By Musa T. Bey

I write these words as a Black revolutionary, grounded in the lineage of struggle that stretches from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the streets of Tehran, from the battle cries of the Panthers to the chants of students rising in defiance across the Global South. I write them not because I claim to speak for Iran, but because I refuse to be silent when empire sharpens its knives and pretends it’s serving peace.

To be Black in America and revolutionary in our consciousness is to understand our struggle is not confined by borders. We are not only the sons and daughters of Africa—we are the siblings of every people resisting domination, dictatorship, and colonial interference. Our role, our duty, is not to watch from the sidelines while the U.S. threatens, sanctions, and destabilizes nations under the banner of “democracy.” We know better. We’ve lived through the lies.

And so when I say we must fight for Iran, I do not mean blindly siding with any state or leader. I mean standing firmly against imperialism—against U.S. militarism, against economic warfare, against propaganda that dehumanizes entire peoples to justify bombs. I mean understanding our struggle as Black people in the belly of the beast is connected to the struggle of Iranian people fighting for dignity on their own terms.

I. From Harlem to Tehran: Our Shared Enemy Is Empire

If there is one thing the Black radical tradition has taught me, it is that U.S. empire is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. Dr. King said it, Malcolm lived it, Assata knew it in her bones. From Vietnam to Iraq, from Chile to Libya, the United States has waged war to maintain the flow of capital, the control of oil, the dominance of white Western power.

And Iran has long stood in the crosshairs of that machine—not because of “human rights,” but because it dares to exist outside U.S. control.

I have watched the narrative unfold too many times. First, they isolate. Then, they sanction. Then, they demonize. And finally, they bomb, invade, or fund a proxy war and call it liberation.

As a Black American, I know that game. I have lived under its logic. The same state that bombs Black communities with tear gas and over-polices our neighborhoods wants us to believe it cares about Iranian women, about Iranian democracy? We see through the hypocrisy.

Our role, then, is to expose it. To challenge it. To build solidarity that is rooted not in romanticizing other nations but in a principled opposition to empire, wherever it appears.

II. Fighting With Our Eyes Open: Nuance, Not Neutrality

Let me be clear: solidarity is not silence in the face of injustice. I do not believe in blind loyalty. I believe in radical love—the kind that tells the truth even when it hurts.

Iran, like any society, contains contradictions. There are struggles happening within—between revolutionaries, reformers, conservatives, and everyday people simply trying to survive. There are feminists, labor organizers, students, and workers fighting for freedom. And they deserve to do that free from the threat of foreign bombs and CIA-backed regime change.

To support Iran against U.S. aggression is not to say Iran is above critique. It is to say that critique must come from within Iran, not from the Pentagon. It is to say that our solidarity is with the people of Iran, not with Western imperialism disguised as humanitarian concern.

We can hold space for multiple truths: that the Iranian people have a right to fight for justice—and that the U.S. has no moral authority to intervene. That sanctions are economic warfare—and that dissent within Iran is legitimate and often heroic.

Our role is not to pick sides in the internal affairs of other nations. Our role is to fight the empire we are inside of—the one that kills with drones abroad and police at home. The one that funds genocide in Palestine, destabilizes Haiti, starves Cuba, and then dares to lecture the world on freedom.

III. Why It Matters for Us, Right Here, Right Now

You might ask, why should Black people in the U.S.—already under siege—care about Iran?

Because our oppressor is global. Because our liberation is international. Because every dollar spent on foreign wars is a dollar stolen from our schools, our hospitals, our hoods. Because the same surveillance technologies used on Iranians are used in Philly and Ferguson. Because the same generals that invade Baghdad train cops in Atlanta.

We are bound together—not by culture or religion, but by struggle.

Iran matters because anti-Blackness is not just domestic—it’s transnational. Because the fight against war is a fight for life. Because solidarity sharpens our analysis and expands our vision of what freedom can be.

We are not just local actors. We are global revolutionaries. The people of Iran are not foreign to us. They are familiar. They are resisting under threat. Just like we are.

IV. Revolutionary Internationalism: Not a Slogan, But a Strategy

The call to fight for Iran is not just symbolic—it is strategic.

We must learn from each other. We must build bridges between organizers, between movements, between peoples. We must amplify Iranian voices resisting imperialism and uplift Black voices that understand this fight.

We must organize teach-ins, build coalitions, disrupt war propaganda, challenge pro-sanctions politicians, and demand an end to endless war. We must reject the logic that says America has the right to be the world’s judge, jury, and executioner.

And in doing so, we radicalize our own struggle—because we realize that our enemy is not only the police chief, the mayor, or the prison warden, but the generals, the weapons contractors, the diplomats and war-makers who profit from blood.

When we fight for Iran, we are not abandoning our own communities. We are honoring them. We are saying: our freedom is tied to yours. We are all under the boot of empire. And we will all rise together or not at all