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Jay Nordlinger is a senior resident fellow at the Renew Democracy Initiative and a contributor at The Next Move.
We have lived with Khomeini’s Iran for a long time. I should be careful about saying “we.” The Iranian people have borne the brunt of it, obviously. But that regime has been a curse on the world at large.
It was in 1979 that this regime took over. I was 15 at the time. As I noted in an essay earlier this week, that period is vivid in one’s life. We are learning about the world, becoming engrossed in its affairs, often tumultuous.
In recent days, I have been thinking about the almost half-century of the Islamist regime, especially the dissidents I have met and interviewed. I have been in touch with some of them, too.
I think of Manuchehr Honarmand, a journalist, whom I interviewed in 2010. He was born in Tehran in 1946. He went to a French primary school in Isfahan, and then to a university in the capital. When the revolution came, he told me, “they arrested anybody who looked respectable.” One was Honarmand.
He was able to leave the country, and then his real travails began, you might say. He was tossed from country to country, enduring hardship after hardship. He spent two years in a Venezuelan prison—Hugo Chávez was a close friend of the regime in Tehran.
“Before the revolution, I was a normal guy,” said Honarmand. But then the world—his world—got cracked. “I had gone to a French school, remember, and I had a free and liberal spirit. Under the Iranian revolution, I could not fit in for even one hour.”
In 2003, an Iranian woman won the Nobel Peace Prize. She was Shirin Ebadi, a human rights lawyer. The regime retaliated in various ways. For example, they stole Ebadi’s Nobel medal. (She got it back, she told me.)
I have written about Ebadi, and a host of other laureates, in a history of the prize, Peace, They Say.
Twenty years after Ebadi, another Iranian woman won the prize: Narges Mohammadi, who had worked closely with Ebadi. Mohammadi was a political prisoner when she was honored by the Nobel committee. She is a political prisoner today.
On February 11, the committee sent out something that sounded like an SOS: Narges Mohammadi had been beaten and tortured almost to death.
Marina Nemat, born in 1965, was arrested when she was 16. She spent more than two years in Evin Prison, one of the worst, most notorious places on earth. She was raped, tortured—all of it. She survived and went into exile, landing in Canada. She has dedicated her life to remembering the victims, past and present.
Sardar Pashaei comes from a family of dissidents. “I remember when I was five years old,” he said to me. “Members of the Revolutionary Guard came to our house at 2 in the morning and arrested my dad. I have never forgotten that scene.”
Sardar has lived in the United States since 2010. His siblings back home have been in and out of prison. A year ago, his sister Leila was arrested after giving a speech on International Women’s Day (March 8). In her speech, she denounced child marriage, mandatory hijab, and the execution of female prisoners.
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They are incredibly brave, these dissidents, these activists.
Among them is Masih Alinejad, well known to The Next Move and to the Renew Democracy Initiative. She is one of our Frontlines of Freedom Fellows. I first interviewed her in 2021, writing a piece called “A Free Spirit.”
She certainly is—but one who has to look over her shoulder, here in America. The regime back home has tried to kidnap and kill her repeatedly. She and her husband jump from safehouse to safehouse, but Masih keeps calling for freedom, using every platform available to her.
On Monday, I asked her, basically, “How do you feel?” She answered, “I feel a storm of emotions.” So do the other dissidents I have spoken with, and so must Iranians in general—those in Iran and those in the sprawling diaspora.
Sardar Pashaei is worried about his loved ones, obviously. The Internet in Iran has been shut down, and communication has been difficult. Some political prisoners, he understands, have been moved to “undisclosed locations.” What will happen to them?
As he and others point out, American and Israeli bombs can fall on innocent and guilty alike—prisoners and their interrogators, for example.
Sardar has heard talk of installing a king, and this concerns him. “After a century of tyranny, the Iranian people deserve democracy,” he says. This includes the protection of minority rights. (The Pashaeis are Kurdish Iranians.)
Marina Nemat, like many, has mixed emotions. She sees dancing in the streets, and she understands it. (How could she not?) At the same time, she remembers the dancing in the streets when the Shah went into exile. She has an awareness that things can always be worse.
The “Supreme Leader,” Khamenei, is dead, and so are other leading killers. But there are always people to replace them, Marina notes. The Revolutionary Guard is still in place. They are the “enforcers” of the regime, she says, its merciless agents. When the current war ceases, they may carry out ghastly reprisals.
Iranians are a talented and resourceful people, Marina says, but there is also a lot of psychological damage after decades of brutality. Can Iranians “pull a rabbit out of a hat” and build a better government, somehow? If not a democracy, then something less brutal?
These are early days yet.
Masih Alinejad details her “storm of emotions” as follows: “relief, grief, and responsibility.”
Relief because Khamenei “was the symbol and architect of decades of oppression. He ordered my killing directly when I compared compulsory hijab to the Berlin Wall and called on Iranian women to tear the wall down.”
Grief because his death “does not bring back the lives he stole.” In the latest uprising alone, some 32,000 people have been murdered.
And responsibility because “what matters now is protecting people and pushing toward real freedom, a better future without the Islamic regime.”
She sees that Americans are having their usual partisan fights (as is natural in a democracy, to be sure). She wishes they could be united in staunch opposition to the Iranian dictatorship, which is an American security problem, in addition to a problem for the victimized Iranian people.
When Khomeini and his movement took over in 1979, much evil resulted. From the downfall of that regime, much good can flow. Who can fail to root for it? While at the same time wondering, “After them, what?”
Will there be an “after” at all, and, if so, when?
For all these years, I have been in awe of Iranian dissidents—as I have been in awe of those from China, Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and elsewhere. Pardon the cliché, but I hope there are monuments to them someday. And if not, they can know that they have the admiration and gratitude of many of us.
More from The Next Move:
What Would a Free Iran Mean for the World?
Five writers, each from a different country, on the global consequences of Iran’s protests.
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The Iranian Martyr Makes The Iranian War A Religious One: Inevitable Consequence Of CNPP
The murder to the aged cancer stricken Khamenei by Israeli forces has turned him into a Muslim martyr This has put our Nazi regime on the spot and in response Hegseth now says that this conflict is a biblically sanctioned religious one, Muslim vs Christianity/Jewish religions This makes this conflict a terrible, dangerous, reckless, and emotional catastrophe There are many emotionally charged Shia Muslims in the Middle Eastern region who view the US Israeli warring coalition creating a religious war Because of this this has the high probability of expanding to many nations in the region
The fascist Netanyahu has long wanted this moment because Iran through its terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis have threatened his theocratic Jewish state As an oppressive warmongering far right Israeli government with the defiantly not giving in to the need for a two state solution, this theocratic state has induced Cheeto’s Dept of War because they are equal religious warmongers
But Netanyahu has coopted the American far right warmongers and it’s right up CNPP’s(Christian Nationalist Pedo Party) mission, to create a “Christian” nation standing up against all pagan states The moniker of CNPP is just an political excuse to create a fascist strongman, autocratic government As Parnas reports, commanders are reportedly telling troops the Iran war is “all part of God’s divine plan,” with one noncommissioned officer alleging a commander said “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth”
So she immigrated here. Trump and his kind would gleefully deport her and any other Iranian if they could get away with it. Does she really think for a moment that Trump and the psychopaths of Israel care if Iranians are free? Surely she knows they don't. They'll turn Iran into another Gaza if they can get away with it. That much is clear.