Two-minute read
For four decades, Iranians have watched an unelected elite trade our nation’s future for missiles, militias, and clandestine centrifuges. Today, that gamble has reached its most dangerous point. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms that Tehran now holds enough 60 percent-enriched uranium to fashion several bombs once the final technical steps are taken. Inside the country, many of us understand what that means: a permanent shadow of war over our cities, and a regime even more emboldened to crush dissent.
Washington has sworn that no state sponsor of terrorism will be allowed to marry ideology with nuclear weapons, and Europe is openly weighing the “snapback” of U.N. sanctions—an automatic restoration of the penalties lifted by the 2015 deal. Our neighbors, who already endure drone strikes on tankers and energy facilities, warn that a nuclear threshold in Tehran could ignite a regional conflict no economy can absorb.
Why does the world mistrust Tehran’s pledges? Because the record since 2018 speaks for itself. After walking away from the JCPOA’s limits, the authorities restarted 20 percent enrichment, then leapt to 60 percent, produced uranium metal, and blocked IAEA cameras. Each step contradicted the Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s own fatwa claiming nuclear weapons are un-Islamic—proof that religious edicts willfully yield to geopolitical calculation. The only forces that still restrain Khamenei are the prospect of devastating airstrikes and, consequently, the eventual uprising those strikes might spark among a population already primed for change.
We call on all governments and parliaments to recognize the Iranian people’s right to overthrow this regime, and to support the rebellious youth in their struggle against the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).
For decades, the Iranian people and the Iranian Resistance have fought—at… pic.twitter.com/2CwqIeycdn— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) April 11, 2025
What, then, is the least costly way to avert disaster? Stand with the Iranian people instead of bargaining with their jailers. This is not an interventionist doctrine; it is fidelity to the values every democracy proclaims. Constitutions from Washington to Brussels enshrine self-determination and human dignity, while the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obliges governments to defend those stripped of both.
Recognizing the Iranian people’s right to resist their oppressors requires nothing more than political courage—a far cheaper price than the trillions already squandered on wars in the Middle East. It undercuts the regime’s survival formula—exporting crisis abroad while terrorizing citizens at home. Treating human rights as leverage, a negotiable “add-on,” only convinces Tehran that repression pays. Making rights the starting premise tells rulers that murdering protesters and shipping drones to battlefields will carry a price they cannot evade.
Critics will ask whether such moral clarity can block a centrifuge cascade. Recent history suggests it can. Tehran has blinked whenever unified, value-based pressure threatened its existence: in 2003, when it accepted snap inspections; in 2015, when it shipped out 97 percent of its enriched stockpile; in 2020, when it admitted downing Flight PS752 after global outrage. Each retreat followed a moment when isolating the regime aligned with amplifying Iranian voices.
The choice is stark. Either the world prepares for sanctions fatigue, proliferation, and the sword of war dangling over the Gulf—or it finally tests the alternative that Iranians themselves have demanded: siding openly with a nation held hostage by its rulers. That path is not meddling; it is belated consistency with the principles free societies claim to cherish. For Iran, and for a region desperate to escape endless crisis, nothing could be more patriotic or more practical.