Witnessing the Unthinkable in Iran

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.