A brave young woman’s daring act in Tehran exposes Western hypocrisy

by Abraham Cooper and Johnnie Moore

We may never know her name, or what led her to public act of defiance. But if we lived in a just world, her young face would have appeared on the front of every newspaper.

Every network, every social media influencer would be demanding an answer to one question: What’s your response to the sacrifice of the young woman in Iran? 

Perhaps you haven’t heard her story yet. While we don’t know much, we do know the circumstances leading to her apparent death.

It began when the young college student’s hijab didn’t fit properly on her head. The Ayatollah’s omnipresent henchmen, who often target university campuses, demanded she fix her covering. But like so many women confined to the horror show that is today’s Islamic Republic of Iran, she was having none of it.  

Instead, she defiantly took action she knew would generate immediate and dire consequences from an unforgiving murderous regime. In an unimaginable act of bravery, she not only refused to comply with the demands of the religious police, but she also stripped to her underwear in a public square and walked like a lioness with her proud head held high, her beautiful long hair covering her back. 

We can only guess the fate that awaited her when the police carted her away. Dead or alive, it was, once again, a young Iranian woman who bravely pierced for a few minutes the evil that is the Mullahocracy. 

The question for the world’s elite, for democracies, high and mighty advocates of human rights sitting in their safe perches in New York and Geneva, is clear: Do they possess the moral GPS to denounce the Iranian regime? Or will the self-anointed vanguards of human rights maintain their stoic silence?  

From the Green Revolution in 2009 to the Women, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, and 10,000 small acts of defiance every day, it is the women and girls of Iran who continue to struggle to keep hope alive as they pray that the civilized world will one day awaken to help the Iranian people bring down the evil regime.

A global coalition must come together that will champion human rights for the Iranian people while applying maximum pressure to curb Tehran’s nuclear goals and stopping the godfathers of terrorism from igniting World War III.  

Indeed, the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom and others have effectively used sanctions to slow Tehran’s nuclear ambition, but no one has chosen to apply “maximum support” for the long-suffering people of Iran, when protesters — often led by women — fill the streets of Tehran to assert their human dignity and autonomy.  

The status quo is intolerable and only serves to embolden the Ayatollah Khamenei and his followers. 

Unless your social media feed is curated to highlight the latest events in the Middle East, you’ve probably not even become aware of this story yet because the media, while fixated on the rights of women in the United States, is derelict in its duty to shine a light on millions of Jane Does suffering under the regimes in Iran and Afghanistan. The next president of the United States must put the fate of these millions of these nameless women on America’s agenda. 

Letting the latest woman’s fate fade into oblivion will guarantee that Iran will continue to export its perverted version of Islam across the globe as it deploys Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi militias and other lackeys as a vast human shield insulating the Mullahs from any consequences. To dispatch the Iranian regime to history’s ash heap America, the UK, Germany and other democracies must aid and abet the women of Iran and their families to bring down the murderous regime. 

We all knew the name of the woman who probably inspired the last revolution in Iran: Mahsa Amini. The public defiance of this latest lioness is a signal that the people of Iran still yearn for a better tomorrow. 

But yet again we are witnessing a world unburdened by heroism and fate of the Iranian women. 

Nations covet Iran’s oil and fear the regime’s long reach that sows chaos and terrorism across the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.  

Are the Iranians paying a price on the world stage? You decide: On Nov. 1, the Islamic Republic of Iran absurdly brought a resolution to the U.N. General Assembly condemning the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

A full 155 countries voted in favor, including all of Europe, and only six countries voted against (the U.S., Israel, Argentina, Australia, Canada and Ukraine). How many of the 155 ambassadors of those nations have risen in the United Nations to condemn Iran for its latest human rights abuses? 

The U.S. must reestablish its leadership on the world stage and help the people of Iran overcome their evil rulers. They must know they are not alone. 

Abraham Cooper is associate dean and director of Global Social Action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Johnnie Moore is the president of the Congress of Christian Leaders and the president of JDA Worldwide. Cooper and Moore are former commissioners on the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom.