Why What’s Happening in Iran Is Being Misunderstood — And Why That Matters
Editorial
People watching the news may think they understand what is happening in Iran. Protests. Crackdowns. Another familiar cycle. But that surface-level understanding misses the gravity of this moment—and, in my view, risks minimizing the suffering of people who are taking extraordinary risks simply by stepping into the street.
I write this not only as a journalist, but as someone born in Iran, fluent in Farsi, who lived through the revolution and the Iran–Iraq war, and who understands the language of fear the state has used for nearly half a century to control daily life. What is happening now cannot be understood without confronting the full weight of that history.
A System Built on Fear, Not Consent
For 47 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has maintained control through repression that is not episodic, but systemic. International human rights organizations and United Nations investigators have repeatedly documented widespread violations: censorship, torture, discrimination, and the use of extreme punishment as a method of governance. Dissent has not merely been discouraged — it has been criminalized in ways that are difficult for Western audiences to fully grasp.
Iranian authorities routinely subject detainees to torture, prolonged solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, denial of medical care, beatings, flogging, and sexual assault. Forced “confessions” extracted under duress are regularly used in trials that fall far short of international standards. People die in custody. Investigations are rare. Accountability is rarer.
The Islamic Penal Code still permits punishments that amount to torture under international law, including flogging, amputation, blinding, and, in statute, stoning and crucifixion. These are not symbolic laws. Variations of them are carried out in practice.
The death penalty as a tool of control
Iran is one of the world’s most prolific executioners. In 2024 alone, at least 975 people were executed, the highest number reported since 2015. Many were sentenced for crimes that do not meet the international threshold of “most serious crimes,” including drug-related offenses. Ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected.
The death penalty is also used as a political weapon. Protesters and dissidents are charged under vague national security laws and fast-tracked through the judicial system. Executions are meant not only to punish, but to warn.
Although President Trump told reporters in Washington that “Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,” on Friday, Associated Press reported that a senior hard-line cleric called for the death penalty for detained demonstrators and directly threatened President Trump.
I grew up hearing stories of people disappearing. Of families learning that a loved one had been executed only when a bag of clothes was delivered to their door. Mothers never told where their children were buried—later learning they were placed in mass graves, denied even the dignity of mourning. Fear was not incidental. It was cultivated.
Why people are still protesting
Understanding that history is essential to understanding the human side of what is happening.
In my professional assessment—this is analysis, not assertion—today’s protests are not about reform or incremental change. They are about regime change.
People are not risking death for better economic conditions. They are risking everything for the possibility that the current system itself could be dismantled.
Opposition movements in authoritarian states do not function the way they do in democracies. Leadership, coordination, and messaging often operate across borders because they must. The Iranian diaspora plays a critical role in amplifying calls to action, translating footage, sustaining momentum, and ensuring that what happens inside Iran is seen by the world.
Many protesters responded to calls to action from opposition figures outside the country, most prominently Reza Pahlavi, the son of the exiled former monarch, who has publicly urged coordinated protests and positioned himself not as a future ruler but as a transitional figure advocating a democratic referendum. Whether one supports him or not, the response inside Iran was real.
As a Farsi speaker who understands protest rhetoric, I know that chants are not just slogans — they are political signals. For the first time since 1979, people in the streets — not just in Tehran — but in the more conservative cities — chanted “Javid Shah,” long live the king. When those nuances are flattened in translation, international audiences miss what protesters are actually saying, what is their intent, and what they are willing to die for.
International signals—and their consequences
It would be incomplete not to acknowledge the effect of international rhetoric. Statements by U.S. leaders, including President Donald Trump, were widely interpreted by Iranians as encouragement that the regime’s grip might not be permanent. Many protesters took those words seriously and paid for with their lives.
More recently, the tone has shifted toward caution and diplomatic restraint. That may be defensible at the policy level. But on the ground, the consequences are immediate. Protesters are still being shot. People are still being arrested. Families are still waiting for loved ones who may never come home.
Those risks are borne entirely by ordinary people.
Censorship as a weapon
Another critical reality often missed in international coverage is how thoroughly the regime controls what people inside Iran are allowed to know.
