Last summer, I lived in Athens, volunteering with a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that provides food to refugees and people experiencing homelessness. I stayed in Exarcheia, a neighborhood that some of my friends warned me about in advance. They described it as dangerous, overrun by anarchists, radicals, even criminals.

What I found instead was warmth. The streets were alive with political graffiti, cafés run by refugees and conversations that stretched long into the night. People spoke openly about injustice and weren’t afraid to take clear moral positions. I loved it.

One afternoon, however, a contradiction stopped me in my tracks. On one wall, a poster condemned Turkey’s violence against the Kurds. Just meters away, another glorified the Iranian regime and its so-called “axis of resistance” — an authoritarian state notorious for repressing Kurds, crushing dissent and executing protesters.

The contradiction was hard to miss.

I understood the frustration behind it. Many people are desperate for anything that might challenge Israel’s military dominance and Western hypocrisy over Palestine. The regime in Iran presents itself as part of that resistance. But when did defending one people start requiring excuses for another’s oppression?

This question goes far beyond Athens. It sits at the heart of how global solidarity is practiced today, particularly in relation to Iran and Palestine.

Since the protests in Iran and violent retaliation by the regime, which left almost 30,000 dead, social media has been flooded with massive support for the protestors, but also a loud and sizable number of people supporting the regime.

One famous UK-based political commentator, widely followed for her solidarity with Palestine, tweeted, “I heard the regime killed everyone. There’s no one left in Iran