In December 2024, Iranian authorities introduced a law that, according to Amnesty International, “permits the imposition of the death penalty for peaceful activism against Iran’s discriminatory compulsory veiling laws.” In other words, if you’re a female peace activist marching on the streets of Tehran and your hair covering isn’t quite right, you may be executed.
That is evil, yes, but who ever uses that word?
Indeed when we argue over the existential threat of a nuclear Iran or bemoan the brutal oppression of its people, we use a lot of fancy words and ideas, but rarely do we use the word “evil.”
If we agree, for example, that the Iranian regime is evil but we hate Trump and everything he does, we won’t dare support his efforts against that regime.
That is Trump Derangement Syndrome, but there is also Israel Derangement Syndrome and America Derangement Syndrome and Jewish Derangement Syndrome.
All those syndromes came together in the aftermath of President Trump’s historic decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear facilities.
Millions of armchair pundits jumped on social media to tell us why it was a dumb decision, how it threatened a third world war, why it was illegal, why Iran wasn’t really building the bomb, why it was all Israel’s fault, and so on.
No one used the word evil.
Leading the way was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — long a hawk on Iran— who blasted Trump’s decisive action for “sidestepping Congress.” What did he have in mind? A weekslong debate in Congress that would give the mullahs all the lead time they’d need to diffuse any attack?
Schumer never used the word evil, either.
The journalist Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” while reporting on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, a Nazi SS officer, in Jerusalem. That phrase has become so iconic I sometimes wonder if the word “banality” has taken the edge off the word. Is that why we so rarely use it — because evil is banal?
The good people of Iran have been subjected to the evil of ideological fanaticism ever since the mullahs took over in 1979. It’s an evil that tells us it wants to destroy the Jewish state and the West, all in the name of how they interpret their religion.
There’s nothing banal about such evil.
Evil is the hardwired motif that runs through everything Iran has done in the region.
What do you call building a “ring of fire” around the world’s only Jewish state in order to burn it out of existence?
What do you call arming and sponsoring terror proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Yemen and racing to build a nuclear bomb with the ultimate intent to commit genocide against Jews?
What do you call becoming the world’s #1 sponsor of terror, suppressing dissent at home and wreaking havoc elsewhere?
Of course you call it evil, but no one will actually say it. They’ll argue over geopolitics or how to make win-win deals or how “regime change” is too explosive to mention even though the regime is evil.
There is one group that does understand evil and not surprisingly, it’s the group with the most skin in the game: Israelis. Maybe that’s why in a country where people disagree about everything, the great majority of Israelis support the war against an evil regime.
Recognizing evil is not a substitute for complex debate over complex problems. Rather, it’s a moral starting point.
“Iran is ruled by a theocratic dictatorship detested by the overwhelming majority of its people,” Mideast expert Dan Perry wrote on his Substack. “No one asked ordinary Iranians whether they wanted to bankroll Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Assad’s brutal regime in Syria — or to spend billions chasing nuclear weapons while their economy crumbles.”
That kind of evil is not all we need to know about Iran, but it’s fundamental. Regardless of all the news we hear about “ceasefires” and “nuclear deals,” recognizing evil is indispensable because it keeps our eye on the essential. Of all the “whys” over why we fight, fighting evil is indeed the biggest why.
Just ask the women of Tehran.
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