Iran needs support for regime change, not meddling

2026-02-02 - 15:18

Opinion: At the time of writing, Iran has been under a near-total internet blackout for over two weeks, severely restricting independent verification and widely understood as an attempt to conceal the scale of state violence. Despite this, videos, testimonies, and names have continued to emerge. Amnesty International and other human-rights organisations report a heavily militarised crackdown involving widespread use of lethal force, mass killings, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and other grave abuses. Some reports indicate that tens of thousands of people have been arrested nationwide, with detentions continuing. Some sources estimate that more than 30,000 people may have been killed; as in other mass-violence contexts, establishing the full toll is expected to take months as names, deaths, and evidence are gradually identified and confirmed. If this cannot be described as mass atrocity – if not massacre, if not crimes against humanity – then the language we use to name violence has lost its meaning. This violence sits within a long history of repression – one that has not crushed resistance but instead forged it. The Iranian people have struggled for freedom, democracy, dignity, and equality for decades – long before hashtags or opportunistic declarations of “support” and “help” from global powers and political figures. Any serious engagement with Iran’s current uprising must begin by recognising this long history and, more importantly, by respecting the agency of those who have carried the struggle at immense personal cost. For years, I have argued for remembering people’s struggles without hijacking them for external political agendas, supporting movements without instrumentalising them, and standing in solidarity without erasing people’s right to shape their own political future. This position is often misread as idealistic, or as a rejection of international support. It is neither. What I am calling for is greater care – in our ethics, our politics, and our language. The words we use and the forms of advocacy and support we choose matter. Vague public statements by figures such as Donald Trump expressing “support” for Iranian protesters – without any clarity about what that support entails – do not protect those risking their lives on the ground. Nor do external calls encouraging people to seize institutions or remain in the streets on the promise that “help is on the way”. When such rhetoric is compounded by claims from Israeli officials that Mossad agents are operating inside Iran or arming protesters, the consequences are not merely symbolic. They intensify the danger faced by civilians while eroding hope itself, which for many Iranians remains a vital act of resistance. None of this diminishes or obscures the central truth: the Islamic regime in Iran is the sole perpetrator of the violence, repression, and killings unfolding inside the country and must be held fully accountable for crimes committed against its own people. Naming the ways in which external rhetoric, misinformation, or political posturing exacerbate the danger faced by protesters is not an attempt to shift blame away from the regime. Rather, it is a recognition that while responsibility for the massacre lies unequivocally with the state, others still bear responsibility for actions and statements that knowingly or negligently increase the risk to those resisting it. The Islamic Republic has long relied on a script: linking dissent to foreign conspiracy, branding protesters as spies, and justifying torture, imprisonment, and execution in the name of national security. Since the 12-day war in June 2025, this strategy has intensified. Internet blackouts, mass arrests, killings, and accelerated executions are not abstractions; they are daily realities. In this context, careless declarations by global powers and political figures do not empower or protect protesters – they further complicate and endanger an already volatile situation. What is missing is not courage or clarity, but support in the areas the regime has deliberately dismantled At the same time, two deeply damaging responses have emerged outside Iran. On one end, parts of the Western far left continue to reproduce the regime’s propaganda, framing it as “anti-imperialist” and dismissing uprisings as foreign-engineered plots. This erases decades of Iranian resistance and effectively sides with the oppressor. On the other end, segments of the diaspora opposition organise demonstrations featuring Israeli flags or images of Netanyahu and Trump. Whatever the intention, these displays reinforce claims of foreign orchestration. Both approaches strip Iranians of political agency and reduce a complex, home-grown struggle to a geopolitical chessboard. Decades of repression are not an abstract story – they are a call for help. But responses from outside Iran must be grounded in responsibility to protect, strategise, and pay respect. After more than 40 years of systematic violence, it is not surprising that some inside Iran call for any form of help, even if it carries devastating risks. Under such conditions, for some survival takes precedence over long-term strategy. Those of us in safer spaces have a different responsibility. Solidarity and support do not mean mechanically acting on every desperate call without reflection. It means listening seriously while thinking strategically about risks, risk-mitigation strategies, consequences, trade-offs, and the sustainability of plans for the future and the day after “victory”. Our task is not only to support freedom from oppression, but freedom for a democratic future. Iranian society has already done much of the hard work under extraordinary repression. Civil society exists – fragile but real. Unions, women’s networks, student groups, environmental activists, and everyday forms of resistance have persisted across generations. The core demand has remained consistent: freedom, equality, dignity, and democracy. What is missing is not courage or clarity, but support in the areas the regime has deliberately dismantled. Inside Iran, movements have demonstrated many of the conditions required for meaningful political and social change. They have articulated inclusive