Tag: Iran

Living in the Age of Geopolitical Fatigue

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As a journalist, staying informed is my job. Lately, however, I find myself avoiding the news cycle. Each time I open my phone, another crisis demands attention. By the time I’ve absorbed one story, three more have displaced it. I closed the app. I look for something, anything, that offers a break.

Turns out, I’m far from alone. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s 2025 Digital News report found that 40% of respondents across 47 markets now say they sometimes or often avoid the news, up 11 percentage points from 29% in 2017. When researchers asked why, selective news avoiders cite feeling anxious and powerless, finding the news repetitive and boring, and feeling overwhelmed by its negative nature.

This exhaustion is different from just being tired of politics. It’s the feeling of living through an accelerating cascade of global crises, Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, economic instability, climate warnings, while having almost no capacity to influence any of it. Unlike previous eras where crises had beginnings, peaks, and some kind of resolution, today’s information environment presents them as simultaneous and never ending.

Psychologists are starting to document what many of us already feel. The American Psychological Association’s 2025 Stress in America survey found that 69% of adults now cite the spread of inaccurate or misleading information as a major source of stress, up from 62% in 2024. Another 57% reported stress about the rise of AI, up from 49% the previous year. What’s telling is that this anxiety isn’t tied to direct personal impact, but to what researchers call “ambient awareness,” the background cognitive load of navigating a reality where information itself feels unreliable and emerging technologies reshape daily life faster than we can process the implications.

When More Information Means Less Understanding

Here’s the strange part: we know more about global events than any generation in history, yet understanding those events hasn’t gotten any easier. If anything, it’s gotten harder.

Information overload researchers have long documented this paradox: our cognitive capacity for processing complex, multifaceted issues has limits. Beyond a certain threshold, additional information can decrease comprehension rather than improve it. We become paralyzed by choice, unable to synthesize competing narratives into coherent understanding.

Digital platforms worsen this dynamic. Research examining social media algorithms has found that emotionally charged political content receives substantially more amplification than neutral reporting. A study published in PNAS Nexus examining Twitter’s algorithm found that among tweets selected by engagement based ranking, 62% expressed anger compared to 52% in chronological feeds, and content expressing out-group animosity increased from 38% to 46%. Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci describes this phenomenon as “censorship through noise,” information isn’t blocked, it’s drowned in a flood of high emotion content designed to keep you scrolling.

In this environment, picking a side feels easier than trying to hold multiple competing explanations in your head. The mental shortcut is understandable. The cost is polarization.

Crises That Disappear Before We Understand Them

Think back to February 2023. A massive earthquake killed over 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. For about 10 days, it was everywhere. Then a Chinese surveillance balloon drifted across North America. Fighting intensified around Bakhmut. A train derailed in Ohio and people worried about chemical contamination. By March, the earthquake had essentially vanished from international news, not because the crisis ended, hundreds of thousands of people were still displaced, but because our collective attention had splintered and moved on.

This keeps happening. Research tracking humanitarian crisis coverage shows that media attention operates in dramatic spikes followed by rapid abandonment. A 2025 analysis of 78,667 news articles covering 10 major humanitarian crises found that coverage is highly event driven, with sustained engagement rare and dependent on sudden developments rather than ongoing need. The pattern suggests we’re moving from crisis to crisis without the time required to understand any of them fully.

When everything happens at once, it becomes almost impossible to maintain any sense of historical continuity. Social media turns into a marketplace where pre packaged interpretations compete for our clicks. And many of us, simply too exhausted to build our own understanding, just pick from what’s already there.

When Exhaustion Becomes the Point

Here’s an uncomfortable thought: fatigue can work as a kind of control, even when nobody’s deliberately engineering it. In authoritarian countries, it’s sometimes by design. Russia’s “firehose of falsehood” strategy intentionally floods information channels with contradictory claims. The goal isn’t to make you believe anything specific, just to make you too tired to figure out what’s true.

In democracies, it works differently but ends up in a similar place. When everything is presented as equally urgent, nothing gets the sustained attention it needs. Research on civic engagement suggests that constant exposure to crisis messaging can produce paralysis rather than mobilization. The perpetual state of emergency becomes normalized, and people retreat into managing their immediate circumstances rather than organizing for broader change.

A tired population doesn’t organize. It just tries to keep up. And when exhaustion turns into apathy, decisions get left to whoever already has the resources and the microphone.

Finding Our Way Back

I can’t solve the wars, the climate crisis, or the economic uncertainty that fills my news feed every morning. Neither can you. But I’m starting to think that understanding how all of this shapes what we pay attention to, and how we think, might be one of the few things we actually can control.

This exhaustion we’re feeling isn’t a personal failing. It’s a reasonable response to an information environment that’s moving faster than our minds were built to handle. We evolved to deal with immediate, local threats. Not a constant stream of global emergencies.

The answer isn’t to unplug completely. It’s to change how we relate to the flood. That’s admittedly an individual strategy for what’s really a structural problem. My personal discipline can’t fix how platforms are designed or how algorithms amplify outrage. But it can give me back something I’ve been missing: the ability to choose what gets my attention right now, and what can wait.

Some researchers are pushing for bigger fixes. Redesigning social media to stop rewarding engagement at all costs. Making algorithms transparent so we know why we’re seeing what we’re seeing. Funding public media that can provide slower, more thoughtful coverage instead of reactive feeds. Whether any of that can overcome the money and lobbying power behind the current system, I honestly don’t know.

What I do know is this: recognizing that my exhaustion makes sense, that it’s not weakness or apathy but a rational response to an overwhelming reality, feels like a small act of reclaiming something. In a world that demands constant reaction, the ability to slow down and actually think might be one of the most important things we have left.

That capacity is getting rarer. Which is exactly why it matters.

Springtime For Iran? The Iranian Haft-Sin and the Eighth “S”: Soghoot (Collapse)

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The Iranian New Year arrives with spring, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that spring finds its meaning through the Iranian New Year.

One of our most beautiful traditions is setting the Haft-Sin table — seven symbols starting with “S” that represent life, hope, rebirth, and continuity. But this year, for Iranians across the world, there is one more “S”: Soghoot (Collapse.)

Collapse; a word that begins with the same letter in Persian, yet carries with it a weight of pain, anger, and at the same time, hope.

For years, Iranians have chanted: “This is the year of blood; the regime will fall.”
But each time, before any fall could happen, it was these innocent people who fell to the ground;
it was these dreams that shattered;
it was these lives that were extinguished.

And yet, each time — like a phoenix — they rose from the ashes, with wounded bodies and exhausted souls, but still standing.

Who could have believed that after the massacre of January 2026, after so many lives were cut short, one could even think of spring?
The grief was so overwhelming that even uttering the word “freedom” had become difficult;
a word whose cost proved far greater than we had ever imagined,
and the brutality that stood against it was beyond any nightmare.

But only twenty days ago, at 9:33 in the morning local time on the 28th of February 2026, news shook the world:
an attack on the “House of the Leader.”

A place that for years symbolized power and repression suddenly became an epicenter of collapse.
No one believed that a dictator who called himself the “Leader of the Muslims of the world” — and who had been hiding underground after the 12-day war in the summer of 2025, leading him to be unofficially crowned with the derogatory alias of Mooshali (mouse in Farsi) — could have been killed in such an attack.

It took a full day for the news to be confirmed.
And once again, during the dawn call to prayer.

For Iranians, the call to prayer at dawn is not just the beginning of a day;
it is a chilling reminder of the hours when executions took place, before sunrise.
How many nights did we stay awake until dawn, in anxiety and helplessness, wishing
that maybe this time…
maybe this young person, this athlete, this activist, this unnamed human being… would survive.

And now, the announcement of the dictator’s death at that very moment, at the dawn call to prayer
felt, for many, like cooling water poured over burning hearts.

The morning after was a different morning.
A morning that — even if it marked the beginning of another war — carried the scent of liberation.

Twenty days have passed since that day.
An intense war is underway, with multiple countries involved in the Persian Gulf region and the engagement of two major armies.
Yet despite all this, the number of casualties still cannot be compared to the massacre that took place in just a few hours.

Today, the world is less shocked by the war than by the “continued resistance of the regime.”
But how could they understand, when for years they chose to look away?

Over the last 47 years, many countries that claim to uphold human rights
not only remained silent,
but through their actions, granted legitimacy to this monstrous regime.

And they still fail to understand that a government that massacres its own people has no hesitation in setting the world on fire and destroying the ancient land of Iran.

To this day, not a single country has officially closed its embassy in Tehran,
nor expelled the ambassadors of this regime.

But the people of Iran see all of this clearly, and without forgetting.

When the “right side of history” is more visible than ever,
yet political interests outweigh human values,
surely this should serve as a warning sign for the citizens of those very countries.

Meanwhile, the power structure in Iran remains in the hands of the terrorist authority, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has controlled the country for years. And just today, before the New Year, they offered a “gift” to Iranians; they executed three protesters of the uprising in January, again at prayer time. That is why Iranians fear the survival of this inhuman regime more than missiles. 

And now, a new leader, the son of that same dictator, has been chosen, carrying the same veneration of violence, and one even more rigid than before.
A leader whose voice the people have not even heard, and whose very existence, whether  alive or dead, is uncertain,
yet his alias, Mooshtaba (from the lineage of a mouse, as his father’s alias was Mooshali, and a distorted form of his real name Mojtaba), speaks volumes about how local people view this continuity.

But what has not changed is the voice of the Iranians.

Iranians who still chant: “Death to Khamenei.”
While during the lifetime of the first leader of this regime, no one publicly chanted “Death to Khomeini,”
and his funeral was held with the utmost pomp and circumstance.

And now, 36 years after his death,
the body of the dictator, who was killed on a cold winter day, remains unburied.

This is the fate of a dictatorship that denied families the right to mourn.
that buried bodies at night, without names;
that broke gravestones so that memories would be erased.

And yet, the names and memories of those loved ones were not erased;
they were etched into the hearts of the people.

And today, that same dictator remains without a name, without a grave.

As if the soil of Iran, stained with the blood of its children,
refuses to accept his cursed body.

During these years of resistance, Iranians have always said: even if only one of us remains, it will be enough to dance on your grave.
And now, there is no grave to dance upon.

And may this be a stark lesson for dictators: how one can fall from the height of power to utter humiliation in less than half a century, despite all the massacres and crimes.

Last year was a year filled with pain.
A pain that neither fades nor is forgotten.
A massacre whose full dimensions are still unknown, yet one that is forever seared into the collective memory of Iranians.

And yet
hope was never extinguished.

This year, among the Haft-Sin,
there stands one more “S”:

Soghoot (Collapse)

A collapse we waited for, for years.
A collapse we paid for with our lives.
And a collapse that perhaps — marks a new beginning for life, freedom, and a spring that, this time, belongs to the people.

Missiles That Attack Your Heart Thousands of Kilometers Away

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My first experience with war — yes, the first one — was when I was five years old. I remember it clearly.

I was born in the winter of 1982, about a year and a half after the Iran–Iraq War began. Until I turned five, my city, Tabriz, famous for its handmade carpets and the largest covered bazaar in the world, had remained relatively safe. Some infrastructure outside the city had been attacked, but I was too young to remember.

Then, in the winter of 1987, the city was bombed, and we were forced to leave.

My grandfather had a white Peykan, the iconic first Iranian-made car that evokes national nostalgia.  He drove my grandmother, my mother, my two-year-old brother, my aunt — who was in the last month of pregnancy — and me, out of the city. My father and my aunt’s husband stayed behind to protect the house and our belongings. Looking back, it seems both frightening and absurd: how could two men protect a home from missiles with their bare hands? 

I remember the cold winter day we left Tabriz for Miyaneh, a small city about two hours away, where relatives lived.

Maybe it was the wrong decision.

The day we arrived, Iraqi bombers attacked Miyaneh. A girls’ high school — Zeinabieh High School — was hit. Even today, nearly four decades later, a sign at the entrance to the city reads: “Welcome to the city of the martyrs of Zeinabieh High School.” It remains the most tragic event in the city’s history.

But the memory that stayed carved in my mind happened just before that. As we entered the city, my grandfather stopped at the bazaar to buy some nuts for the relatives we were about to stay with — we had left Tabriz so suddenly that we had brought nothing. At that moment, a jet fighter broke the sound barrier overhead. The explosion of sound shattered the windows of every shop around us.

The plane flew so low that, in my childish imagination, I thought I could reach up and catch it.

Years later, when I learned in physics class about supersonic speed and the breaking of the sound barrier, I already knew exactly what it meant. I had experienced it in the most real laboratory imaginable.

No child should ever have to learn physics through war.

A few days later, my cousin was born. 

Her birth filled the house with joy. As a child, it helped me forget the fear of that attack. We soon returned to Tabriz with the newborn baby, and only years later, did those memories come back to me.

*  *  *  

Years later, while studying in Italy, I once heard fighter jets flying over the city for a national day celebration. The sound instantly brought back that childhood fear. I could not continue studying.

For many years afterward, life in Iran felt like a different kind of battle. Especially as a girl, I was in a constant, invisible fight with the regime’s inhumane rules — a compulsory hijab among them. But despite repression, there was no real war again until the summer of 2025.

By then, I was already living in exile.

We knew this was the regime’s war, not the people’s. Unlike the war with Iraq, this conflict was not even with a neighboring country; it was with a state the Iranian regime refuses to recognize. The war lasted only twelve days, nothing compared with the eight-year war of my childhood.

This time, many regime officials were assassinated, and nuclear facilities were attacked. Civilians were also killed, and residential buildings were destroyed — tragically, as in every war. Yet many Iranians felt relief that those responsible for decades of repression were gone.

But the most terrifying experience — even for those of us in the diaspora — was the complete communications blackout. The internet, phone lines — everything cut.

We could not hear the voices of our loved ones to know if they were alive.

The internal enemy that has held Iranians hostage for forty-seven years feels more dangerous than missiles.

*  *  * 

And now I find myself living through the third war of my lifetime.

On the eleventh day of this war, a police building next to my family’s home was struck by a missile.

That day was the hardest day of my life in exile.

Destroyed police station in Tabriz, Iran. | (Photo by Anonymous)

Since the beginning of the war, I had spoken with my mother only once, for less than a minute. The communications channels were blocked again. That morning, I woke at 4:30 a.m. with a terrible headache. I took a painkiller and tried to go back to sleep, but could not.

I started the day as usual, pretending to live a normal life in exile while my country was at war.

Around noon, in the middle of an online meeting, my brother suddenly called.

“We are safe,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry. But the police station next to the house was hit hours ago.”

When he told me the exact time, I realized it had happened at 4:30 a.m.— the moment I woke up.

Thousands of kilometers away, yet somehow my mind was still there.

As a physicist, I should not believe in telepathic connections. But not everything in life can be explained by science.

