I hate Khamenei's regime, but I love Iran even more.

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5 hours ago

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a cabinet meeting in Tehran last year. Israel may frame its strikes on Iran as an attempt to remove the theocratic regime, but the reality is what follows could be worse.
Image: Reuters
Arash Azizi
I've loathed the dictatorship of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I'd roll my eyes every morning during the obligatory salute to our supreme leader in the schoolyard. I resented the strictures, the atmosphere of moral probity the man in robes presided over.
In other words, you'd think I would be applauding Benjamin Netanyahu's attack against the Iranian regime.
And yet, I'm not sold.
Since launching airstrikes against Iran on June 13, the Israeli prime minister has insisted that the bombs raining down on Tehran serve the interests of people like me. Framing his attack as a battle for liberation, he urges Iranians to rise up against Iran's decades-long theocratic regime. He has even gone as far as to dub the Israeli operation 'Rising Lion,' a reference to a cherished Iranian national emblem.
Arash Azizi is author of 'What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.'
Image: Supplied
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It's true, Khamenei's regime jails and kills dissidents, stifles expression, censors our culture and pursues disastrous foreign policies that have climaxed in the current quagmire. It's the primary reason myself and millions of other Iranians live in exile.
But instead of celebrating the Israeli strikes, I'm gripped with fear and trepidation about my country's future.
I always knew a military intervention would be ugly: It would be ordinary Iranians, not state elites, paying the biggest price. That belief was confirmed this week as illusions about Israel's 'precision strikes' were put to rest; hundreds of Iranian civilians have fallen. They include Parnia Abbasi, a 23-year-old poet; Mehrnoosh Haji-Soltani, a soulful young flight attendant; Amir Ali Amini, a student of taekwondo - he looks no older than 9.
But mine isn't only a humanitarian concern but also a political one. The idea that this conflict will lead to a popular uprising which will bring down the regime is pure fantasy.
This has been made clear this past week. The leaders of Iran's diverse domestic protest movements are united in opposition to Israel's attack, among them trade unionists and protagonists of the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement that took the country by storm in 2022. Busy trying to stay alive, such activists are in no state to stage Netanyahu's longed-for revolution.
Wartime life is hell for Iranians, especially for the near 10 million denizens of my beautiful hometown of Tehran who have been warned to evacuate by Israel and the United States. Like many Iranians abroad, I've spent much of the past few days checking on friends and family in the city, many of whom - if they are able - have now left Tehran for safer areas, even as Israel moves to bomb Iranian provinces outside of the capital.
Instead of bringing down Khamenei, Iranians are engaging in mutual aid and solidarity with their fellow citizens. If they have time left for political commentary, they condemn both Israel for launching the attacks and the regime for the policies that have led to the current conflict. They demand a ceasefire and a democratic transition, a sentiment echoed by Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister with a large following, currently locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
It's hard not to be struck by the spirit of humanity and resistance that Tehranis and other Iranians have exhibited in the past days. Landlords have been forgiving rents or offering rooms without charge for sheltering families. At hospitals around the capital, volunteer nurses and doctors have shown up in droves, risking their lives to help the injured. Bakers and gas station workers have worked nonstop to service their fellow Iranians. One video shows a baker fast at work in the central Iranian city of Malayer, a mere half an hour after his brother was killed in an Israeli strike. Another video reveals two young mechanics roaming a busy Tehran highway at night, fixing the cars of families scrambling to flee the bombing.
Hoping to reap political benefits from the chaos, certain Iranian political activists abroad have called upon their countrymen to rise up. They include Reza Pahlavi, Iran's former crown prince, who has styled himself as the leader of a democratic transition. Pahlavi has gained some media visibility, but the idea that he could lead a revolution is quixotic at best. In all his years of positioning himself as a leader of the opposition, Pahlavi has not built a single organization with meaningful membership. His supporters have barely organized a major rally outside Iran, let alone inside. The idea that Pahlavi - a man who has not set foot in Iran for 45 years - might win and maintain power in a country of more than 90 million is not a serious one.
Pahlavi's close association with the Israeli attacks, along with previous meetings he has staged with Netanyahu, have turned even some of his own most ardent supporters away. In a country whose history has been marked by foreign invasions and machinations, such collaboration with a foreign body comes at a high political cost. Iranians are nothing if not proud.
But if Pahlavi is ineffective, so are the rest of us in the Iranian opposition. It has been 45 years since a popular revolution ushered in an Islamic Republic and in that time, Iranians have not built durable opposition political organizations - inside and outside the country. Without such vital organizations, revolution will be difficult to achieve.
Meanwhile, I'm kept up at night by countless terrible worst-case scenarios. Even if regime change doesn't come about, the Israelis could debilitate Iran as a nation-state, hitting it hard and regularly.
Worse, if the conflict continues, Iran could descend into civil war or become a failed state. The historical grievances of Iran's many ethnic groups - Kurds, Azeris and Baluch among them - could be leveraged into sectarian conflict, threatening Iran's territorial integrity.
A best-case scenario for Iran, one that would minimize death and maintain its territory, is an evolution toward more pragmatic sections of the existing regime. This might happen via internal coup d'état or it might happen organically in the aftermath of the supreme leader's death. While it is not the miraculous and instant change that many Iranians - myself included - dream of, it is one we can live with and one that, crucially, doesn't carry with it the stigma of foreign intervention.
Of course, our struggles for democracy and justice won't end even after such a shift of power. But they can be pursued on more stable grounds, when bombs aren't falling on our heads, and the country isn't threatened with disintegration.
As the old Solomonic parable goes, I would do anything to not see my country harmed.
Arash Azizi is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and author of 'What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.'