Bombs in the name of women

The ceasefire between the United States and Iran has temporarily halted the escalation, but it leaves a difficult image to ignore. For days and weeks, and also in various scenarios of the Spanish State's political arena, the war was justified in the name of Iranian women. Their oppression, lack of rights, feminist struggle. All presented as a moral reason to bomb the country.

Immediately before the truce was announced, Donald Trump threatened to destroy "Iranian civilization" if Tehran did not yield. The contradiction is brutal. He invokes the liberation of women while threatening to annihilate the society in which they live.

And this is not an inconsistency, but a pattern we have seen too many times. Women become a moral argument. War becomes humanitarian intervention. And violence against entire peoples, an acceptable collateral damage.

This mechanism has a name: femonationalism. The instrumentalization of women's rights to justify geopolitical, security, or militarized agendas, both within and outside respective borders. Women are presented as victims of "backward" cultures. Bombing powers, as saviors. Deputies who rip off veils, as representatives of modernity. Violence is thus transformed into protection.

The script repeats: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine... Now Iran. Women from the Global South are presented as bodies to be rescued, not as political subjects with their own struggles. This representation allows two simultaneous movements: to dehumanize racialized men and to legitimize external violence.

The result is paradoxical. Women's oppression is used to justify policies that increase their vulnerability. Wars destroy basic infrastructure, fragment social networks, push millions into displacement, and reinforce patriarchal dynamics. The narrative, however, remains intact. Bombing is done in the name of liberation.

Another displacement also occurs. Local feminist struggles lose agency. Their demands become reusable slogans. "Woman, Life, Freedom" goes from being a cry against repression to a slogan that legitimizes bombings. Feminism is transformed into strategic language.

Meanwhile, real women disappear from the narrative. Iranian women who reject war. Palestinian women under bombardment. Displaced Lebanese women. Afghan women after decades of occupation. They don't fit the script, as they question the idea that external violence liberates.

The threat of destroying a civilization made it clear enough. The logic is not to protect women, but to discipline entire societies. Feminism becomes an alibi. War, a policy. And peoples, disposable scenarios. Women are invoked to justify violence. But it is they, along with the rest of their societies, who suffer it.