When I finally heard my mother’s voice, it was a huge relief. She tried to reassure me.

“I had just cleaned the windows for the New Year,” she said lightly. “Now they’re all broken.”

I knew she was downplaying it to protect me. But when she ended the call with “I love you so much,” I heard the fear she did not say out loud.

For the past three days, we have had no connection again.

No internet. No phone.

Who could imagine that during war — when communication is vital— a regime would deliberately cut people off from the world?

I even feared my family might be in danger because we had spoken critically of the regime during that call. In Iran, that can be more dangerous than missiles.

I cannot stop thinking: if that missile had deviated by only a few meters, what would have happened to my family? And how could I have continued living?

That day I took two more painkillers. Even three days later, the pain has not fully subsided.

After sunset, I walked for hours, crying. I wanted desperately to hug someone, but exile is a lonely place. Instead, I hugged the trees along the path.

I imagined their branches wrapping around me.

When you hug a tree, you notice something: its skin is rough, not soft like human skin. Perhaps that is because it has survived many harsh winters. The bark grows thick to endure them.

It reminded me that my own skin must also grow stronger.

Trees teach us something else: after every long winter, spring eventually arrives.

But there is one difference between trees and people like me. Trees are rooted. In the past four years of exile, moving across four countries, I have not been able to take root anywhere.

My roots remain in my beloved Iran.

And I carry a small seed of hope in my heart, waiting for the day I can plant it in a free Iran.

Iranians in Britain who oppose regime and war

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The U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran have ignited passions around the globe, including among Iranians living outside the country. Clashes broke out in London on March 6, six days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed, between supporters of Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, and supporters of Iran’s current regime.

But three Iranians living in Britain told The Sentinel that these polarised views did not reflect their opinions, nor those of people living under the bombardment in Iran.

For political activist Aghileh Djafari Marbini, who is opposed to the current regime, it was not possible to rejoice at the death of Khamenei: “I’m not sad, but I’m not happy either.”

“The places that are being bombed are places I know.  I haven’t been to Iran for the past 10 years, but you know the smells, you know the places,“ she said, adding that the destruction of Tehran meant it was hard “knowing that my two kids will never go back to the place I left behind.”

Djafari Marbini, who spent most of her childhood in Iran, has been able only intermittently to hear news of her family there, given restricted Internet access.

“We do hear from people. One person hears from them and we hear from them that they’re OK,” though she added that the daily news of the war was “gut-wrenching”.

Djafari Marbini said the use of external force was not the right way to bring about change in Iran.

“I am very anti-this regime, I have never voted for anyone under this regime. What goes on in Iran is not the business of outsiders. We Iranian people have the right to determine our future. I don’t want my country to go from one dictatorship to another. This is not what people want.”

Djafari Marbini said it was important to remember the diversity of views, both inside and outside Iran. An analysis of the slogans used in the January protests in Iran, for example, showed that only 17% indicated support for Pahlavi.

“It’s a country of 90 million people and a variety of opinion, it’s like any other place. Lots of people are very upset about Khamenei having died.”

Djafari Marbini does not favour the return of the monarchy, unlike some of her friends and family, a cause of disagreement between them.

“I can’t see how this fracture can be fixed, I have lost friends, I had a row with a cousin in Canada.”

Her sister Hosnieh Djafari Marbini, a doctor, said the attacks brought back her childhood memories of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s:

“I really dreaded the dark because I was so afraid of the bombing, I couldn’t stop shaking when the bombings took place.”

Khamenei has been replaced by his son Mojtaba, whom Suzanne Maloney, vice president of the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program, described as hardline in a report on leadership transition in Iran published only four days before Khamenei’s assassination.

“Repression increases every time there is war, it hardens views, it breeds fear and anxiety,” said Hosnieh Djafari Marbini. “Now Iran has got an even more hardline regime than it had before. I cannot see how any of this is going to bring so-called freedom or liberty.”

“It is going to make all our lives much harder, it’s causing so much suffering.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has faced criticism both at home and abroad for his unwillingness to enter the war, with U.S. President Donald Trump calling him “not Winston Churchill”.

However, British-Iranian journalist Arash, who declined to give his full name due to the sensitivity of the issue, said Britain should keep out of the war.

“We don’t want the UK to get involved, it will be really bad for the UK,” he said, pointing to the pressure on oil prices. “We need to try to mediate in order to find a diplomatic solution.”

Economist Timothy Ash also highlighted the broader economic impact of the conflict in a Substack post on March 10, pointing out that it went beyond oil prices, given Iran’s current closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a major route for the world’s shipping. Ash said that if this route were not opened soon, “the impacts to the global economy of the on-going war will still be very significant and could well still be globally systemic.”

Iran to the Interstellars: Can You Hear Us?

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This is a message to interstellar powers.
If you think you are a “Human,” do not read on.

Hi there,
I hope you can hear me.

