What Iran Reveals About Selective Activism

By Daniella Spoto, Policy Fellow 2025-2026. This article originally appeared in DC Journal.

Two deaths a minute. Human rights organizations estimate 36,500  deaths in the first 12 days of the uprising in Iran. Shockingly, this has not been met by outrage from some Western activists. 

The uprising in Iran has exposed the limits of Western solidarity. It is clear that sympathy for Gazans living under siege and the murder of tens of thousands of protesters in Iran is perceived to be mutually exclusive. Some clearly believe that standing against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps weakens their position on Gaza. Worse still, some see their unwillingness to criticize the regime as an act of resisting the return of a Westernized Iran, invoking Western imperialism as a familiar scapegoat.

The reaction to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israelis saw the start of trends in support of Gaza: watermelon paraphernalia, the increased activity of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, as well as the Westernization of the keffiyeh. 

It’s safe to say that Gaza caught and kept the attention of all those watching, sparking instant criticism of Israel. The infamous buzzword of genocide appeared in headlines as early as October 18, 2023; comparisons between Zionists and Nazis arose from as early as October 22, 2023. Counterprotests started in London on October 8, before a single soldier, tank or missile had crossed the Gaza border.

Now, Iranians are being killed at a rate that defies comprehension. Since the end of the internet blackout, many inside Iran have said that the reported death toll of 36,500 is a conservative estimate. Reports have emerged that regime soldiers are infiltrating hospitals, shooting the wounded and making families pay for the return of their loved ones’ corpses. Doctors on the ground have said that “we were walking in blood.”

The reality of selective sympathy is unfolding before us. Greta Thunberg, who has dedicated the last two and a half years of her life positioning herself to be the voice of Gaza and a defender of all oppressed peoples, is yet to utter a single word about Iran. Following her release from Israeli detention in June 2025, she declared:

“We cannot take our eyes away from Gaza, from all the places of the world that are suffering, living on the forefront of this business-as-usual system: Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Gaza, and many, many more.”

I am certain that if she were to make a statement such as this now, Iran, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has executed, tortured and oppressed tens of thousands, would not appear on the list.

This silence and her stated principles are irreconcilable. By her standards, refusing to acknowledge the systemic murder of more than 36,500 Iranians is craven abandonment. And it exposes a deeper truth; even the loudest Western voices for universal justice have limits.

If the primary concern of Western activism is the plight of those being killed and tortured under occupation, then why has the systemic murder of protesters in Iran not attracted their attention? To place the scale of this tragedy into perspective, you need to be directed toward the compared estimated death tolls. In the first 12 days of the conflict in Gaza, it has been estimated that 3,785 Palestinians were murdered. In the first 12 days of the uprising in Iran, 36,500 people were killed. This is a nation bleeding out in real time.

Why is standing with the people of Iran so repulsive? Could it be due to the fact that the IRGC has funded the “resistance” in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, which they defend and promote. To condemn the regime would require acknowledging that the state they romanticize as anti-imperialist is also the fundamental machinery of torture and terrorism. It is clear that there is a fear that condemnation will cheapen their stance on the conflict in Gaza. Ironically, their refusal to comment paints them as complicit in the suffering of Iranians.

Or does their silence represent their rejection of the return to a Westernized Iran? We have seen this pattern before. When Nicolás Maduro, widely hated by Venezuelans as an authoritarian dictator, was arrested, Venezuelans celebrated. Yet activists abroad protested his detention, not because they understood Venezuela’s suffering but because opposing the United States was their primary goal. Likewise, without understanding who Hamas is and its methods of maintaining power without elections in Gaza, Western activists almost unthinkingly jump to Hamas’s defense. The idea of Western imperialism is an easy scapegoat.

Sympathy for the suffering and plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the Iranian people is not remotely exclusive. In picking one or the other to stand behind, Western activism is inherently weakened. Iran is a nation being crushed in real time while those who claim to champion universal justice look away. If solidarity is extended only when the oppressor fits a familiar script, then it is not solidarity at all; it is selective activism 

As Thunberg said, silence is complicity. Iran has been left to bleed in that silence.