Category: Iran
Is the ayatollah a feminist?
The horseshoe theory may have been on full display after the supreme leader of Iran made a surprisingly feminist statement on social media.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei often ponders philosophical and political topics on his X page, most recently critiquing the role of women in Western society. In a string of posts on Wednesday, Khamenei insisted that Islam treats women better than other Western faiths and societies, and even resurrected a 2010s feminist talking point that has long been debunked.
‘Women’s wages are lower than men’s for the same work.’
“Islam’s view of women is the opposite of the Western capitalist view,” Khamenei said in a post on X. “In Islam, she possesses her independence, her capacity to act & to progress, her identity; in the West, her dignity is not respected, and she is treated as an object in the service of material interests.”
There is certainly room to criticize women’s role in Western societies, especially in the post-modern era. However, Khamenei conveniently omits the practical application of Sharia law in countries like Iran that tolerate child marriages and require women to hide behind hijabs.
Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images
In an even more surprising take, Iran’s supreme leader insisted that the gender wage gap was an oppressive reality that Western women have to endure, despite it being both disproven and outlawed altogether.
“Today, in many Western countries, women’s wages are lower than men’s for the same work,” Khamenei said in a post on X. “Today, that’s how it is. It’s a blatant injustice.”
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Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
While criticizing the West, the ayatollah omitted the real, dramatic gender disparities in Iran’s workforce.
In Iran, less than 14% of women participate in the workforce, compared to 67% of men. Additionally, a husband can prevent a wife from working at all if he believes it to be “with the family interests or the dignity of himself or his wife.”
Iran’s law also forbids women from being employed in “dangerous, arduous, or harmful work,” with massive underrepresentation in higher professions like parliament. Women are barred from positions like supreme leader, and they cannot be appointed to judicial roles.
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Iran’s freedom fighters put America’s No Kings clowns to shame
Liberals in the United States keep pretending to “resist” a democratically elected president they smear as an “authoritarian.” Meanwhile, real resistance fighters push back against a real authoritarian regime — in Iran.
For well-to-do white liberals, “resistance” amounts to a bumper sticker, a hashtag, a chant, and a safe protest march. No American faces arrest for opposing President Trump or his policies. Police never cracked down on thousands of No Kings demonstrators. The government never shut down the internet. No American risks execution for demanding new leadership.
Partisan voices push the false claim that Americans must choose between sending troops or doing nothing. Anyone who actually listens to Iranian dissidents knows better.
Iranian dissidents face all of that and more. Their resistance carries the cost of blood, freedom, and life.
Last weekend, I saw real resistance up close. More than 1,000 Iranian dissidents gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Free Iran Convention to plan for a future free from the mullahs’ rule. Panels featuring scholars, women, young activists, and even voices from inside Iran painted a picture of a regime on the brink.
As the regime clings to power, it leans harder on censorship, torture, and public executions to keep Iranians living in fear.
This crackdown unfolds against an economy collapsing under its own weight. More than 80% of Iranians live below the poverty line. Inflation punishes the entire country. Unemployment keeps climbing.
The harsher the repression, the more Iranians recognize the only path forward is regime change.
In 2018, 2019, and 2022, Iranians took to the streets in nationwide uprisings. Thousands died. Tens of thousands went to jail. As 2025 unfolds, the question no longer asks if another uprising comes — only when.
The West now faces its own question: Will we be ready to support the Iranian people when that moment arrives?
Here at home, partisan voices push the false claim that Americans must choose between sending troops or doing nothing. Anyone who actually listens to Iranian dissidents knows better.
A third option exists — the one championed by Maryam Rajavi and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition that rejects both the shah’s dictatorship and the mullahs’ theocracy.
Rajavi, elected by the NCRI as president for the transitional period after the ayatollah’s ouster, puts it plainly:
Neither appeasement nor war, but regime change at the hands of the Iranian people and their organized, legitimate, and just resistance. We do not seek money or weapons. We only ask that this resistance be recognized.
This resistance already lives and breathes inside Iran. The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran stands as the largest and best-organized opposition movement in the country. Resistance units operate in all 31 provinces. They have carried out thousands of attacks on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij — the regime’s main instruments of suppression.
These units organize protests, strikes, and anti-regime campaigns. Their intelligence network exposed Tehran’s clandestine nuclear program and uncovered terrorist plots funded by the regime.
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Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
The cost has been staggering. Since 1981, the regime has killed more than 100,000 PMOI/MEK members. Countless others have been imprisoned, tortured, or targeted in state-funded smear campaigns.
The idea of negotiating with the Iranian regime belongs to the realm of fantasy. No meaningful difference separates so-called hard-liners from so-called moderates. Both factions produce economic ruin at home and terrorism abroad. Young Iranians see the truth plainly.
During the Free Iran convention, Seena Saiedian — an Iranian American and law student at the University of Virginia — captured the desperation:
The landscape for the youth in Iran is bleak: hyperinflation, high unemployment, censorship, repression. Iranian youth see no hope for moderating or reforming the current regime. By every metric, life gets worse. The root cause of every challenge Iran’s youth face is the current regime.
The Iranian dictatorship will collapse. History guarantees that. The only question: Will the United States shorten the Iranian people’s suffering or extend the mullahs’ reign of terror?
If we want a secular, democratic Iran — one capable of fostering peace in the region — we must say clearly that no negotiation can salvage the current regime. No deal will reform it. No diplomatic fantasy can tame it.
We must tell the Iranian people and the brave resistance units operating inside the country that the United States stands ready to recognize their efforts and their right to chart a future for a free Iran.
The United States doesn’t need to send money, weapons, or troops. The regime is already on the brink of collapse. The Iranian people are already mobilizing. They need moral clarity from the West — not silence, appeasement, or more excuses.
Supporting freedom against tyranny is the American way. It always has been. And standing with the people of Iran honors the moral foundations that built this nation.
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