I am calling you from Iran, a country on Planet Earth, in the Milky Way Galaxy. I am a cosmologist, and I know how to address other galaxies in the classifications that we have prepared, but I do not know your system. So I hope you know where Earth is. If you can find Earth, it is easy to find Iran. It is the saddest country on this planet now.

The population of this planet stands at around nine billion people, and you probably wonder why, instead of just talking with them, I am reaching out to you. Because here, although we have ears and eyes, in critical times we close them. We do not have time to hear and see the grief of OTHERS. Yes, “others.” On this planet, we are strangers.

We have several instruments to contact you with, but I always say to myself that even if you hear our signals, and even if you find us with your equipment, you will not respond or contact us — because this planet, although it looks blue, is in reality red, the color of blood. We look civilized, with satellites, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the ability to travel to the Moon, but we are unable to communicate with each other.

When I was younger, I dreamed of traveling to other planets out of curiosity and out of wonder, but  always in the certainty of returning to Earth, my home. But now I want to escape it.

That is why I am reaching out to you, and I am asking for your help.

Two weeks ago, another uprising started in my beloved country, Iran. We Iranians call it a revolution, but here no one believes it. Do you know what “revolution” means, or should I explain?

The regime that has governed us for forty-seven years (Earth years, which are equal to 365 days,) has been murdering us. We do not even know how many have been slain, because all communication with our country has been blocked for twelve days. You may wonder how I am able to write to you. I can, because I am one of the millions of Iranians who left home, who left their loved ones to live in a free world, but whose roots and hearts are still in Iran.

In the last twelve days, we tried to be the voice of our people by any means we had. On this planet, there are many languages, and we do not know them all, but we used a new technology called AI to translate our messages, and social media too. But it isn’t working, because no one is listening. Even with this advanced technology, we are still voiceless. I do not know which language you speak, but I am writing to you in English, which is not my mother tongue.

On this planet, we have satellite internet and Starlink to communicate, but these technologies are not for Iranians. We are sanctioned by the rest of the world and denied access to technology because our regime is oppressive. Can you imagine that the people of a country are being punished because of a regime they have stood up against several times, and that they have been murdered in droves for doing so? How do you punish regimes in your galaxy? Do you have sanctions? I hope not.

There is a country on this planet called the USA. You have probably heard of it, because on this planet everyone knows it — even a child in a remote village. Its president promised Iranians that help was on its way, and now it has been ten days that we are waiting. Imagine a nation asking another country for support to kill a dictator.

Do you know what a dictator is? We have had several here on Earth. The most famous and brutal one was Hitler, who wanted to dominate the whole planet. That was eighty years ago. But if you ask me, the dictator of Iran is running a close second, because he kills in the name of God. He believes he represents God, and therefore he can do anything, because God can do anything. Do you also believe in God? Do you also label your people by religion?

I was telling you about the help from the US. That country is far from Iran, and its planes take hours to reach us. Although they feature advanced military technology, they are not fast.

Here, killing is very fast.
Saving is very slow.

As a physicist, I know that the speed of light is the highest possible speed, and the nearest star to us is more than four light-years away. So it would take at least four years if you decide to help my people. I should probably have sent this message in 1979, when this brutal regime occupied my country and held my people hostage. But I was not born then.

Still, many do not believe this regime should go. They believe in reform. They do not believe dictators don’t change. They fail.

I do not know how I can convince you to help, because on this planet it has not been possible to grab the attention of humans. I can tell you that in two days, 16,500 people were murdered, 330,000 were injured, and at least 8,000 lost their eyes. We Iranians call it genocide. Do you know what that means? If you say no, I would not be surprised, because even here, no one believes it.

Here, politicians say that even if the US saves us by killing the dictator, it would only be because of our resources. Iran has oil, gas, and plenty of other valuable natural resources. Do you need them? If we offer all of them to you, will you come and save my people? We need these resources only if we are alive. Dead people need nothing.

Here, politicians remain silent and say it is an “internal issue.” Imagine: a dictator can kill all the people he governs, and no one questions it because it’s an internal issue. If you have such a rule — not to interfere in the affairs of other galaxies — then I am wasting my time writing to you.

I do not know what more to add.

Here, we have human rights. Perhaps you have interstellar rights. I hope your laws cover us as well, because here we aren’t equal under these rights, and countless human rights organizations are spineless.

Please come and save my people, even if it takes years to reach us.
We Iranians have done what we could.
Children are still being born in our country.
They deserve to live in freedom.

Witnessing the Unthinkable in Iran

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There is a Persian proverb that says, “Hearing is not the same as seeing.”
These days, I can no longer trust even my eyes.

On one side, I see the vast uprising of my people in Iran — the largest since the establishment of this inhuman regime. On the other, I see the rare and fragmented videos that manage to escape the media blackout: bodies piled at the Legal Medicine Organization. If I did not hear Persian voices or see Persian writing in these videos, I would refuse to believe this is Iran. My mind instinctively rejects them.

I was born three years after the 1979 revolution. Until the Green Movement of 2009 [a non-violent protest seeking democratization that spread throughout Iran] — when I was a student in Germany — I had only vaguely heard about the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s. I had never read about them. There was no accessible documentation, no social media, no independent platforms. At home, politics was never discussed; my family was entirely non-political.

