Atefe Asadi : “We, the people of Iran, have always been alone”

From the Iran-Iraq War to the bloody suppression of uprisings, to the current war, which has buried the Mullahs’ nuclear hopes, the memory of violence runs through an entire generation of Iranians. Iranian poet Atafe Asadi, now a refugee in Germany, shared her story with us. She questions the ethics of states faced with a criminal regime that has gone unpunished for decades. Between traumatic memories, lucid anger, and unyielding hope, she paints a portrait of an abandoned people. She looks back on the bloody repression, the lost illusions, and the ongoing war—and yet continues to dream of a free Iran.

 

 

If you ask me how I’m doing these days, I might just smile, shake my head, and escape from the conversation. Because I no longer have the words to describe the flood of emotions I’m experiencing all at once. I can’t just release a barrage of words and say, without pause, that I am happy and sad, angry and hopeless, anxious and laughing, crying and afraid, worried and furious—and still, somehow, hopeful.

Feeling all of these things simultaneously, and constantly being filled and emptied by them, is complicated. Especially now, in the very moments I write this, another familiar feeling has returned to join the rest: the sensation of being trapped in a locked room. It was during the bloody November of 2019 when the Islamic Republic shut down the internet and, in silence, carried out a massacre of over 1,500 people. I was in Iran at the time. We were screaming underwater—no one could hear us. The world had forgotten us. And now, as I sit here in Europe, once again cut off from everyone in Iran with no access, I’m back in that same locked room. The feeling of isolation has returned. Not knowing is unbearable. It makes no difference where you sit on the map—whether in Tehran, or surrounded by longing in Hanover.

It’s clear that no one loves war. I don’t either. Ever since childhood, I’ve despised war. I saw what it did to my father—how it left him injured and constantly at risk of losing his sight. He was forced into military service, spending the best years of his youth in the Iran-Iraq war, and ever since, has had to be careful that the piece of shrapnel lodged in his left eye doesn’t shift. I loathe war. And yet, I wonder—after all the times protests have been crushed with bullets, after all the executions of those who dared speak out—what’s left to save Iran from the bloodstained hands of this regime, if not foreign intervention?

I worry for every inch of that city, for every innocent soul who only ever wanted a normal, joyful life. But at the same time, when I see the IRIB building under attack, I feel a flicker of joy.

Especially in recent years, we’ve witnessed the people of Iran—brave and unarmed—take to the streets. They stood in front of bullets. Peacefully, they demanded their most basic human rights. They said “no” to Khamenei and his bloodthirsty regime. And what lives, what eyes, what futures were lost along the way! From children like Kian Pirfalak—whose only crime was being born in Iran and who was deliberately shot while in the street with his family—to Nika Shakarami, the courageous teenage girl who was raped and murdered by IRGC^[1] forces after joining the protests.

And what came of it? Did our bare hands manage to defeat the executioners? Did even a single country fully sever ties with the Islamic Republic and boldly declare that a murderous regime cannot be reformed or negotiated with? Did the Western world truly hear Iran’s suffering and choose to close its eyes to its own interests, listing the IRGC as a terrorist organization?

No. None of that happened. We were alone. We, the people of Iran, have always been alone. And we still are.

I watch videos and photos of Tehran—my beautiful city, the place where I was born and spent my entire life—now drowned in fire and smoke. My heart tightens. I worry for every inch of that city, for every innocent soul who only ever wanted a normal, joyful life. But at the same time, when I see the IRIB^[2] building under attack, I feel a flicker of joy. The faces of every victim of this propaganda machine flash before me. Countless political prisoners have testified that IRIB staff served as interrogators in prisons. Even its director is appointed directly by the Supreme Leader. This radio and television network has, for more than four decades, been a platform for spreading lies, violating free speech, and airing forced confessions.

