency systems, and global power.

This line is reinforced by how the Western economic model creates a structural craving for geopolitical control. In this analysis, a more active industrial policy, greater self-sufficiency and a green transition could reduce the pressure against this type of power politics.

International law is bent depending on who is attacking.

When Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine as preventive self-defense, it was met with strong condemnation. When Israel and the United States attack Iran, the tone in several Western countries becomes completely different. Then leaders talk about security, about necessity and about the right to defend themselves, even though it is about violence against a sovereign state without a clear mandate from the UN Security Council.

This selective view of international law is eroding the rules-based order that the West claims to defend. In large parts of the world, it is increasingly clear that the rules are being applied harshly to enemies and leniently to allies. The result is not only hypocrisy. It is also that international law is losing its force precisely when it is needed most.

John Lapidus: the truth dies first

John Lapidus, PhD in economic history, contributes several sharp insights on Facebook. One of the most important is his simple observation that the first casualty of war is the truth. He describes how lies, shifting explanations, and media concessions quickly fill the void once war breaks out.

He also points out how Swedish and Western leaders often repeat US talking points without examining what actually happened before the war: that Iran tried to avoid an open confrontation, that negotiations were underway, that Trump previously tore up a functioning nuclear energy agreement and that the sanctions subsequently further destroyed Iran's economy. Lapidus also harshly criticizes NATO leadership and how Secretary General Mark Rutte in practice legitimizes an offensive war by presenting its justifications as if they were given facts.

His second main point concerns Sweden. According to him, large parts of Swedish politics and Swedish opinion formation have left walkover before the war even started. This does not only apply to the right. It also applies to social democratic and green environments that have long been silent, cautious or directly war-positive. In this analysis, warmongers get an advantage precisely because they meet such weak resistance from actors who should have built opinion against a new catastrophic war long before.

Mattias Håkansson: the chaos didn't start in the studio

Mattias Håkansson, a journalist,'s contribution on Facebook is more immediate and more scenic. He describes an information situation where censorship, lack of access and Swedish media incompetence mean that the audience gets an overly calm picture of how serious the situation is. What is important in his reasoning is not every single military detail, but the overall picture: that the war is being sold as order while in reality it is spreading disorder across the entire region.

He points out how Israel emerges as the driving aggressor in a long conflict, how the US's motives change from day to day, how Trump seems to have believed in a quick and easy victory, and how a system that has purged experts in favor of loyalists is given a poorer basis for decision-making precisely when the risks are greatest.

Håkansson also sharpens the picture of the regional consequences. The war does not only affect Iran and Israel. It involves the Gulf countries, energy flows, trade, civilian infrastructure and, by extension, Europe's economy. Therefore, his most apt formulation is perhaps the simplest: chaos is not a future scenario. Chaos is already underway.

Swedish leaders hope for democracy and duck responsibility

Mattias Håkansson's rendition of the Agenda conversation on March 8 captures something bigger than a TV program. It shows how Swedish top politicians talk about Iran. Ulf Kristersson and Magdalena Andersson both open up to the hope that the war could eventually lead to democracy and freedom. At the same time, they acknowledge the risks of a major regional war and chaos. Kristersson also says outright that there is a certain openness to actions that do not quite follow traditional definitions of international law.

This is remarkable. Swedish politics here operates in a language where the desire for democracy is allowed to function as a soft backdrop for a war that has already violated fundamental legal principles and already threatens to worsen everything that democracy requires in order to grow.

The most striking thing is the tone. The politicians appear as commentators on other people's wars, not as leaders with a responsibility to clearly defend international law. They say "about" things that are already happening. They talk about possible chaos when the bombs are already falling and the region is already being destabilized.

The religious undercurrent

There is a religious dimension that is often under-reported in mainstream news reporting. This applies not only to Iran's own ideological self-image or certain Israeli notions of Greater Israel. It also applies to the United States, where evangelical apocalypticism and Christian Zionism have long had influence at the highest levels of government and political culture.

This does not mean that religion alone explains war. But it does mean that certain power projects gain extra charge when they are dressed in eschatological notions of good and evil, battles of fate, and historical missions. Such ideas make compromises more difficult and dehumanization easier.

What history actually says

Stable democracies have generally grown from within. They have grown through social movements, education, class struggle, institution-building, economic development, and long political conflict. They have not rained down from the sky in the form of bombs.

When war is sold as a path to human rights, it often hides something else: geopolitics, energy, trade routes, currency systems, domestic political crises, double standards or pure will to power. In the case of Iran, all of these are on the table at the same time.

Bombing human rights and democracy is much more difficult than the warmongers claim. Often it is not just difficult. Often it is the very opposite of what the war actually achieves.

When the smoke clears

When the smoke settles over Iran one day, the question will not only be who won militarily. It will be about what was destroyed politically, socially, and morally.

A people who have lived for a long time between dictatorship and great power pressure do not need more saviors with bombs. They need space to breathe, organize and change their own country. History shows something very simple: those who really want to defend democracy must first stop bombing the societies where it could grow.