In 2009, as I gradually began to understand what that revolution truly was, I was shocked. When I learned that young women — virgins — were raped before execution because their executioners believed virgins would otherwise go to heaven, I was rendered speechless. Even today, my mind resists fully processing this. Rape is a major crime under Islamic law, punishable by death. And yet it was systematically committed by those who claimed moral and religious authority.

It was then that I also began to realize that a compulsory hijab was not rooted in Islam. But I had been deeply indoctrinated: I genuinely believed that if I showed my hair, I would be punished in hell. It took three years of reading, research, and painful self-deconstruction — despite extremely limited access to information — before I accepted that the hijab is not mandated by Islam. I removed it and made a promise to myself: I would never wear it outside Iran.

I later returned to Iran after my PhD, and became a professor. Inside the country, I complied with the law. Outside Iran — at conferences and research visits — I never wore the hijab. I knew I was risking the career I had struggled so hard to build. But that was my dignity.

That is why, in 2022, when Mahsa Amini was killed for a few strands of hair, I resigned from my faculty position. I could not accept that a human being could be murdered because of hair.

From 2012 to 2022, before my exile following that resignation, I lived in Iran and witnessed the country’s steady collapse: the freefall of the national currency, exponential inflation, deepening poverty, and the visible anger and exhaustion of the people. Multiple uprisings occurred during those years. One in 2018, was crushed within days.

Then came November 2019 — the first time the regime shut down the internet nationwide for five days. I remember it vividly. I was waiting for a visa to attend a conference in Europe. The embassy called me — something they never do — because they could not email me. My visa was ready, but I could not book a flight. There was no internet. During those five days, more than 1,500 people were killed. That was when we learned that we could be killed in total silence.

In January 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down. For three days, the regime lied, calling it an accident. Again, my mind resisted the truth. One hundred and seventy-six innocent people — including an unborn child — were killed. It was the first time in history that a state killed its own citizens in its own airspace. I remember thinking: This will not be the last crime. This regime is capable of anything.

Then came COVID-19. Once again, Iranians died in silence. The Supreme Leader — today mockingly called MoushAli by the people (moush meaning mouse, after he hid for days during the June 2025 Iran–Israel war) — banned vaccines from the US and the UK, and insisted on domestic production. To this day, we do not know how many Iranians died because of that decision.

September 2022 marked the turning point of my life. I became the first faculty member to resign publicly. Threatened by the regime, I did not return to Iran from my scientific travels, and have remained in exile ever since. Given my activities over the past three years, I know that if I return one day, I will be executed.

Because I had studied this regime’s brutality closely — both historically and through lived experience —  I knew that the next uprising would be met with unimaginable violence. I feared how many lives would be taken. It took thirty-nine months for the next uprising to ignite. And still, I am unable to comprehend the scale of the brutality.

Since January 8, all communications — phones included — have been completely severed. We experienced similar blackouts during the June 2025 war. Once again, we had no news of our loved ones. Today, reports suggest that 12,000 people have been killed in just two days: on January 8 and 9. My mind rejects this number. I cannot even cry. Those who have lost someone understand this state: when you cannot accept the loss, grief does not yet take the form of tears. I cannot accept the death of humanity itself.

Today I saw a video of blood being washed from the streets while bodies lay piled nearby. Evidence erased in real time. I still cannot believe it  —  not because this regime is incapable of such crimes, but because the perpetrators speak Persian. They are part of my people. How did they become this evil, within a civilization thousands of years old? Are they children of Iran? Are they human? How do they kill, go home, sleep, and return the next day to do it again?

Will this nightmare end? My mind feels as if it is collapsing.

For forty months in exile, my mother was the one person I spoke to about all this grief. January 7 was the last time I heard her voice. I already missed her smell, her hug, her kiss. Now I miss her voice too.

This is what it means to stand against a dictator who is still in power — whose machine gun is still firing.

How long this will last, I do not know.
No one knows.

Counting the Days Until Freedom in Iran

Posted on by [email protected]

These days, with the eyes of the world on widespread protests in Iran, my mind returns to September 2022. 

I left Iran just three weeks before the killing of Mahsa Amini, intending to spend three months abroad on a scientific visit. Now, more than three years later, I have yet to return.

My grief following Amini’s brutal murder while in state custody was so deep that I know with certainty that had I been in Iran, I would have been in the streets. Shouting for freedom. For dignity. For humanity. Things that had been systematically stripped away under a brutal regime for decades. But I was far away. And so, one week later, I resigned publicly from my academic position. It was the only way I could stand with my people.

At that time, we did not call it a revolution. We did not even call it “Woman, Life, Freedom”. This was the name given to the uprising later on, in tribute to a Kurdish slogan chanted at the funeral of Mahsa Amini, who was of Kurdish origin. The rebellion unfolded gradually. But in truth, it was a revolution for the most basic rights of women.

By “basic,” I mean the right to choose not to cover our hair.

