The Iranian people are caught between forces they cannot control

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Ava Homa’s books include the novel Daughters of Smoke and Fire.

Israel strikes. Iran retaliates. Above ground, civilians live between missile strikes. Below, Iran’s Supreme Leader hides. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the self-proclaimed “God’s representative on Earth,” who has sent countless thousands to their deaths for charges such as moharebeh – “enmity against God” – now shelters from the world he helped set on fire.

When several top commanders were killed – men who ruled by rope and rifle – there was relief. Followed by dread. Civilians always pay first and last. This is the slow strangulation of a country caught between an abusive regime and a world unwilling to imagine true Iranian freedom.

I cannot speak for 91 million people. No one can. But as a Kurdish woman who lived the consequences and taught at Azad University, I try to offer a glimpse into a nation trapped between three forces: the Islamic Republic, an Israeli leadership carrying out mass atrocities in Gaza, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s doctrine, lawless at home and reckless abroad.

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A ceasefire has taken hold, albeit tenuously. If the war restarts, catastrophe can follow. And if the regime survives, it will likely reassert control by punishing the poor, ethnic minorities, and the youth, the ones who cannot flee. As if, for the crime of being born in Iran, they must endure both internal tyranny and external elimination without protest.

This war is not theirs. It is not the war of Kurdish women who buried Mahsa (Jina) Amini. Not the war of Baluch boys shot during protests. Not the war of retired teachers lining up for bread and fuel. And yet, they are the ones the regime targets first, offering up their bodies to mask its own humiliation.

The trauma of everyday Iranians did not begin with these bombs. It began in 1979, when a revolution was hijacked. Ayatollah Khomeini promised justice and delivered mass executions. The war with Iraq became a cloak for purges. That betrayal lives in our bones. It shaped the generation now crouched in bomb shelters as they wonder if they will live to see another day.

The regime has not survived by strength, but by fracture. It maintains power by sidelining ethnic minorities, turning youth into suspects, women into threats, the poor into collateral. It isolates not only from the world but from each other. And the world keeps meeting this strategy with silence, sanctions or bombs.

Each major uprising – 1999, 2009, 2019, 2022 – has hardened the regime’s fist and sharpened the people’s awareness and connection. By 2022, something deeper had shifted. The chant Jin, Jiyan, Azadi – Women, Life, Freedom – broke the spell of division. For the first time, Iran moved as one. Kurds had long resisted alone, watched by the regime’s eyes, attacked by convoys, cut off from medical aid. In Mahabad, the wounded waited while ambulances were stopped and donated blood was confiscated. Still, they marched.

Bouncing back from near collapse, the regime grew more brutal. It retaliated by blinding young demonstrators, shooting women in the chest and genitals, raiding homes at night, jailing artists, journalists and academics. The spotlight turned, but the fists did not. If the regime survives this moment, it will likely accelerate its nuclear program and retreat into isolation. North Korea is not a metaphor. It is a model.

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And if this regime collapses, who will lead? No figure, religious or secular, monarchist or reformist, has the trust to unify a nation fractured by design. Outlets such as Fox News hold up Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-based Shah’s son, as a default alternative. But he was widely rejected during the 2022-23 protests, inside Iran and across the diaspora. Even the idea of him serving as a transitional figure recalls how Ayatollah Khomeini positioned himself in 1979, only to consolidate power.

No one trustworthy is poised to lead what’s next. Iran’s people, especially women and minorities, do not fear regime change. They fear regime repetition: patriarchy, racism, and class inequality rebranded and beautified by a Western puppet. There is no clean side in this war – only people caught in the middle. Years of sanctions and state corruption have decimated Iran’s middle class, making once-stable families food-insecure and unemployed.

I do not call for bombs or truces crafted by generals. I call for the world to stop sacrificing the vulnerable for political spectacle. Destruction is not liberation. Collapse is not transformation. If the world truly cares about freedom, it must stop mistaking ruin for rebirth. Those who have suffered the most – ethnic minorities, the working poor, women – cannot afford another false salvation.