For 47 years, the people of Iran have yearned for justice, freedom, peace, and prosperity—and have paid for it with their blood. If your outrage at Iranian lives lost began only today, but you were silent as the regime slaughtered thousands of its own people in recent weeks, Iranian lives did not suddenly become worthy of your concern. Their lives have always mattered. Many Iranians today are experiencing a profound and painful dissonance: waiting with bated breath for the fall of their tormentors, while grieving every innocent life lost—and knowing it was decades of the regime’s violence, repression, and recklessness that led the country to this precipice. Imagine the profound dissonance of living under such injustice for so long that war begins to feel like the lesser evil. It pains me deeply that the Islamic Republic has led Iran to this moment. The Iranian people are not this regime. They are its first victims—and they have never stopped fighting to rid themselves of it. I stand with the people of Iran and their right to self-determination. May freedom, justice and peace swiftly prevail.
