Zahra Shafei, cultural researcher
The case of systematic crimes on Epstein’s island is not merely a moral scandal or the sexual corruption of several wealthy figures; it has now become a fully documented indictment — a decisive unmasking of the Western human rights discourse. Within this case, a network of Western politicians, capital holders, media personalities, and intellectual elites—figures who for years portrayed themselves as flag-bearers of “human rights” and “women’s rights”—now find their names directly or indirectly linked to one of the darkest cases of sexual abuse, trafficking of underage girls, and sexual slavery. What emerges from the released files, flight logs, and surviving images is not merely a corruption network, but the true face of a system that for decades claimed leadership in defending women’s rights and freedom.
False defenders of women: Servants of the devil on the island
Perhaps the most consequential dimension of this case is the total collapse of the West’s claimed moral authority on the issue of women. For years, politicians, media outlets, and so-called human rights organizations have used their official platforms to condemn the Islamic Republic of Iran and other independent nations for their “treatment of women.” Yet these are the very same politicians who cultivated ties within the Epstein network. These are the same media outlets that either boycotted the case or pushed it to the margins. These are the same wealthy elites whose tainted fortunes gave rise to “human rights” foundations. For decades, this very network has overseen the design and promotion of the “oppressed Iranian women” narrative—a project whose ultimate goal has been to foment unrest and insecurity inside Iran. To achieve this, vast budgets have been funneled to entities linked to intelligence agencies, all operating under the guise of human rights foundations, while the blueprint for “freedom” has been drafted in think tanks serving the military-industrial complex.
They have brought the media under their coordinated command to produce a single, uniform narrative, while swiftly silencing any voice that rises to expose this intricate web of deceit and conspiracy. Lies, secrecy, conspiracy, and deception have constituted the diabolical doctrine of these criminals in executing all their schemes—from Epstein’s island to the streets of Tehran. In the words of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution: “The enemies of the Islamic Republic quickly realized that they couldn’t defeat the Revolution using hard power. [So], they turned to using methods of soft power. Soft warfare includes using propaganda, temptations, and the dishonesty that one sees exists in their slogans. They label their actions as being defense of women, the female community, a particular group of women, or as defending one woman. They create riots in a country under the guise of defending a woman.”
This scandal marks a turning point in exposing these hypocrisies and stripping Western elites of their moral authority — the very same elites who, throughout history, have wrapped war, destruction, insecurity, and exploitation in the ornate packaging of “women’s freedom.”
In this context, the role of the leaders of the Zionist regime and Israeli lobbies cannot be overlooked. Years before the Epstein scandal brought this corruption to light, the Zionist regime’s hand had already been exposed as “the center of a global organ-trafficking network.” Now, the names of powerful figures holding Israeli citizenship appear throughout this case with such frequency that no room for doubt remains: across every page of these documents, the traces of efforts to safeguard the interests of the Zionist regime are evident. All of this unfolds while Imam Khamenei had warned about these matters years earlier: “Women trafficking is among the trades that are growing fastest in the world. There are a few countries which are worst in this regard and the Zionist regime is among them. Under the guise of labor, marriage and other such things, they collect women and girls from poor countries in Latin America, certain Asian countries and certain poor European countries and they deliver them to certain centers, centers whose names and activities would shock people. All of these things are the result of the misconception about women.”
The project of “saving Muslim women”: A defensive mechanism of an incurable illness
A psychoanalytic reading of this issue reveals a deeper truth. In clinical psychology, “projection” is defined as a defense mechanism in which an individual, in order to escape the anxiety caused by their own flaw, attributes that flaw to another and then proceeds to combat it in the other. The West’s obsessive campaign to “liberate the Muslim women” appears, in this light, as nothing less than an attempt to save itself—to repair its own fractured identity.
This obsessive fixation functions as a defense mechanism designed to conceal a more troubling truth: that the Western system is incapable, within its own borders, of protecting women. By amplifying the image of the “oppressed Muslim women,” public attention is diverted from the “victimized American women” on Epstein Island. In reality, they are not seeking the freedom of Muslim women; rather, they are seeking relief for their own troubled conscience — a conscience haunted by the crimes committed against their own women.
What do these contradictions and conspiracies reveal?
In this light, it becomes unmistakably clear that the so-called “defense of women’s rights” functions as an imperial instrument in the war of narratives against societies that have never consented to become part of this corrupt network. How can those who failed to protect the women and children of their own country from an organized criminal enterprise of sexual exploitation suddenly present themselves as the champions of Muslim women?
This contradiction exposes the very essence of an entire intellectual system. By discarding religion-based morality and replacing it with the primacy of profit and pleasure, the Western system has not only proven incapable of safeguarding women but has, by necessity, devolved into the world’s largest cartel of sexual exploitation. When “freedom” is reduced to an instrument for the unrestrained gratification of wealthy elites, the vulnerable girls on the margins of that very system are reduced to commodities.
How can such a system presume to offer prescriptions for the Muslim women of Iran—women who live under the protection of Sacred Law and divine ordinances? Moral authority rightfully belongs to those who shield the vulnerable, not to those who, on their private islands, sacrifice the most defenseless in pursuit of their own pleasure.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Khamenei.ir.)