Iran’s latest Eid al-Adha overtures for “Islamic unity” land with the thud of spent rocket casings after Tehran spent the spring lobbing missiles at fellow Muslim nations from Iraq to Pakistan. The regime’s call for solidarity rings especially hollow when you remember that its own ballistic-missile and drone programs—largely reverse-engineered from North Korean and Russian designs—have been used to intimidate Sunni neighbors and to arm proxy militias that destabilize entire regions. For the Second Amendment community, the spectacle is a textbook reminder that authoritarian states never relinquish the means of coercion; they simply rebrand it as piety when the bombs stop falling.

The deeper lesson for American gun owners is that rights not defended at the ballot box and in the courts are rights easily redefined by the next regime that claims a monopoly on “unity.” While Iran’s theocrats lecture the ummah about brotherhood, they simultaneously tighten domestic gun-control edicts that leave ordinary citizens defenseless against both state repression and the criminal gangs the regime itself arms. That contrast should sharpen our resolve here at home: every restriction on lawful self-defense, every new ATF rule, every magazine ban quietly imports the same logic that lets Tehran decide who may own what for protection.

Ultimately, the mullahs’ hypocrisy underscores why an armed populace remains the ultimate check on centralized power—whether that power wears a turban in Tehran or issues press releases from Foggy Bottom. When governments can bomb their neighbors one month and demand religious solidarity the next, only a citizenry that retains the tools of resistance can keep such regimes from exporting their brand of unity to our own shores.