Q:

Next month, Ayatollah Khamenei’s theocracy will stage celebrations commemorating 40 years of revolutionary power. It will do so amidst widespread acts of civil disobedience, street protests, labor strikes, and ubiquitous resentment produced by a collapsed economy and grotesque corruption. Even prominent regime insiders are now openly proclaiming the emptiness of the regime’s authority, with critiques resembling late analysis from the Soviet nomenklatura as it was confronted by cascading legitimacy crises manifested by the primordial contradictions of an ideological state.

Yet today’s Iranian liberals, unlike the anti-American supporters of the 1979 revolution, are largely ignored in the West. Though their values are no different from those expressed by Solidarity in Poland or the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Iranians who yearn for democracy and an open, prosperous society at peace with the world are met with overwhelming indifference from the West’s media and political leaders, not to mention its universities, unions, civic groups, churches, and celebrities—the very people and institutions that historically have lent their empathy, solidarity, and concrete assistance to the cause of freedom across the world.

On the occasions when outlets like the New York Times, for example, deign to cover the country’s disastrous economic mismanagement, they seem reluctant to acknowledge the widespread dissent and labor organizing that it has produced. Nor do they bring much attention to bear on the robust social media scrutiny Iranians exert on the ruling mafia that robs an educated but hungry people to fund its own hedonistic lifestyle and to finance terror abroad, all in the name of God. For years now, self-censorship has been rampant among Tehran-based correspondents and commentators including those filing with prestigious outlets like PBS NewsHour and the Financial Times and other outlets generally assumed to be professional and fair-minded. Even when interviewing regime officials in the safety and freedom of the West, journalists will pander with soft questions and even by donning the hijab, the regime’s most coveted symbol of its power:

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