The bitter hope of Iranians dreaming of regime change
By Maryam Mazrooei
The Telegraph:
As airstrikes rain over Tehran, citizens find themselves trapped not only between missiles and rubble, but between betrayal and survival. Missiles – including those now being launched by the United States – are above them. The enemy – the Islamic Republic’s theocratic regime – has ruled over them for 46 years.
“We are not happy that our country is being attacked. We are happy that the criminals who ruled it are being taken down.”
That quote, now being widely shared across social media channels, comes from mothers whose children were killed by the regime. It captures the agony of a people caught in a war that is not theirs, watching what may yet prove to be the demise of those who brought them nothing but silence, torture, and poverty.
When Israel killed senior Iranian military officials, many reacted with unrestrained joy. These were not distant figures. These were the men who, as part of the unholy alliance between the military and the clergy, had silenced protests and crushed uprisings. Their deaths felt – to those of us opposed to the clerics – like long-awaited justice and relief. Iranians have been trying to confront this tyranny since 1998, and every time they rose up, their efforts were crushed even more brutally.
During the 2019 fuel protests, the internet was cut and hundreds of people were massacred in just three days. Then came the pandemic. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, personally banned the import of vaccines, resulting in thousands of preventable deaths. Ordinary Iranians, already battered by sanctions, were left defenceless, pawns in a geopolitical game, their suffering rendered invisible.
Then, in 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating hijab laws in Tehran. She was killed in custody, reportedly after being beaten. Her death sparked nationwide protests under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,” marking one of the largest uprisings in the history of the Islamic Republic. What followed was a wave of brutal repression: systematic torture, rape, blinding, and killings.
Today as, one by one, the commanders of this suppression fall, those Iranians who have suffered at their hands feel satisfaction, but not peace.
When the Islamic Republic’s broadcasting service was hit – a state-run media machine that, for nearly five decades, had served the regime’s narrative (including airing forced confessions with “interrogator-journalists” humiliating dissidents before execution) – many Iranians took to platforms like Instagram and Twitter to express their astonishment and barely disguised glee.
This, after all, was the same institution that demonstrators had tried to seize during the Green Movement in 2009 when mass protests, which saw millions take to the streets, were sparked by a disputed presidential election.
Back then, the broadcasting service became a focus for disgruntled Iranian ire as it continued to spout propaganda. Now, it is targeted by Israeli bombing – including an attack that forced an anchor to flee the studio during a live broadcast.
Yet amid these surreal moments, civilians are dying. According to Iran’s Health Ministry, more than 200 people have been killed. The joy of watching oppressors fall has been soured as the bloodshed continues.
“There was no time to celebrate,” says Faezah*, a hairdresser from the central city of Karaj. “The sweetness turned to ash in our mouths.”
“It is,” reads one widely shared tweet, “like defending your house after a thief broke in, brutalised your family, and made himself at home. Now a second man is breaking in, and you are forced to stand between them.”
The Iranian people, long held hostage by their rulers, now find themselves doubly assaulted, under siege from within and without. Years of repression have crushed all organised opposition. Political parties have been banned, voices silenced, leaders imprisoned or exiled. Now, these rules are added to by orders from Israel (such as to evacuate the capital) and threats from Washington that Iran faces further assault unless Khamenei moves to make peace.
With the US strikes to date targeting three nuclear facilities, Iranians found themselves, overnight on Saturday, witnessing the collapse of everything the Islamic Republic had gambled on for forty-six years, at the cost of their daily lives and basic welfare. Fear of radiation and another Chernobyl type disaster gripped the public, mixed with growing rage. Just hours earlier, the Supreme Leader had momentarily resurfaced only to post a tweet declaring Palestine as his primary concern, without mentioning Iran at all.
Some residents have left Tehran as the war worsens, but for the rest — the majority in a sprawling city of some 10 million people — it is impossible.
“I am staying,” says Kaveh*, an activist, journalist, and cafe owner. “But the fact that we are opposing this regime does not make the Israeli attack any less of an invasion.”
Looming above all is the fear that if the regime survives, it will turn to vengeance. The memory of the 1988 post Iran-Iraq-war executions, when thousands were killed, still haunts the nation. Today, regime supporters take to social media openly to post threats about dissidents being marched to the gallows once this conflict is over.
Others warn bloodletting may begin even while the conflict rumbles on. “My fear,” says Sara*, a schoolteacher, “is that they will start killing us themselves, then blame it on Israel.”
In the meantime, even as explosions echo overhead, the government offers no sirens. No shelters. No protection. Only surveillance. Arrests continue. Activists are detained. Protesters’ families are targeted. Censorship intensifies.
The regime has imposed a nationwide shutdown on the internet and phone lines, curtailing communications with the outside world.
Families have been plunged into suffocating silence, while Iranians abroad have lost access to their loved ones trapped inside the country.
Panic has set in. No one sleeps. Not the 90 million inside Iran. Not the 7 million in exile.
Iranians everywhere lie awake as if outside an operating room, waiting to hear if the patient — this land, their families — will survive.
They know neither the regime nor its enemies care about them. They only have each other.
And in the ruins, they show extraordinary dignity. No looting, no chaos, just quiet resistance.
They open their homes. They drive one another to safety. Off-duty doctors show up to help. They mourn, together.
And while the fighting continues, Iranians sit with feelings no one can quite name. Something between happiness and grief, mourning and hope, quiet, fractured, but still breathing. When this is over, they will begin again and build their country, says Elham*, a medical student. “If the enemy and its enemy let us live.”
*Names changed to protect anonymity
