MADRID - Within the landscape of the Iranian diaspora, a particular phenomenon demands critical attention: the aspiration toward political whiteness. This is not a physical trait but an epistemic and symbolic position that organizes privileges, establishes hierarchies, and produces consent for foreign intervention.

This logic, frequently adopted by sectors of the diaspora embedded in media, academia, and Anglo-American political circles, entails identifying with the Western civilizational framework, its narrative of progress, and its capacity to wield violence under the guise of ethical rationality.

In certain instances, this identification translates into the belief that American and Israeli bombs are instruments of moral precision, capable of distinguishing between regime and civilians, erasing both the physics of the explosive and the history of foreign intervention.

The article by Arash Azizi published in The Atlantic illustrates this dynamic. Presented as reporting intended to reflect “the voice of Iranians,” it unfolds, in reality, as an echo of imperial discourse, where the perception of the diaspora becomes a translator of Western desires and a moral endorsement for military action. The anxiety and frustration of those living outside Iran are encoded in a language useful to those planning intervention strategies, while the direct experience of the Iranian population is abstracted and simplified.

Political whiteness and the magical realism of The Atlantic

Political whiteness, as theorized by Alana Lentin, is a social technology that defines privileges, norms, and epistemologies associated with Western power. For the diaspora, particularly those living in secure environments in Brooklyn, London, or Toronto, this allows the transformation of complex situations into simplified moral equations, where the consequences of conflict—the collapse of infrastructure, scarcity of medicine, civilian deaths—become abstract data. Human tragedy is reinterpreted as a mandate for external intervention, offering the illusion of morality and knowledge while reinforcing the strategic narrative of the West.

Azizi’s article follows this pattern. By interviewing a select segment of the diaspora, it constructs an artificial consensus on what “Iranians” supposedly desire, ignoring those who live with the daily impact of sanctions, scarcity, and indirect violence. The resulting narrative does not reflect Iran’s internal complexity but functions as a tool of imperial psychography. The population’s desperation is transformed into a presumed endorsement of external violence, and historical experience is erased to present a simplified story in which the regime is evil and the people are ready to be “saved.”

Within this framework, sanctions and external military pressure disappear from the narrative. History begins at the moment of the “cry for freedom,” ignoring decades of economic and political harassment. The absolute certainty of victim counts, repeated without context, reinforces the illusion of consensus. The proposal of “surgical” strikes is framed as bold and rational, while in reality it ignores the decentralized nature of power in Iran and the unpredictability of any military action. The narrative transforms the complexity of Iranian politics into a moral fable, consumable by a Western audience, while risk and uncertainty regarding the country are dismissed.

The function of the native informant: A mirror of hegemony

Here a crucial concept emerges: the native informant. This figure does not merely transmit facts but legitimizes a Western narrative of power. Its primary function is to produce the illusion of complete knowledge on the part of the West, a knowledge that seeks to solidify a hegemonic self that can be contrasted with a problematic and dangerous other. The authority of the native informant rests on the perception that someone speaking from inside the country knows how “Iranians” think, feel, and would act, creating a distorted mirror that reaffirms Western superiority and rationality.

This mechanism operates on multiple levels. First, it encodes diaspora anxiety in terms comprehensible to planners in Washington or Tel Aviv, transforming the experience of exile into a moral testimony that justifies intervention. Second, it erases local complexity, including diverse opinions, non-violent civil resistance, and the institutional resilience of the Iranian state. The native informant thus becomes a moral intermediary: not only saying what the foreigner wants to hear but constructing the very necessity of external action.

From this perspective, the function of the native informant reveals a recurring pattern in the relationship between the West and the Middle East: the externalization of knowledge and ethical authority. It is not only a matter of interpretation but of producing a strategic consensus that validates distant power decisions, whose effectiveness, or even humanitarian consequences, are entirely beyond analysis. This practice can be traced from Iraq to Libya and Syria, where the combination of diaspora narratives and selective reporting helped justify operations that ended in humanitarian disasters, a pattern that repeats in coverage of Iran.

Lessons from Iraq and Libya

This mechanism is not new. The experience of Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 demonstrates the dangers of this type of narrative. In both cases, military intervention was presented as a rational and morally justified act, based on the supposed will of the people. The results were catastrophic: in Iraq, one million deaths, sectarian wars, and the rise of ISIS, while in Libya, intervention led to a power vacuum and prolonged chaos. The lessons from these experiences should be obvious, yet the narrative of Western exceptionalism persists, ignoring Iran’s scale, institutional density, and geostrategic significance.

The complicity of the diaspora requires neither uniforms nor explicit orders. It is sufficient to produce an article, a prestigious platform, and prose that performs the work of translating anxiety into strategic opportunity. Desperation becomes a moral endorsement for external violence and a tool to legitimize military decisions, providing a cover for those planning interventions from afar. The diaspora thus functions as a distorting mirror, amplifying the logic of intervention and transforming the country’s internal complexity into a simplified, manipulable narrative.

Conclusion: Rejecting the distorting mirror

Azizi’s analysis highlights the need to critique this distorting mirror. Understanding Iran requires acknowledging the interaction between internal factors and external pressures, situating Iranian politics within a broad geopolitical framework, and examining the effects of decades of sanctions and military threats. The critique does not seek to deny internal problems; it points out that diaspora discourses, when turned into endorsements for intervention, contribute to an incomplete and potentially harmful understanding of the country.

Comprehending Iran demands an approach that combines geopolitical rigor, strategic analysis, and attention to internal realities, without turning the population’s suffering into permission for intervention. True reflection on the country must distinguish between historical complexity and moral simplification, preventing the Western narrative from imposing itself over the lived experience of those inside Iran. Any discourse that ignores these basic lessons once again reproduces the logic of hegemonic power, speaking to itself in a loop that distorts history and the realities on the ground.