Not even the right to dress freely, because even today, forty months later, women in Iran cannot walk in the streets wearing a T-shirt, short trousers, or a skirt. Access to school, university, work, and public services is still under hijab law. So whatever you hear about “hijab freedom” in Iran is a lie.

Iranian girls and women still risk their education and their jobs for appearing without a hijab in public. Their “lifestyle violations” are recorded in official files and used against them in evaluations. If this regime survives, these records will haunt them for life.

And it is not just a hijab.

Under the Islamic regime, women are forbidden to sing.

Every Iranian woman singer you know lives in exile, not because she committed a crime, but because she wanted to sing. Even sharing a singing video on your social media as a female singer inside Iran can lead to arrest. For forty-seven years, not a single female singing voice (Iranian or non-Iranian) has been broadcast on state television or radio. 

Do not ask me for the reason. As a scientist, I cannot explain what I cannot understand.

I share something in common with those women singers. I, too, have been living in exile since September 2022. My resignation was seen as a threat to the regime. My family was threatened. For my safety, I was forced not to return home.

In the past forty months, I have moved across four countries. Not by choice, but because of visa restrictions, sanctions, and the impossibility of finding stable work as an Iranian in exile.

And now, once again, my country is on fire. Waves of protests have erupted across dozens of cities in Iran, with citizens demanding freedom, equality, and an end to the regime’s repressive policies. The demonstrations began on December 28, 2025, in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, sparked by the collapse of the national currency. Although many think economic woes drive these protests, they are also about women’s rights and general freedom

And since then, my heart has lived in my throat. In 2022, even from afar, I knew how to act. Today, I do not. All I can do is write; write as someone in exile while a revolution unfolds at home.

A person who wakes up, eight and a half hours away, to videos of people being beaten and shot with live ammunition.

And who goes to sleep in tears, wondering how the arrested survived the night, how the families of the murdered are enduring their loss.

My friends in Iran and in the diaspora say, “This is the end.”

I hope it is.

But even if it is not — (and may the universe never hear this) — I am proud. Proud that Iranian women rose in 2022 and fought for their rights. No future regime will ever be able to say it granted these rights to women. Iranian women already got their rights.

Equality is one of the core demands of this uprising/movement/revolution, whatever name history gives it. We still have a long way to go. The price has been unbearably high. But we learned something irreversible: In a society where women and men are not equal, there is no freedom.

We learned to fight for our rights because, from now on, if any regime, system, law, or ideology tries to take them away, we will stand and resist.

In 1979, only a few women resisted. Many rights — such as access to education, the ability to work, freedom of travel, the ability to obtain a divorce, and political participation — had been granted from above during modernization, not won through struggle. Society was not ready. So when the Islamic regime took them away, too many accepted it since they were not even aware of them.

This time it is different.

We paid the price. And because of that, we will never forget.

So keep your eyes on Iran. What you are witnessing is a revolution against one of the most brutal religious totalitarian regimes in history. You may think I am exaggerating. You are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Even Iranians themselves will ask how they endured this regime for so long.

Books will be written. Films will be made. But none will truly convey the suffering, just as we can never fully feel the suffering of those who lived through World War II. That is why history repeats itself.

But one thing I know with certainty: Religion will never again rule Iran. And Islam will not be the name of the country. What is now the Islamic Republic of Iran will soon just be Iran.

I count the days until I return home, along with millions of Iranians in exile.

The Persian poet, Houshang Ebtehaj, who himself died in exile, once wrote:

می‌بینم
 آن شکفتنِ شادی را
 پروازِ بلندِ آدمیزادی را
 آن جشنِ بزرگِ روزِ آزادی را

I see
the blossoming of joy,
the high flight of humanity,
the great celebration of the day of freedom.

Every Day Is Halloween in Iran

Posted on by Jonathan

Halloween comes once a year for most. A night of masks, spooky movies, and pretend scares. But in Iran, under the rule of the mullahs, every day is Halloween.

The mullahs hide behind the mask of religion while practicing a reign of terror. They turn faith into fear and laws into lethal weapons. The world celebrates Halloween as a once-a-year fantasy. For Iranians, it is a daily horror. 

I am Iranian. It was for me. 

A death that sparked a movement

On September 16, 2022, Mahsa Amini, only 22 years old, died after being taken into custody by the frightening gasht-e ershad patrol — “Guidance” in Farsi, but we Persians call it the morality police. 

She was arrested and taken to the notorious Vozara detention center because of her hair. Too much of it showed from beneath her hijab. Three days later, she was dead. 

The regime insisted it was a heart attack, the people knew it was murder, something a UN report later confirmed. Protests swept across the country. People took to the streets with courage, but unlike in the West, they could not carry painted signs. In Iran, even holding a sign is enough to be detected, arrested, and imprisoned. The images of banners you may have seen come from protests abroad, where Iranians in exile have the freedom to speak in ways that are impossible inside the country. The government responded with full metal jackets. 

More than 500 people were killed to prove that Mahsa’s death was not their fault. Proof this is the Islamic Republic within Iran. 

