Ali Larijani, former Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a key figure in the regime’s leadership, was eliminated in an Israeli strike. (IDF) (X Screenshot)
Ali Larijani

Media Portray Iran’s Larijani as a Pragmatic Scholar, Not a Murderer

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Instead of foregrounding Larijani’s role within a regime accused of violently suppressing protests, coverage leaned into biography. Scholar. Pragmatist. A man of ideas.

By Dr. Rinat Harash, HonestReporting

Western media went out of their way this week to portray Iran’s regime de facto boss, Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli air strike, as a pragmatic philosophy scholar rather than a man responsible for the violent machinery of the regime.

The pattern in coverage was consistent and revealing. NBC News called him a “bookish front man for the regime.”

The Guardian chose to highlight his demeanor, noting his “warm smile.” The New York Times referred to him as a “Top Iranian Politician and Emissary.”

The BBC said he was “one of the Islamic Republic’s most experienced and influential policymakers,” while The Washington Post described him as a mere “security official.”

And across outlets, there was repeated emphasis on his academic credentials. A Ph.D. in philosophy. An expert on the philosopher Immanuel Kant. As if intellectual biography could stand in for moral accountability.

In reality, Larijani, as head of Iran’s National Security Council, was not a detached intellectual. He was a central figure in a system of repression. A system that has cracked down on dissent with brutal force. A system that spread terror and death worldwide.

Larijani was a ruthless actor who did not seem to internalize Kant’s moral maxim: “Act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means.”

So what the media did was not incidental. It was framing.

Instead of foregrounding Larijani’s role within a regime accused of violently suppressing protests, coverage leaned into biography. Scholar. Pragmatist. A man of ideas.

The implication was clear. This was someone who might have mattered for diplomacy.

On social media, that framing went even further. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and BBC presenter John Simpson effectively lamented Larijani’s death, suggesting he might have been able to “hammer out a peace deal.”

They ignored the more immediate reality. He hammered protesters instead.

And the emphasis on Larijani’s intellectual profile created a distortion. It suggested that studying Kant somehow mitigates responsibility for actions taken in power. That philosophical sophistication signals moral restraint.

But Kant’s philosophy is not a decorative detail. It is a moral standard. And by that standard, Larijani’s record stands in direct contradiction.

Ignorant writers see brilliant rationality as a mark of virtue. They don’t know it has been historically portrayed as the mark of the devil. And in general, they mix up ethics with academic achievements.

The result was a portrait that elevated intellect while muting accountability. A man responsible for deadly decisions within a violent regime was presented, above all, as a clever, rational scholar.

Larijani eventually received what Kant really meant by the second formulation of his moral maxim: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” He wanted universal death for anyone who defied him, and he got it.

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