I have experienced this personally as a journalist. During earlier protest waves, after receiving verified reports or footage from abroad, I would call sources inside Iran to ask what they were seeing. More than once, the answer was the same: they had no idea what I was talking about. Protests were happening only miles away, sometimes in neighboring cities, but because state-run media does not report unrest, people nearby were left completely unaware.
This isolation is deliberate.
Authorities routinely cut or throttle internet access during protests, blocking social media, messaging platforms, and even basic connectivity. Satellite television is jammed. VPN use is criminalized. Digital rights organizations have documented repeated nationwide shutdowns designed to stop people from gathering, organizing, or even understanding the scale of what is happening.
The regime’s control of information extends beyond silence to distortion. Amid nationwide protests, state media and affiliated online networks have circulated misleading or out-of-context content—including AI-generated footage and old images—to exaggerate pro-government rallies and project an image of popular support that independent reporting cannot verify.
Women, minorities, and everyday terror
For women and girls, repression is not theoretical—it is daily life. Women are legally treated as second-class citizens, facing systemic discrimination in marriage, divorce, custody, employment, and inheritance. Enforcement of compulsory hijab laws varies and carries penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment and physical abuse.
As a child, I was afraid to walk outside. I heard stories of women being grabbed off the street and disappearing because something about their clothing displeased the morality police. One of the most traumatic memories of that era was hearing about acid attacks—women disfigured to “teach a lesson,” not necessarily because they were uncovered, but because something about their appearance was deemed unacceptable. The message was unmistakable: your body does not belong to you.
That cruelty did not disappear with time. It evolved.
In September 2022, Mahsa Amini died in police custody after being arrested for an “improper hijab.” Evidence pointed to fatal head injuries. Authorities claimed pre-existing medical conditions. Her family denied it. The protests that followed—under the banner of Woman, Life, Freedom—reignited a nationwide reckoning. I told the story of the diaspora fighting to give the movement a voice.
Punishing families, even in death
The regime’s cruelty often extends beyond the dead.
There have been consistent reports of families being forced to pay exorbitant sums—sometimes described as “fees for bullets”—to retrieve the bodies of relatives killed during protests. Amounts reportedly range from several hundred to more than a thousand U.S. dollars, unaffordable for many.
Families are pressured to sign false statements claiming their loved ones died of natural causes or were killed by “rioters.” Some are told that if they agree to have the deceased posthumously registered as a member of the Basij paramilitary force, the body may be released without payment. Funerals are restricted, rushed, and monitored to prevent mourning from turning into protest.
This is psychological warfare.
That sense of fear is not abstract to me, and it is not confined to the streets. It surfaced again recently while watching It Was Just an Accident, a 2025 thriller written and directed by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The film follows a group of former Iranian political prisoners who confront a man they believe once tortured them, forcing them to wrestle with the lingering trauma of captivity, memory, and the moral ambiguity of revenge in a society shaped by oppression.
The ending left me shaken—not because it was sensational, but because it was familiar. It awakened memories from my childhood in Iran: the bone-chilling certainty that you are never truly safe, that at any moment something arbitrary, violent, or irreversible can happen—and there will be no recourse. That is the internal landscape many Iranians live with. When protests erupt, they are not driven only by anger, but by years of accumulated fear, trauma, and the knowledge that silence has never guaranteed survival.
Why context matters
When international coverage reduces this moment to generic unrest, it does not paint the full picture—when it documents violence without fully explaining why people knowingly face it — the result is dehumanization. Death tolls become numbers. Arrests become statistics. The extraordinary courage of people protesting under these conditions is flattened into abstraction.
People in Iran are not protesting casually. They are doing so knowing that execution, torture, or collective punishment may follow. They are doing so because, for the first time in a generation, hope has outweighed fear.
In my view, as a journalist with lived experience of this system, failing to convey the full depth of that reality does more than misinform. It dehumanizes.
A note on perspective
This article reflects my professional judgment and informed opinion, grounded in first person reports from people inside and outside of Iran, documented human rights reporting and shaped by personal experience growing up under this regime. It is not an endorsement of any political figure. It is a call for completeness, context, and humanity.
If we do not tell the whole story—if we allow omission to stand in for neutrality—we risk misunderstanding not only Iran, but the immense price its people are paying to imagine a different future.