This op-ed was written by Editor-in-Chief Lisa Daftari for the New York Post and California Post.
To the brave people of Iran, this letter is for you.
It is for the mother who sends her only child into the streets knowing he may not come home.
It is for the valiant father who struggled to obtain his Ph.D. and now sells pistachios in the local bazaar to bring food home for his family.
It is for the young woman who has had to turn to prostitution to sustain her life, and for the battered woman who has stayed with her abusive husband because Islamic courts will not grant her a divorce.
This is a letter for all the students at Iranian universities whose hopes and dreams are not much different than ours, yet at the same time live half a world away.
We dedicate this to you, who have courageously filled the streets of Iran fighting for freedom. This is a letter from all of us, your countrymen who live outside Iran yet yearn to be one with you today.
We know that the last 47 years have been a long nightmare. You gave your children, your futures, your personal choices. You hid your social preferences and silenced your political convictions for fear of being called “un‑Islamic” or an enemy of the regime. The Bahai, Jew, and Christian among you practiced in secrecy, always fearing retribution. You picked up the phone anticipating an eavesdropper, sent emails knowing there would be an audience, and always left home in fear.
Human rights were lofty dreams far from reach.
We may live or have been born in the West, but our story has always been entangled with yours.
Although it is seldom talked about, we have also tasted the bitterness of this regime. We may have escaped the torment but never escaped the weight of what was done to our people. We live with another kind of torment: watching you fight the same enemy that stole our parents’ futures, our grandparents’ dignity, and our own sense of belonging.
We cannot stand beside you physically on the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz and beyond, but we are fighting for our legacy alongside you.
Like you, many of us carry a nostalgia for a time we never truly lived. It is a reminiscence inherited from our parents’ stories no matter where we lived. We watch the old footage of the Shah leaving Iran in 1979 and feel an ache we cannot fully explain, a faux nostalgia that mirrors yours: Iranians born after the revolution yet yearning for a time before it.
We listen to the music of the ’70s, stare at the photos of our mothers and grandmothers—hair uncovered, mini‑skirts, walking the streets, studying in universities, dancing at weddings, enjoying freedoms that were stolen.
We yearn for the same things you do. We are nostalgic for the same lost country. The memory of that Iran — whether lived or inherited — binds us together. You are fighting for your present. We are fighting for our legacy. It is the same fight.
This time is different. For those of us watching every round of protests since the university protests of 1999, we see something extraordinary in today’s demonstrations. We have never seen such unity around the shared idea of a free Iran, and increasingly, unity around a face and a name.
When we see the support many of you show for Prince Reza Pahlavi, we recognize the same questions in your chants that echo in our conversations here: Can there finally be a revolution that is not immediately stolen? One that has both courage on the streets and clarity in leadership? One that has a flag, a vision, a continuity with the Iran that was taken?
We watch as the world tries to sell you “reform,” “engagement,” “dialogue,” and every other polite word that really means “keep the regime, change the packaging.” We know you are not risking your lives for cosmetic changes. You want your country back. You want our country back. You want a life where you do not live under suspicion, where your gender does not dictate your worth under Sharia or Islamic law, and where your faith or lack of it is not a crime.
And then they’ll try to undermine you by calling you foreign agents. They will call you Mossad, CIA, puppets of whomever—anything to avoid admitting that Iranians themselves are rejecting their oppressors in organic fashion. “They are Mossad operatives” becomes a convenient way to say you are not real Iranians, not deserving of basic human rights. It is a cruel trick meant to strip you of your legitimacy and deny your revolution. It is their excuse to wash their hands of responsibility and to maintain their narratives.
And speaking of narratives, we see deafening silence in institutions that claim to stand for justice. The same universities that were covered in encampments and slogans somehow cannot find the breath to chant for you.
The same media that amplified every claim from Gaza without hesitation suddenly becomes skeptical, hesitant, “careful with the numbers” when it is Iranians being beaten, blinded, or killed in wholesale fashion.
Your martyrs do not go viral. The numbers that human rights groups struggle to verify through blackouts and censorship only hint at a truth far worse than anyone can imagine.
Know this: You are not alone. Some of us were born on the outside of the prison, but our hearts never left it. We in the diaspora have our story too. Our lives have been bitterly shaped by the same regime that is now pointing its guns at you. Our parents crossed borders with fake passports, hid in stowaways, slept in strange countries, traded their degrees for taxi meters and night shifts.
We carry Western passports and Western names, yet gravitate toward Iranian culture, searching for friends who understand our jokes, our food, our pain. Some of us have never seen Iran, but the fight for Iran is in our bones. We do not romanticize your suffering, and we do not pretend that our hardships match the price you are paying. You are the ones facing live ammunition, mass arrests, torture, and executions. But we carry our own burden: to make sure your sacrifice is not buried under geopolitics, partisan politics, or propaganda.
With love,
We will rally in Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris. We will flood our feeds, confront our media, and challenge our politicians. We will be your voices where you are silenced and your witnesses where you are denied. We will not let this revolution be squandered. We will not let them hijack your desires, your unity, your chance at a future that looks more like those old photos — and better.
We are your fellow Iranians, and until you walk freely in a free Iran, know this: we are with you, we hear you, and we will not look away. This time, the world does not get to move on. This time, we stay.
Iranians in California
