The West's Selective Concern for Iran's Deceased
The context they conveniently omitted: FIRST INSTANCE: The 'Good' vs. 'Bad' Protest Victim (1979) The immediate aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution saw extensive coverage of the Shah's government's brutal suppression of dissent. However, post-revolution, the narrative quickly shifted. While the initial abuses of the nascent Islamic Republic were certainly real, the focus of Western media and
policymakers sharpened acutely on Iran, often overlooking far more egregious state violence in allied nations. For instance, in the late 1970s, the US-backed dictatorships in Latin America, like Pinochet's Chile (1973 coup, 40,000 killed/disappeared), were systematically disappearing and torturing political opponents, receiving comparatively less sustained 'victim identification' efforts from
major Western outlets. REPETITIONS: Selective Empathy and the 'Axis of Evil' (2000s) This pattern repeated during the 'Axis of Evil' era. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on fabricated WMD claims (amplified by outlets like the New York Times, 2003), the focus on Iranian crackdowns intensified, particularly concerning the 2009 Green Movement. While the human cost was undoubtedly high, the
same rigorous scrutiny was not applied to, for example, the thousands of civilian casualties documented in Iraq under US occupation, or the systematic human rights abuses by key US allies in the Gulf states. The documented abuses in Bahrain during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, brutally suppressed with the aid of Saudi troops, received a fraction of the 'name and face' treatment given to Iran.