WASHINGTON, DC — The Free Iran Convention 2025 opened on Saturday, November 15, bringing Iranian scholars, activists, professionals, and community leaders together for an all-day program in the U.S. capital structured around four thematic panels, special segments amplifying voices from inside Iran, and discussions on rebuilding a democratic future.
Following welcoming remarks by Soona Samsami, the U.S. Representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the first panel, “Society Ripe for Change,” set the framework for the day by examining how Iran’s deepening economic, political, social, and environmental crises have pushed society toward a tipping point and made fundamental change appear increasingly inevitable.
Soona Samsami, the U.S. Representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, welcomed participants as an “extraordinary gathering” of Iranian scientists, professionals, and young people committed to a free and democratic republic in Iran. She described this as a decisive moment, arguing that the regime is at its weakest point and that the broad, experienced community in the hall is united around the goal of overthrowing “religious tyranny” and examining a concrete roadmap for change.
Samsami characterized the NCRI as the only genuine democratic alternative to the ruling theocracy, stressing its long-standing rejection of both the mullahs’ regime and the monarchy. She highlighted the perseverance and sacrifices of the MEK/PMOI and pointed to Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan as a practical framework for a future democratic, secular, non-nuclear Iran built on gender equality, human rights, and the rule of law. She also cited the NCRI’s record in exposing Tehran’s clandestine nuclear activities, documenting executions and arrests, and challenging the regime’s terrorism and human-rights abuses.
At #FreeIranConvention2025, NCRI U.S. Rep Soona Samsami stresses that for 44+ years the NCRI has been the only organized, genuine democratic alternative, firmly rejecting both dictatorships: the mullahs’ theocracy and the Shah’s monarchy.#NCRIAlternative pic.twitter.com/A4YjfH6kxY
— NCRI-U.S. Rep Office (@NCRIUS) November 15, 2025
Attorney Ana Sami, a second-generation Iranian and the convention’s emcee, positioned the Free Iran Convention 2025 as “history in the making,” not a routine gathering. She emphasized that, for the first time, Iranian scholars, professionals, and community leaders from across the United States had assembled to chart a path from dictatorship to a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran.
Sami told the audience that the convention is “more than an event; it is a movement” driven by courage, conviction, and the belief that freedom is a right. She said participants would hear from those who have defied tyranny and from international allies who back the Iranian people’s struggle for liberty and justice.
Framing the day’s panels and discussions, she stressed that the program aims to confront Iran’s current crises, analyze the forces driving change, and articulate a vision of a free Iran at peace with itself and the world. “Today,” she concluded, “we don’t just imagine a free Iran, we commit to building it.”
At #FreeIranConvention2025, @SimaYazdani opens Panel 1 – “Society Ripe for Change in Iran” – showing how 4+ decades of repression & crisis forged solidarity between people, diaspora & organized resistance. Not fleeting unrest, but data-driven proof that fundamental change toward… pic.twitter.com/suz2dXYXeU
— NCRI-U.S. Rep Office (@NCRIUS) November 15, 2025
Panel moderator Sima Yazdani, an AI technology executive with 40 years of experience in secure IT systems and knowledge modeling, opened Panel 1 by thanking participants and expressing “profound gratitude” to the NCRI for elevating the Iranian people’s “unyielding stand against tyranny on the global stage.” She declared that “the world is finally watching” as Iran undergoes what she called a “seismic shift—a nation on the edge of transformational change.”
Yazdani argued that more than four decades of repression and corruption had “cracked the regime’s façade,” forging unity among citizens, the diaspora, and the organized resistance. “This isn’t fleeting unrest,” she said. “It’s the maturation of social readiness for overthrow.” She outlined three guiding questions for the panel: the roots of discontent, the ways it manifests, and the role and direction of the organized opposition.
Rejecting slogans or speculation, Yazdani said the panel would rely on “fact-based research” that exposes widening fractures inside the regime, which she described as marked by “tyrannical terrorism, massacres, and the world’s highest number of executions.” She warned that Iran is not collapsing but “igniting toward a democratic, secular, non-nuclear republic.” Drawing an analogy to America’s 1776, she said Iran’s resistance—from “underground cells to exiled visionaries”—reflects the same spirit of enlightenment and defiance. “If not now, when? If not us, who?” she asked, before introducing the panel’s experts.