goals that cut across class, gender, ethnicity, and ideology. Resistance has been constant – re-emerging whenever political or social opportunities appear, such as elections or economic crises, to push against the theocratic system, widen its cracks of legitimacy, and then retreat underground when repression intensifies. Resistance does not end when streets fall silent, yet the diaspora and international community too often respond only to visible uprisings. Activists have tried their best to sustain coordination, collective leadership, and strategic adaptability despite arrests, killings, and the destruction of formal organisations. Movements in Iran have also shown extraordinary moral legitimacy. Women have played a central role; diverse struggles have been articulated as interconnected rather than competing. Even under brutal violence, the movements and people’s resistance have largely remained nonviolent and ethical. It should be understood that resistance is a response to the violation of basic human rights and dignity; it does not always appear “peaceful” or “comfortable” to outside observers. One must understand the context that produces it. As the scale and intensity of state violence change, so too do the forms of resistance it produces. The 2025–2026 uprising, larger and more forceful than previous waves, has been met with an unprecedented level of repression – making it unrealistic to expect resistance to remain unchanged. Inside the country, people have mobilised limited resources strategically – lawyers volunteer pro bono, skilled individuals contribute expertise, and networks cooperate under surveillance. Funding, however, is often unavailable or dangerous. International support can become a pretext for accusations of espionage, imprisonment, and dismantling of civil society. By contrast, the diaspora opposition – despite greater safety and access to resources – has often struggled with fragmentation and factionalism. Too often, predetermined political outcomes narrow international solidarity and support rather than expand it. This imbalance points to a clear conclusion: the role of the diaspora and international community is not to replace grassroots leadership or impose external strategies. It is to strengthen the movement where repression has made action inside Iran nearly impossible—documentation, independent media, digital infrastructure to counter disinformation and control the narrative, research, international advocacy, resource mobilisation, institutional building and long-term preparation for transition. Transition does not begin the day a regime collapses; it begins long before. In moments of crisis, emotional urgency can create pressure to suspend debate, silence disagreement, and rally unquestioningly around symbols said to represent “unity.” The idea that criticism, pluralism, or debates about institution-building should be postponed until “after victory” is not only misleading—it is false. Democratic futures are built during struggle, not after it. What is urgently needed may include: a collective, non-personalist leadership structure, a council of national coalition, a constituent assembly and constitutional drafting, mechanisms for accountability and inclusion, and laying the groundwork for future free elections. Iran is a society of more than 90 million people shaped by deep diversity. Any serious alternative to authoritarianism must emerge through that diversity, not over it. Democratic legitimacy cannot be imported or declared from outside. It can only be produced through collective deliberation, transparency, and the people’s right to choose freely what they want to be free for—not only what they want to be free from. After decades of imposed and limited choices, from the 1979 referendum to years of authoritarian rule that reduced politics to a “yes or no” or “bad versus worse” dilemma, this discourse no longer reflects the political language or demands of the people in Iran, nor the cost they have paid to move beyond it. Until a genuinely free and democratic election is held inside Iran, under conditions of transparency, access to information, and open debate, any attempt by global power, individuals, groups, or factions to pre-emptively claim leadership or representation of the people’s will or to shape Iran’s future political order lacks legitimacy. The European Union’s designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organisation (The Guardian, 29 January 2026), represents a notable policy development, but it is not sufficient on its own. If the international community wants to help, there are concrete actions available: freezing regime assets, including (but not limited to) those held by oligarchs and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked networks; removing regime representatives from international forums; cutting diplomatic ties and denying symbolic legitimacy; targeting elite financial networks rather than ordinary citizens; supporting political prisoners and their families; engaging with democratic opposition and civil society in Iran; holding Islamic Republic authorities accountable for mass atrocities and crimes against humanity; affirming Responsibility to Protect as a binding international norm; and strengthening independent media and documentation. Broad sanctions that punish society while enriching the regime’s corrupt black-market economy, dominated by the Revolutionary Guard, have already failed. The Islamic Republic is already fractured across political, economic, cultural, and social institutions. What remains relatively intact is its security and repressive apparatus, and system-supporting elites. Strategic international pressure and humanitarian intervention can help accelerate fractures there – without hijacking the movement or turning people into targets. The Iranian struggle must not be reduced to a campaign slogan, a geopolitical project, or a symbolic performance. It is about people – exhausted, courageous people – fighting for a normal life under extraordinary conditions. Solidarity and support means protecting their agency and their movement, thinking strategically, and refusing both authoritarian silence and reckless interventionism. Anything less risks reproducing the very structures this revolution seeks to dismantle.