The Iranian regime's execution of three men convicted of armed sabotage during January's unrest is not, by itself, an editorial topic worth debating—it is a sovereign government fulfilling its duty to protect public order and property.
The men were convicted of using Molotov cocktails, grenades, and firearms to destroy infrastructure in Karaj, including an electricity substation that caused widespread outages. The Supreme Court upheld those convictions, finding them guilty of operating on behalf of hostile foreign entities.
That is not a headline; it is a court applying the law to acts of violence against the state. When a government punishes those who target its citizens and infrastructure, it is performing a function no liberal international body should second-guess from a distance.
What makes this story matter to anyone paying attention is not the executions themselves but the global chorus of alarm they have provoked. International organizations and foreign-based NGOs have attempted to frame the unrest as purely peaceful while ignoring the documented campaign of arson and firearms that the Iranian state itself describes. That selective framing is the real story, and it reveals a recurring pattern: external actors who benefit from instability abroad are quick to condemn the very governments that try to restore order through law.
That pattern finds its mirror image across the Atlantic in Michel Barnier's demand that Britain accept free movement of people as a condition of market access. The former Brexit negotiator has made clear that Brussels will not permit an 'a la carte' relationship with the single market.
Any closer economic ties require full submission to the four freedoms, including the free movement of persons. This is not merely a trade dispute; it is a contest over whether a nation may govern itself according to its own laws without Brussels' permission.
Barnier's condescension toward populist leaders like Nigel Farage only proves how out of touch the EU establishment remains with the democratic will of the British people.
The parallel should be obvious, and it should be resisted. One side of this divided world believes that sovereignty is a negotiable asset to be bartered for convenience; the other believes it is the foundation upon which all legitimate government stands. Iran executes terrorists because it does not want to see its cities burn.
Britain was elected to leave because its people understood that surrendering sovereignty for market access meant surrendering self-governance. Both decisions rest on the same principle: the people who live inside a territory have the right to set the rules that territory obeys.
For Americans, the lesson is not complicated. We have our own institutions, our own courts, and our own laws. When foreign regimes execute those who violate domestic law, we should support them in doing so—not because we agree with every policy, but because the alternative is chaos.
When foreign bureaucrats demand that other nations surrender their sovereignty, we should recognize it for what it is: a power play by institutions that have forgotten what popular government means. The Iranian executions and the EU ultimatum are not unrelated stories on different pages.
They are the same argument, stated at two ends of the political spectrum.
Liberty means nothing if the people who live under a government cannot choose their own rulers and their own rules. Sovereignty means nothing if a government can be dictated to by distant institutions and hostile interests. The Iranian regime has reminded us that order must sometimes be enforced with force, and the European bureaucracy has reminded us that freedom must sometimes be defended at the cost of comfort. Both reminders deserve more attention than the comfortable silence that follows when either happens.
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