In 1960, Saloth Sar — better known as Pol Pot — formed the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Pol Pot looked at Mao Zedong and China’s Cultural Revolution as inspiration. The Khmer leader was both a fanatic and a nationalist. He wanted to remake society and purge it of Western influence. He also harbored deep racial and religious hatred toward both Thailand and Vietnam.
When the Khmer Rouge seized power, they began a campaign of terrorism that claimed more than 1 million lives, nearly 25% of the country’s population. Even at the height of the Khmer Rouge’s slaughter, progressive groups and Western academics denied the atrocities, sought to rationalize them, or even blamed the West for creating the conditions and the ideological atmosphere in which the Khmer Rouge operated.
Almost 80 years after the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker’s non-governmental organization, won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work with prisoners of war during World War II, the group still claims moral legitimacy as a Nobel Laureate. What it seeks to forget, however, is its advocacy on behalf of the Khmer Rouge. Noam Chomsky, the linguist better known for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy, also denied Khmer Rouge atrocities, pillorying the Western press reports as inaccurate and exaggerated. “Even if the photographs had been authentic, we might ask why people should be pulling plows in Cambodia. The reason is clear … The savage American assault on Cambodia did not spare the animal population,” Chomsky wrote, a nonsensical thesis to strip the Khmer Rouge of its agency to enslave Cambodia’s population. Gareth Porter, an academic and journalist, also denied Khmer atrocities. “I cannot accept … that it is a fact that 1 million people have been murdered systematically or that the Government of Cambodia is systematically slaughtering its people,” he told a 1977 congressional hearing. Today, Porter denies Iranian atrocities.
As the war in Iran continues, uncertainty remains about how long President Donald Trump will continue it, notwithstanding his March 21, 2026, ultimatum to Iran’s remaining leadership to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or lose its power plants. Trump, after all, does not let his own rhetoric constrain him. He ended his bombing campaign against the Houthis by declaring victory, leaving the group in place and its capabilities unscathed. If Trump claims Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed, he may declare mission accomplished and go home. Alternatively, if he finds a regime patsy to sign an interim agreement as an Iranian corollary to the Venezuela model, the clerical regime will survive.
Herein lies the danger: The Iranian regime already used ideology to justify the slaughter of perhaps 30,000 dissenters, just as Pol Pot once did on a larger scale.
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If Trump walks away, the regime might calculate that not only can it get away with an atrocity on the scale of Cambodia, but it might also get progressives to blame the United States. The AFSC already condemns the U.S. and defends Iran. Porter attended a 9/11 “Truther” conference in Tehran alongside Holocaust deniers. Academics, meanwhile, hold teach-ins to rationalize Iranian actions as a reaction to slights rather than acknowledge the regime’s free will.
Human rights activists might hate Trump, but they should have no illusion: Ending the war short of regime change may mean a slaughter in Iran unseen since the Mongols.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.