Iran protest for Mahsa Amini - signs read “Women.Life.Freedom” - Santa Monica, CA - October 08, 2022
(Image courtesy of Craig Melville via Unsplash)

Since then, executions have become the regime’s loudest weapon. More than 10 protesters have been executed since the uprising, their deaths meant as warnings. In just the first nine and a half months of 2025, more than 1172 people were executed, about three every single day. Imagine this in the 21st century: a state that takes lives on an industrial scale to prove its power. More proof. 

The cruelty is not limited to the streets. On January 8,  2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 was shot down by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards just minutes after takeoff from Tehran. All 176 people on board, men, women, children, even an unborn baby, were killed. Iran became the only country to shoot down its own civilian plane in its own airspace.

The horror stretches back to the beginning. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution (recall that the country became known as The People’s Islamic Republic of Iran), thousands were executed. Opposition to the regime was framed as opposition to God. 

Graves of hundreds remain unknown. 

In the 1980s, the Iran–Iraq war was prolonged. not to defend the nation but to silence dissent under the slogan of “wartime unity.” To this day, the true cost of human horror in that meaningless war is hidden.

A dried lake, a dried future

The regime’s brutality is not only against people, but even against nature. Lake Urmia, once the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East and the place of childhood summers for many, has dried. Neglect, mismanagement, and corruption drained this natural treasure and place of cultural heritage, leaving behind salt plains and despair. 

Even the land bears scars and wears the mask of this misrule, bereft and humiliated.

A real-life Halloween

What kind of regime kills its women for the way they wear their hair, shoots down its own people in the sky, drains its lakes, and executes three people a day, all while demanding respect? 

I know this horror personally. As an academic, my work and my voice put me at risk. The same regime that silences women on the street has no tolerance for those who speak up in universities or in public life. In solidarity with the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, I resigned from my position in Iran in 2022. That act of conscience made me a target. Like so many others, I was forced into exile, not out of choice, but out of necessity, to protect both my life and my ability to continue my work.

Here in the West, I have witnessed Halloween in its sweetest form. Children knocking on doors in costumes, candy-filled buckets, laughter under streetlights. I have seen a tiny mermaid holding her father’s hand, a Glinda the Good Witch skipping along with friends, and even a toddler dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog racing up and down the sidewalk. This is what Halloween should be: play, imagination, and community.

Back in Iran, the most dangerous Halloween costume in the world is worn every day. This is the cloak of the mullahs, because behind it is not a happy face, but a machine of death.

The difference between once-a-year Halloween in the West and everyday life in Iran is simple: during Halloween, your fear is pretend. Your nights are filled with trick-or-treat candy and fun. Your daylight brings safety. In Iran, our nightmare does not end at dawn. It just continues to haunt.

Yet Iranians endure. Despite decades of brutality, they remain among the kindest, most resilient people. They hope that there will be light at the end of this darkness. One day, the mask will be torn away, so the nightmare will end. 

This Halloween

Soon, I will stand at my door and see children on my street dressed as witches, superheroes, and fairy-tale characters; their laughter will no doubt echo into the night. Their joy in a world where fear is only pretend gives me hope. Hope that one day, children in Iran too will know only the sweet kind of fright, the kind that ends with candy at dusk and safety at dawn. And perhaps then, the mullahs and their reign of horror will be nothing more than a dark fairy tale told of the past.

Ghostly costume beside unlit pyre in bare field, Saskatchewan, Canada
(Image courtesy of Tandem X Visuals via Unsplash)

Devastating Explosion at Iran’s Shahid Rajaee Port Claims Dozens of Lives

Posted on by Jonathan

Bandar Abbas, Iran: A catastrophic explosion struck the Shahid Rajaee Port in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, on Saturday, April 26, 2025, resulting in at least 46 fatalities and over 1,000 injuries..

The explosion, which occurred around midday, ignited a massive fire that continued to burn for nearly 24 hours, significantly impacting air quality and prompting the closure of schools and offices in nearby Bandar Abbas.

Initial investigations suggest the blast may have been caused by the improper storage of chemicals, possibly ammonium perchlorate—a chemical used in missile propellants . However, Iranian authorities have not confirmed the exact cause.

The explosion has raised concerns about safety protocols at the port, which handles a significant portion of Iran’s trade. The incident has also drawn international attention, with Russia dispatching emergency aid to assist in the aftermath.

As rescue operations continue, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian visited the injured and urged a thorough investigation into the cause of the explosion. The Iranian government has taken legal action against media outlets for speculation about the nature of the explosion, underscoring concerns about public perception and misinformation.

The Shahid Rajaee Port is a critical hub for Iran’s maritime trade, and the explosion has disrupted operations, affecting both domestic and international shipping routes. Authorities are working to assess the full extent of the damage and restore normal operations.

This incident coincides with renewed U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, which have been described as constructive and are set to continue. The explosion has added a layer of complexity to the already tense geopolitical landscape in the region.

As investigations continue, the international community is closely monitoring the situation, offering support and awaiting further developments.