Iranian activist and lawyer calls out supporters of Islamic Republic: ‘You are no friend to the Iranian people’

Hi, Iranian woman here. It’s become very apparent that you haven’t been listening to anything that we’ve had to say for the past two years, but I was wondering if you could just lend me a few minutes of your time in this ungodly hour to hear us now. We’ve had to watch over the past 24 hours, people clambering onto the Internet to exclaim that Iran has the right to defend itself. In what capacity have you distorted the story to make the Islamic Republic the victim? That that’s that’s I think what we’re most curious about. When we were screaming for the past two years that they were lynching us, where were you when we were screaming that they were killing Iranian women for not wearing a hijab? Where were you when they were lynching Iranian men from cranes for protesting? Where were you when we were explaining that this is a terrorist occupying force? Where were you? But all of a sudden, everyone’s graduated from Instagram School of Law. To say that this is a violation of international law and Iran has the right to defend itself. First of all, you’re not talking about Iran. You’re talking about the Islamic Republic. What the Islamic Republic does is not a reflection of the Iranian people. We’ve been clear about what we want, which is peace. Second of all, you may have discovered the Middle East yesterday, but the Middle East didn’t start existing yesterday. If you want to talk about an act of war, just a few days ago a federal court determined that the attacks on Israeli embassies and Jewish centres in Argentina were conducted by the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah. That was in the 90s. That was in the 90s. Was that an act of war? How about the terror proxies that the Islamic Republic has created to foster regional instability? What did you think that they were there for? What did you think Hezbollah was there for Hamas, Houthis, their militia groups in Iraq and Syria? Did you think that they were there to instigate a system of public schooling, education to feed the poor? How’s the unhoused? What did you think that they were there for? Is that an act of war? Was October 7th an act of war? Are the Rockets that Hezbollah fires into northern Israel on a near daily basis an act of war? And so when these senior IRGC commanders meet up with Hezbollah in a IRGC military base, OK, not an Iranian embassy and Israel strikes, your response is to say that that is an act of war. If you would listen to us for the past two years, much less the past 45 years, you’d know that Iranians don’t want war with Israel. We want peace with Israel. Iranian people inside of Iran have come out and said this over and over and over again. It’s you that wants war with Israel. It’s your hatred for Israel and your hatred for Jews that’s pulling us into a war that we didn’t ask for. Have we not suffered enough for the past 40-5 years that we now have to be used as pawns for your fantasies about war with Israel? Leave us alone. We don’t want that. So if you want to support the Islamic Republic in putting Iranians lives at risk and everyone’s lives at risk, they just killed a 10 year old Bedouin boy for this, Is that what you wanted? Then just come out and say that with your whole chest. Say you support the Islamic Republic in their continued aggressions that put everybody’s lives at risk. But don’t say Iran. For two years we asked you to come out and say free Iran and now you want to speak up to put our lives at risk and say go to war Iran. You are no friend to the Iranian people for that.