At #FreeIranConvention2025, Dr. @HSaiedian shows why Tehran’s regime is illegitimate and failing on all 3 pillars: nuclear project exposed by NCRI-US, export of terrorism backfiring, and executions/censorship at record levels. Crises + MEK-backed defiance make change inevitable.… pic.twitter.com/SadpImToq2
— NCRI-U.S. Rep Office (@NCRIUS) November 15, 2025
Dr. Kazem Kazerounian, former dean of the University of Connecticut’s College of Engineering and a fellow of ASME and AIMBE, presented what he described as “three mega-trends” defining Iran’s economic collapse. “Iran’s economic collapse is structural,” he said, emphasizing that it is “not temporary, and by no means a result of sanctions.” Instead, he argued, the economy has been turned into “a tool for repression and plunder.”
Citing research conducted by a team of scholars, Dr. Kazerounian said the crisis is visible in every sector—including GDP, inflation, housing, banking, jobs, and oil dependency. He noted that Iran now ranks 117th in the world in GDP per capita, a “shameful position” for a resource-rich country. Food inflation near 60 percent, medicine costs up “700 to 800 times,” and the fact that “80% of Iranians live below the poverty line” were, he said, unmistakable signs of collapse.
He described extreme inequality in housing—“1% of the country owns more than 30% of the wealth”—and a labor market where nearly 80% lack stable jobs. The IRGC, he said, controls as much as 60% of the economy, creating a “military oligarchy.” He estimated the cost of the regime’s nuclear program at $2 trillion, calling it a catastrophic drain on national resources.
“Iran’s social fabric is breaking under the weight of inequity,” he concluded. “Discontent has become defiance, and that defiance is accelerating the path toward total regime collapse.”
At #FreeIranConvention2025, Prof. @kazemkaz shows Iran’s crisis is structural, not about sanctions: 80% below the poverty line, food inflation ~60%, joblessness, bankrupt banks and an IRGC mafia economy. Plunder, repression and nuclear vanity have turned economic discontent into… pic.twitter.com/I50y4mEp6T
— NCRI-U.S. Rep Office (@NCRIUS) November 15, 2025
Dr. Hossein Saiedian, a professor of computer science at the University of Kansas with more than 170 publications in software engineering and cybersecurity, expanded the panel’s analysis by arguing that Iran’s crisis is rooted in what he called the regime’s “core foundational problem: its illegitimacy.” He told the audience that the clerical leadership “has never been a legitimate government,” asserting that “Khomeini stole the revolution” in 1979 by exploiting a power vacuum and derailing over a century of Iranian struggle for democracy and secular governance.
Because it lacks a democratic mandate, Dr. Saiedian said, the regime built its survival on “three pillars: internal repression, export of terrorism, and development of nuclear weapons.” He argued that each has now failed. He credited the NCRI with the 2002 exposure of the Natanz nuclear site, calling it “a courageous act of patriotic intelligence” that triggered sanctions and diplomatic isolation. “The world owes a big thank you to the NCRI-US,” he said.
Dr. Saiedian then detailed what he described as the collapse of Iran’s regional strategy and the regime’s intensifying reliance on executions and arrests, noting that “executions have tripled” in three years. He highlighted extreme repression of MEK supporters, widespread censorship, persecution of minorities, and environmental breakdown. Despite this, he said Iranians are “more defiant than ever,” concluding that “an explosion of freedom is not just possible, it is inevitable.”
The message from the Iranian people is clear: Down with the oppressor, be it the Shah or the leader.
Panel 1 | #FreeIranConvention2025 pic.twitter.com/TfQvko87zE
— OIAC: Organization of Iranian American Communities (@OrgIAC) November 15, 2025
Dr. Ashraf Zadshir, a California-based physician, educator, clinical researcher, and recipient of California’s Woman of the Year Award, examined how Iran’s intertwined crises have culminated in what she described as “their most consequential form: sustained revolt.” Building on the panel’s earlier economic and political analysis, she said that isolated protests had transformed into an “organized movement marking a turning point from which the regime cannot return.”
Dr. Zadshir outlined three nationwide uprisings—2017, 2019, and 2022—that spanned all 31 provinces. The 2017 unrest, spreading to 142 cities within days, produced the defining chant: “Reformer, hardliner, the game is now over.” She said this slogan “shattered the regime’s four-decade narrative of competing factions,” revealing a society rejecting the entire system rather than seeking internal reform.
She described the 2019 fuel-price uprising as Iran’s largest in decades, reaching more than 200 cities and targeting symbols of repression including Basij bases and police stations. “That uprising ended the myth that the underprivileged supported the regime,” she noted.
Turning to 2022, she called the Mahsa Amini revolt a “generational rebellion,” led by women and youth demanding the end of all dictatorship: “Down with the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Leader.”
Dr. Zadshir highlighted the expanding role of MEK-affiliated Resistance Units—responsible, she said, for over 39,000 acts of defiance last year—as well as election boycotts that have reduced turnout to “8 to 10%.” Iran, she concluded, has entered a “permanent state of defiance,” making the next uprising a matter not of if, but when.