As the us/israel-iran war enters its fourth week with no signs of resolution, a stream of arguments is being put forward by the US, Israel, and its allies to justify this unequal war. While there may be some substance in contentions relating to nuclear proliferation and existential threat to Israel, the proclaimed objective of liberating Iran’s women from a cruel, oppressive regime is the weakest. Because foregrounding women’s rights as a casus belli for imperialist wars is neither new nor convincing.

One of the principal justifications advanced for the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was the promise of liberating its long-suffering women from the brutal Taliban regime. Nearly a quarter century later, with US armed forces fully withdrawn, Taliban 2.0 has returned with renewed severity, enforcing the world’s harshest restrictions on women — banning girls’ education, prohibiting commuting without a male guardian, and excluding women from most forms of employment in the public and private sectors.

Therefore, to again posit that external military interventions can meaningfully advance the cause of women’s rights is to over-simplify the complex process of social reform and, more importantly, dilutes the agency of  women. For the past several decades, this Islamic theocracy’s brave women have demonstrated extraordinary resilience and courage in challenging its gender discriminatory laws and practices.

Moreover, it is necessary to contradict selective invocation of women’s oppression in Iran as justification for war. A facts check of women’s rights records in other Islamic Gulf countries aligned with the US reveals equally — if not greater — oppression of women. In Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally, women have only recently been permitted to drive automobiles and remain subject to the archaic male guardianship system that constrains personal autonomy. This to varying degrees, is the condition of women in all Gulf monarchies allied with America. Contrast this with Iran, which has never imposed driving restrictions on women, has had a women’s football team since the 1970s and where 70 percent of all STEM university graduates are women. Moreover, the human rights record of Israel is glaring. According to UN Women, a United Nations subsidiary, since October 2023, Israel has killed over 28,000 women and children in Gaza.

However, none of this is to deny that Iran’s women’s rights record warrants condemnation and reform. Over the past 45 years since the Islamic Republic assumed power in 1979, it has trampled women’s rights, freedoms, and political dissent. But, given the pathetic success record of earlier Western imperial war projects to “liberate women”, a more judicious and effective alternative available to America and the West is to fund and support internal opposition, advocacy and civil society groups in Iran. The history of the Islamic world provides ample evidence that women’s freedoms won through the devastation of war are transient and unsustainable.