Mission Creep: Western Activists Pivot to Iran
- The current wave of Western protest driven by events in the Middle East will likely lead to increased targeting of Jewish people and Jewish space, including the possibility of a mass-casualty event.
- Activists and protestors are conflating the war in Gaza with Israel’s continuing aerial bombardment of Iran.
- The protest narrative situates the Iranian regime as a victim of “Zionist aggression.”
This will amplify the entire range of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and, specifically, antisemitic tropes that have defined protest and activism since October 2023.
Operation “Rising Lion”
The current conflict between Israel and Iran is a highly kinetic, rapidly evolving situation. The initial Israeli attack on June 13 was devastating. The IDF claims to have killed key nuclear scientists, senior IRGC and intelligence officials, and to have destroyed up to one third of Iran’s missile launch capability. The Natanz fuel enrichment plant has also been heavily damaged and the International Atomic energy agency has issued a statement warning of radiological and chemical contamination inside the facility. Nevertheless, much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure appears to remain intact. The heavily fortified nuclear plant at Fordow cannot be disabled without US-built “bunker buster”-type bombs, and the aircraft capable of delivering them. Whether this kind of US intervention is even in the realm of possibility is uncertain, so longer term outcomes, much less events over the next 24 hours, are impossible to predict.
One of the most immediate outcomes of Israel’s attack on Iran has been an immediate shift in focus away from the war in Gaza, which has now been downgraded to a level two priority by the IDF. Critics of Israel have said that this will serve only to prolong the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Some Israeli officials, meanwhile, have expressed hope that degradation of Iranian support and funding capability will encourage Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and hostage deal.
From Gaza to Tehran?
Outside of the region, however, Gaza remains very much front of mind for protesters and activist groups. Increasingly, however, the war in Gaza and the conflict with Iran are being conflated in a narrative that characterizes the Israeli attack on the Iranian regime as part and parcel of Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza. Over the weekend, large protests in this vein, often involving thousands of participants, took place in London, Paris, Brussels and Berlin.
The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a British-based NGO and activist group, issued a statement directly linking the “genocide” in Gaza and the “major strikes on sites across Iran,” and accusing Western governments of allowing Israel to “escalate its genocide without consequences.” Similar protests linking the two conflicts have taken place in New York and Winnipeg and these will undoubtedly spread if and as the conflict continues.
Iranian People and the Iranian Regime: Not To Be Confused
How are Iranians feeling about all of this? Since the imposition of strict Islamist rule in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, the Iranian regime is detested and feared by large swathes of Iranian society. Its response to any kind of dissent is brutal; religious and cultural minorities and, especially, women are targeted; and rape, torture, “disappearance,” and both judicial and extra-judicial execution are all part of the Islamic Republic’s machinery of oppression. Recent surveys suggest that over 80% of the Iranian population rejects the regime and prefers a democratic government. Any suggestion that the Iranian people feel a sense of solidarity with extremist organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah simply because their government supports them is dangerously misguided.
Initial reporting from Iran indicates that even committed and long-time dissidents are concerned about the effects of sustained war on Iranian society, governance and civic infrastructure. And while one of Israel’s motives for attacking Iran may in fact be regime change – something that has been a Western and, especially, an American preoccupation since 1979 – few Iranians believe that Israel is doing it for their sakes. War rarely leads to stability, especially not in the Middle East. Iraq and Syria are the cautionary tales in this regard.
Media reporting from the Canadian Iranian diaspora tracks opinions ranging from full support of the Israeli airstrikes in the hope that they will destabilize and topple the regime, to more nuanced recognition of the toll of any war on civilians. It is important to note that the bulk of the approximately 281,000 strong Iranian diaspora in this country arrived after the 1979 revolution. This means that the virtually all Canadian citizens and residents of Iranian origin are refugees from the current regime.
Activist groups trying to link Gaza and Iran in any other way than the transactional relationship between Hamas and the Iranian regime are unlikely to get any traction with most Iranians, wherever they are. If nothing else, any defense of the Iranian regime makes a mockery of the real oppression of the Iranian people. This complete lack of understanding of the dynamics of the contemporary Middle East is widespread. Many of the young, Western participants in the so-called “Global March to Rafah” who are being arrested and detained by Egyptian authorities are discovering the limits of regional solidarity, to say nothing of tolerance.
Israel and Jews; Activists and Useful Idiots
Lack of understanding or not, this confusion of conflicts and their origins can have dangerous consequences. The common factor in the conflation of the conflicts in Gaza and Iran is Israel and Zionism. For most committed activists, both inside and outside of the Middle East, that means Jews, no matter how careful they are to separate the terms.
Here in North America, many “spontaneous” protests and encampments are organized and stage-managed by longstanding activist organizations like Within Our Lifetime and Students for Justice in Palestine. Explicitly or not, both groups’ ideology is eliminationist. That said, many of the students and progressives who support these groups are enlisted as what 20th century revolutionaries used to define as “useful idiots”: people who support a cause without necessarily understanding its implications. In this case, their ideological stance is often innocuous and derives from natural sympathy with the marginalized and with victims of war: they believe in ceasefire, in a two-state solution, in solidarity with Palestinians and with Gazans.
More Than Mere Toxicity
But it quickly becomes murky. Increasingly, the language of social justice is being used to impose something that is disturbingly close to mob rule. Crowds of activists and their followers, using language that appears to have been scripted by the Iranian regime, chant their support for Hamas, call for the slaughter of Israelis, “Zionists,” and Jews, and intimidate both visible Jews and uninvolved passersby. Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents in Canada – especially those involving person-on-person harassment or violence – increased by about 125% between 2022 and 2024, with the bulk of that increase occurring after October, 2023.
This has created an environment that is not only toxic, but that also has real consequences. In the past few weeks alone, a Jewish gathering in Boulder, Colorado was attacked by a firebomber, and two young Israeli embassy employees were shot dead in Washington, DC by an American-born Hamas supporter. Neither of these attacks were directed at ideological “concepts” – like “Israeli apartheid,” or “settler colonialism” – that supposedly drive principled anti-Zionist activism. They specifically targeted Jewish people, Jewish bodies.
Why Do We Care?
Whatever the level of ambient antisemitism in Canada, or elsewhere, this form of targeting is now Jewish reality. The problem is that as the activist mission “creeps” to include the Iranian regime in its narrative of victimhood, the parallel narrative of Zionist aggression will increase in amplitude, possibly aided by Iranian or even Russian disinformation tactics. This has the potential to intensify not only specifically anti-Jewish action, but direct targeting of institutions, groups and individuals who are deemed to be “pro-Zionist” because of their principles, their politics, or their business, social or cultural relationships. At the very least, Canadians must imagine the ever-increasing possibility of a mass-casualty event targeting Jewish people, or Jewish space.
Of course, outcomes in Iran – again, currently impossible to call – will play a major determining role in this regard.
This assessment is based on information current as of 1200 hours, June 20, 2025.