And this joy doesn’t mean I stand for bloodshed or violence! But here’s the truth: no one is looking out for us, the people of Iran. The regime has spent decades fueling conflict, but built no shelters for its own people. While government officials hide in secure bunkers, no one tells ordinary citizens where to take refuge. No one thinks about how millions of Iranians—without fuel, without cars, without even a place to go—are expected to flee a burning capital on blocked roads overnight. No one spares a thought for the defenseless political prisoners behind bars.

I think of friends who refused to leave Tehran because of their pets. One of them couldn’t bear the thought of the stray cats around her home starving without her. Another only owned a small motorbike—impossible to evacuate a family on that. Many working-class Iranians have no personal vehicle, or rely on bicycles and motorcycles. I think of my aunt, who had to stay in Tehran for her essential medication. I think of my family, stuck for nineteen hours on blocked roads, trying to escape the explosions and reach a safer village. I think of my pet bird, its tiny heart pounding in terror. I see the images of pigeons, dead from fright, lying lifeless on the rooftops of Tehran.

No one is looking out for us. The Islamic Republic has made its hatred for the Iranian people clear. For decades, its officials have tried to erase the beauty of Iranian history, literature, and culture—pretending that Iran had no identity before Islam. And now, suddenly, they’re using words like “nation” in the news, invoking our culture and civilization, hoping to manipulate people into siding with the regime in a false binary: Islamic Republic vs. Israel. As if being “our own” makes them any less criminal.

It’s been only a week since the war began, and already we’ve seen the regime venting its rage—powerless against Israel—on its own citizens.

Ali Khamenei, who considers himself the Supreme Leader of the Muslim world, remains in the safest hideouts, wagging his finger at the world in threats. And even in his weakest moments, when he has lost so many key allies and stands closer than ever to death and collapse, he still refuses to surrender. He won’t let go of his dream of a nuclear Iran—even if it means more people die. His goal is to leave Iran in absolute ruins — a devastated homeland for future generations.

So when I see high-ranking IRGC commanders—the murderers of our beloved sons and daughters—killed one by one, their faces crossed out in red on posters shared online, I feel happy. I count the days until that red X appears on Ali Khamenei’s face too. Because the dream of achieving freedom through peaceful means, the hope that these murderers might someday be tried in a just court—that dream has died in me.

Maybe one of the greatest crimes the Islamic Republic has committed, alongside all its killings, is the murder of our dreams and our hope. We Iranians have become addicted to our despair. We hold it like a giant shield in front of us, clinging to it with everything we have. Because every time a flicker of hope has appeared in our hearts, they’ve extinguished it in the cruelest of ways.

Now, as I read the latest news and see that this is far from over, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that even after all this blood, fear, and pain endured by innocent Iranians, the war might end and the regime might survive. I know that even if it remains in its weakest, most defeated form, it will take revenge on the people. The same people who, for years, have stood quietly in line—just to die or be branded criminals.

It’s been only a week since the war began, and already we’ve seen the regime venting its rage—powerless against Israel—on its own citizens. Civil and political activists’ homes have been raided. Phones have been confiscated in the streets. Crackdowns over compulsory hijab have intensified. People like Esmail Fekri have been executed for “spying for Israel” without warning. And that’s what scares me the most: the thought that the world might strike a deal with the Islamic Republic again, handing us back to the same butchers who are now sharpening their knives with even more vengeance. Just like they did after the Iran-Iraq war, when over 12,000 political prisoners were executed in a single night and their bodies never returned to their families.

Even now, regime insiders speak openly on social media about a coming massacre of dissenters once the war ends. So when I read that “negotiations” are still possible, that the interests of global powers might again outweigh the lives of innocent people, I cling even tighter to my despair.

But yet, in the heart of me and all Iranians, there remains a dream they have never been able—and will never be able—to take away from us: the dream of dancing beneath the Azadi Tower in a free Iran. An Iran that, in the world, is a symbol of beauty, culture, and literature—not warmongering and radical Islam. And it is a fact that the Islamic Republic regime, neither through prisons, nor executions, nor exile, has been able to kill this dream! A dream for which we live and carry on…

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Atefe Asadi