Mujo in Iran

Mass rally in Tehran condemning US and Israeli threats and intervention in Iran, January 12, 2026 -- Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Biljana Vankovska

Anyone from the former Yugoslavia will immediately understand the title. Mujo is a legendary (though fictional) Bosnian character, the protagonist (together with his inseparable friend Haso) of countless jokes that generations of Yugoslavs grew up with. Wars took many lives, erased towns, and destroyed futures, yet Mujo survived even the darkest days of the Bosnian conflict. One particular joke has stayed with me for more than three decades, because it captures, better than most analyses, the arrogance of superficial Western “expertise.”

The scene unfolds in a small Bosnian town, in a local tavern where a foreigner (from the West, of course) is instantly recognisable. One day Mujo walks in, notices the stranger, and—warmly, as locals do—approaches him. He asks when he arrived and how long he plans to stay. “Yesterday,” the foreigner says. “Tomorrow, I leave.” “And what are you doing here?” Mujo asks.“ ’I’m writing a book about Bosnia.” “And what will the book be called?” The answer is unforgettable: Bosnia: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

This is how ignorance dressed as authority looks. A brief visit or two, or no visit at all, some borrowed impressions, a few media clichés, and suddenly one claims mastery over an entire country, its people, its history, and its future. So let me be unequivocal: I have never been to Iran. I say this openly, unlike many loud voices who pretend otherwise. I work with Iranian colleagues; Iran has long been a dream destination for me. I hoped to visit it before the pandemic, but now I genuinely wonder whether such a moment will ever come.

As someone who knows what war is, not from books but from lived experience; as someone who has seen “colour revolutions,” military interventions, and humanitarian lies unfold in real time; as someone who studies peace and conflict; and as a leftist by conviction, I refuse to remain silent while the orange creature in the White House prepares, once again, to drag another country into catastrophe.

I am not an Iran specialist, but I know imperialism when I see it. It follows a rigid, almost mechanical script: demonize the state or its leader; delegitimise them relentlessly; remove them—by “soft” means or brute force; instrumentalise genuine social grievances and internal divisions; pour fuel on the fire; wait for blood—and then unleash the “American cavalry.” Wherever the United States intervenes, life withers. Grass does not grow again. What grows are new client states, puppet-like leaders, sometimes even ISIS executioners with new branding. And, inevitably, the large-scale extraction of resources.

Democracy? Human rights? Spare us. These are rhetorical decorations, not objectives. The only constant is imperial interest.

A population that may already have suffered under imperfect or even harsh governance is then disciplined into obedience; this time under the supervision of an U.S. ambassador acting as governor-general. And if the necessary bloodshed does not occur organically, it can always be staged, exaggerated, or manufactured to justify a “humanitarian” intervention.

This is why the death toll speculations from peaceful protests turned violent by intent have become a moral fault line. It separates those who genuinely care about the Iranian people from those who merely weaponise their suffering. This divide does not run only between left and right; it cuts through the left itself. Such moments are political and ethical litmus tests. They force us to confront our principles or expose their emptiness. Too often, we fail this test.

Marx’s line from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte keeps returning these days: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” This applies not only to revolutions but also to our naïve desires to see Iran transformed overnight into a peaceful and prosperous state. Yet, many genuine Iranian voices, women and men, speak from within the society itself, alongside credible sources. The Western media do what they usually do: don’t care about information, but serve as a gauge of propaganda, which, depressingly, works even on well-educated people with good intentions. It’s hard, if not arrogant, to claim full understanding of a complex and huge country of 90 million people, with immense ethnic, religious, generational, and ideological diversity. But one thing is beyond dispute: Iran’s social development was violently derailed the moment it became a strategic target of Western greed, and later, the victim of exceptionally cruel sanctions. Now they face new, terrible prospects.

The evidence is overwhelming. Sanctions, especially unilateral ones, and Iran’s were never legal under international law, always devastate societies from below. They starve populations, hollow out the middle class, and radicalize politics (or make it impossible), while elites adapt and survive. Iranian society has been subjected to a slow, deliberate suffocation: an invisible form of social engineering designed to block economic growth, social mobility, and political evolution. We are all complicit in failing to build a sustained global movement against sanctions. Not that success was guaranteed; Cuba stands as a permanent warning.

Changing leaders does not dismantle structures forged under siege. A state surrounded by military bases, subjected to constant threats, and punished simply for existing will inevitably develop defensive elites and securitised politics. Pointing to the “external enemy” is not paranoia; it is reality. Thus, external rather than internal forces actively shaped Iran’s political system and culture. Like it or not, these structures are legitimate expressions of a certain historical condition.

What deepens the violence is the cultural humiliation: the endless demonization of Iranians and their civilization as such. Persia, one of the world’s great civilizations, has been reduced to caricatures of “mullahs,” veils, and backwardness. In stark contrast, brilliant Iranian women provide a deeply insightful and nuanced analysis of the country’s vibrant civil society, highlighting how women’s groups, trade unions, and social movements strive (within existing constraints) for dignity and better lives. This reality is systematically erased in Western narratives.

After Venezuela, and the long list of leaders eliminated before it, Iran is now in the crosshairs. For the moment, the authorities have blocked the Western script. But blood has been spilled, and blood leaves scars. Some now demand even harsher sanctions, punishing a “regime that kills its own people”—as if states under attack never resort to repression. Others openly cheer for Trump’s next “quick and spectacular” military adventure.

We are standing at the edge of multiple scenarios, all dangerous. Trump has already imposed new trade restrictions; the EU obediently follows, theatrically “concerned” about Iranian civilians, while remaining silent, blind, and complicit in Gaza. The obscenity is staggering: genocidal states and imperial predators prepare their next move, Iranian suffering will multiply across all social classes, and “Mujo’s guests” debate whether this is a moment for morally condemning authoritarianism before delving into a critique of the West.

Whenever Western powers—or certain intellectual circles—invoke “human rights,” my stomach turns. Yugoslavia. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Every intervention was a lie, a tool of imperial domination. Every actor was cynical, serving capitalist interests. Every operation was profitable, while the people paid the price. Needless to say, any external interference violates the right to political self-determination. Any use of force without UN authorization is a crime, and under current conditions, a crime against humanity. These principles must apply universally.

The Iranian people have been battered for generations, and this must end. Yes, many endure harsh lives, and yes, the younger generation is exhausted by the constant sense of living in a cage. But these people are neither naïve nor infantile, and they do not need imperial “guardianship.” They are fully capable of understanding their own reality and shaping their own future. They love their country, and they do not wish to see it reduced to a client of Western imperial power.

Anyone who genuinely wishes to see a flourishing Iranian society should begin by demanding the immediate lifting of all illegal sanctions, a halt to covert operations, an end to military threats and interventions carried out by actors with no legal, political, or moral legitimacy.

Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.

This article was produced by Globetrotter and No Cold War.