There is something deeply troubling about watching otherwise educated and rational people jubilate over the alleged cold blooded assassination of a foreign head of state.
The cheering. The memes. The glee.
Not over justice delivered after due process. Not over peace achieved. But over airstrikes on a sovereign nation.
That is not clarity. That is conditioning.
The lines between religious fanaticism, hatred and common sense are becoming dangerously blurred. The lines between history and propaganda have been deliberately erased. And when that happens, entire populations lose the ability to reason beyond indoctrination, social media and slogans.
Let us slow this down.
Before there was the Iranian Islamic Revolution, there was Operation Ajax, the CIA and MI6 backed overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister whose crime was nationalising Iran’s oil. That single act reshaped the psychology of an entire nation. It was not theology that birthed Iranian mistrust of the West. It was regime change.
But history rarely trends.
Instead, what we are fed after years of covert subversive moves, crippling sanctions and targeted propaganda is a simplified narrative: exporters of terror, evil mullahs, death chants, nuclear ambitions. No context. No causation. No memory.
The same people cheering today cheered when the United States captured and removed the sitting president of Venezuela. They cheered when Israeli strikes in June last year killed Iranian scientists and officials in cold blood. They cheered when thousands of Palestinians were buried under rubble in Gaza under the justification of Hamas. They cheer every time a missile lands in Tehran.
And yet they call others radical.
The moral line has collapsed.
The question must be asked plainly: how many countries has Iran invaded? How many Israelis and American officials has Iran assassinated or killed?
Compare that record with that of the United States since 1945.
Compare that record with Israel’s cross-border operations.
This is not a defence of clerical governance. It is a defence of perspective.
When people frame this entire conflict through a purely religious lens, Evil Ayatollahs versus the Free World, they are not analysing geopolitics. They are repeating indoctrination. The conflict between Washington and Tehran is not fundamentally theological. It is strategic. It is about sovereignty, oil, blocking China and Russia, regional dominance, and the unresolved catastrophe of Palestine.
Iran remains the only regional power that has openly and materially supported the Palestinian cause when most Arab governments cowardly and self servingly normalised relations. That support is controversial, principled, yes. But it is rooted in a geopolitical stance, not cartoon villainy.
To pretend otherwise is intellectual laziness.
Now we are told that daylight bombings targeting leadership meetings represent precision brilliance. We are told this is institutional trust destroyed inside Tehran. We are told this is the removal of terror sponsors.
But when did targeted assassinations of foreign officials become normalised statecraft?
If Iran conducted daylight strikes in Telaviv targeting the Israels top brass, would that be described as strategic brilliance or an act of war?
Perspective matters.
The United Nations was established after World War II precisely to prevent this type of unilateral escalation. What is its purpose now? To issue statements while permanent members act with impunity?
What is the role of the US Congress if major combat operations can be initiated without meaningful debate?
Power without accountability has a name. History has seen it before.
The cheering of authoritarian excess did not begin with Hitler’s final years. It began when early aggression was rationalised as strength. When dissenters were mocked as weak. When military precision was celebrated without moral examination.
Tyranny rarely announces itself as tyranny. It arrives wrapped in national security.
And we must address the darker whispers circulating beneath this moment, allegations that intelligence leverage and kompromat politics influence Western decision making, particularly involving Mossad. Whether proven or not, the very fact that such suspicions circulate widely reveals a profound erosion of trust in global governance structures. When citizens believe foreign intelligence blackmail shapes policy, democracy itself is wounded.
This is the cost of opaque power.
Who next?
If regime elimination becomes doctrine, then no sovereign nation outside the dominant military alliance is safe. Nuclear speculation without verified evidence becomes pretext. Intelligence claims become justification. Pre emptive strikes become policy.
And the world edges closer to permanent instability.
There is a difference between opposing a government and celebrating its violent decapitation. There is a difference between strategic competition and civilisational crusade. When the language of Great Satan and Evil Mullahs dominates discourse, rational analysis collapses into religious antagonism and fanaticm.
The tragedy is not just bombs falling.
The tragedy is watching otherwise intelligent people abandon nuance.
The tragedy is watching propaganda masquerade as patriotism.
The tragedy is forgetting that every empire in history believed its interventions were justified.
This is not about defending Tehran’s clerics.
It is about defending the principle that sovereignty cannot be erased by applause.
It is about recognising that Operation Ajax planted seeds that still bear bitter fruit.
It is about understanding that supporting Palestinians does not equal exporting terror.
It is about asking why speculation about nuclear capability triggers airstrikes in Iran, while existing undeclared arsenals like that of Israel remains untouchable.
It is about remembering that when war becomes entertainment, humanity has already lost.
Religious fanaticism is dangerous.
So is secular fanaticism dressed as strategic inevitability.
If the world is entering a new era of hegemonic enforcement where daylight assassinations are normal, then we must ask hard questions now, not after escalation spirals beyond control.
Because history is very clear about one thing.
Applause is often the first casualty of wisdom.
By Chima Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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