A letter to the brave people of Iran, from – Latest News
To the brave people of Iran, this letter is for you.
It is for the mom who sends her solely baby into the streets understanding he might not come home.
It is for the valiant father who struggled to receive his Ph.D. and now sells pistachios in the native bazaar to convey food home for his household.
It is for the younger girl who has had to flip to prostitution to maintain her life, and for the battered girl who has stayed together with her abusive husband as a result of Islamic courts is not going to grant her a divorce.
This is a letter for all the college students at Iranian universities whose hopes and desires will not be a lot completely different than ours, but at the similar time stay half a world away.
We dedicate this to you, who’ve courageously crammed the streets of Iran preventing for freedom. This is a letter from all of us, your countrymen who stay exterior Iran but yearn to be one with you as we speak.
A particular person appears to be like at public buses destroyed by fire during protests on January 21, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. Getty Images
We know that the final 47 years have been a long nightmare. You gave your kids, your futures, your personal decisions. You hid your social preferences and silenced your political convictions for concern of being referred to as “un‑Islamic” or an enemy of the regime. The Bahai, Jew, and Christian amongst you practiced in secrecy, all the time fearing retribution. You picked up the telephone anticipating an eavesdropper, despatched emails understanding there can be an viewers, and all the time left home in concern.
Human rights had been lofty desires far from attain.
We might stay or have been born in the West, however our story has all the time been entangled with yours.
Although it’s seldom talked about, we have now additionally tasted the bitterness of this regime. We might have escaped the torment however by no means escaped the weight of what was performed to our people. We stay with one other variety of torment: watching you struggle the similar enemy that stole our mother and father’ futures, our grandparents’ dignity, and our own sense of belonging.
We can not stand beside you bodily on the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz and past, however we’re preventing for our legacy alongside you.
Like you, many of us carry a nostalgia for a time we by no means really lived. It is a memory inherited from our mother and father’ tales no matter the place we lived. We watch the previous footage of the Shah leaving Iran in 1979 and really feel an ache we can not totally clarify, a fake nostalgia that mirrors yours: Iranians born after the revolution but craving for a time earlier than it.
We hear to the music of the ’70s, stare at the images of our moms and grandmothers—hair uncovered, mini‑skirts, strolling the streets, finding out in universities, dancing at weddings, having fun with freedoms that had been stolen.
We yearn for the similar belongings you do. We are nostalgic for the similar misplaced nation. The reminiscence of that Iran — whether or not lived or inherited — binds us collectively. You are preventing to your current. We are preventing for our legacy. It is the similar struggle.
People in Los Angeles march in help of the people of Iran on January 18. REUTERS
This time is completely different. For these of us watching each spherical of protests since the college protests of 1999, we see one thing extraordinary in as we speak’s demonstrations. We have by no means seen such unity round the shared concept of a free Iran, and more and more, unity round a face and a title.
When we see the help many of you show for Prince Reza Pahlavi, we acknowledge the similar questions in your chants that echo in our conversations right here: Can there lastly be a revolution that’s not instantly stolen? One that has each braveness on the streets and readability in management? One that has a flag, a imaginative and prescient, a continuity with the Iran that was taken?
We watch as the world tries to sell you “reform,” “engagement,” “dialogue,” and each different well mannered phrase that actually means “keep the regime, change the packaging.” We know you aren’t risking your lives for beauty modifications. You need your nation back. You need our nation back. You need a life the place you don’t stay below suspicion, the place your gender doesn’t dictate your price below Sharia or Islamic law, and the place your religion or lack of it’s not a crime.
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And then they’ll strive to undermine you by calling you international brokers. They will call you Mossad, CIA, puppets of whomever—something to keep away from admitting that Iranians themselves are rejecting their oppressors in natural fashion. “They are Mossad operatives” turns into a handy means to say you aren’t actual Iranians, not deserving of primary human rights. It is a merciless trick meant to strip you of your legitimacy and deny your revolution. It is their excuse to wash their fingers of accountability and to preserve their narratives.
And talking of narratives, we see deafening silence in establishments that declare to stand for justice. The similar universities that had been lined in encampments and slogans someway can not discover the breath to chant for you.
The similar media that amplified each declare from Gaza with out hesitation abruptly turns into skeptical, hesitant, “careful with the numbers” when it’s Iranians being crushed, blinded, or killed in wholesale fashion.
Your martyrs don’t go viral. The numbers that human rights teams battle to confirm by means of blackouts and censorship solely trace at a reality far worse than anybody can think about.
Know this: You will not be alone. Some of us had been born on the exterior of the jail, however our hearts by no means left it. We in the diaspora have our story too. Our lives have been bitterly formed by the similar regime that’s now pointing its weapons at you. Our mother and father crossed borders with pretend passports, hid in stowaways, slept in unusual nations, traded their levels for taxi meters and night time shifts.
We carry Western passports and Western names, but gravitate towards Iranian tradition, looking for mates who perceive our jokes, our food, our ache. Some of us have by no means seen Iran, however the struggle for Iran is in our bones. We don’t romanticize your struggling, and we don’t fake that our hardships match the price you might be paying. You are the ones dealing with stay ammunition, mass arrests, torture, and executions. But we stock our own burden: to make sure your sacrifice just isn’t buried below geopolitics, partisan politics, or propaganda.
With love,
We will rally in Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris. We will flood our feeds, confront our media, and problem our legislators. We will likely be your voices the place you might be silenced and your witnesses the place you might be denied. We is not going to let this revolution be squandered. We is not going to allow them to hijack your needs, your unity, your likelihood at a future that appears more like these previous images — and higher.
We are your fellow Iranians, and till you stroll freely in a free Iran, know this: we’re with you, we hear you, and we is not going to look away. This time, the world doesn’t get to transfer on. This time, we keep.
Iranians in California
Lisa Daftari, editor in chief of the Foreign Desk and a political analyst for Fox News Channel, is an investigative journalist specializing in international coverage, the Middle East and counterterrorism.
