Host of nightly show The Program
Free speech. Open dialogue. People having access to one another, the ordinary ability to speak freely and exchange ideas. These might be the downfall of the system patiently built up by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, not foreign weapons.
A public sphere not mediated by state television or controlled narratives. People simply talking to each other, in real time, in a forum beyond the reach of power.
That is the fear.
I say this not as a theorist or a politician, but as the host of a nightly call-in program that attempts, modestly and imperfectly, to make such exchanges possible.
The experiment is simple.
There are no slogans, no marching crowds, no images calibrated for cable news. Instead, there is a microphone, a live line, and an invitation so unassuming it almost sounds apolitical: talk. Not perform. Not chant. Not rehearse ideology. Just talk, to one another, in real time, about what has gone wrong, what hurts, what frightens, and what still feels imaginable.
A society that cannot speak to itself is condemned to repeat its errors. A society that can speak cannot be governed indefinitely by myth.
Fractured by fear
Iran is among the most politicized societies in the world, yet genuine political dialogue is structurally impossible.
Families learn which subjects to avoid at the dinner table. Schools train obedience rather than inquiry. State media speaks incessantly but listens to no one.
Even social media, often romanticized as a space of resistance, is fractured by fear, surveillance, and mutual suspicion.
The result is not apathy, but exhaustion.
Questions accumulate without resolution. Why does a country rich in oil and gas fail to provide reliable electricity? Why do rivers vanish while neighboring desert states manage water abundance?
Why does each generation inherit fewer prospects than the one before it? Is war inevitable? Is collapse? Is change possible without catastrophe?
These questions never cohere into shared understanding.
Online, coordinated campaigns flood debates with distraction and distortion, contaminating the very spaces where collective reflection might otherwise take shape. Fragmentation serves power.
A society arguing with itself is a society distracted from those who govern it.
The most dangerous conflict in Iran today is not between the state and the people, but among the people themselves, along ideological, generational and emotional fault lines.
In the aftermath of the recent brief war with Israel, many Iranians found themselves at a crossroads, unsure whether the future demanded silence, rupture, or something harder and more fragile.
Dialogue, in this context, is not reconciliation with power, nor a plea for moderation as a moral posture. It is not an elite exercise in rhetoric.
Real dialogue is untidy. It requires listening to voices one distrusts. It rests on a radical premise: that no one, neither the dissident nor the conscript, neither the exile nor the factory worker, is disposable by default.
The right to speak, and to hear
On my program, I try to create space for that premise to be tested. The format is open, live, and unfiltered. Callers speak without ideological vetting. What matters is not agreement, but participation.
Recently, callers from Tehran, Rasht, Shiraz and Zahedan spoke openly about leadership, foreign intervention, a monarchy versus a republic, internet shutdowns, nonviolent resistance and the ethics of accountability if the Islamic Republic falls.
Some urged speed. Others warned against vengeance. Some placed hope in figures abroad. Others insisted that change must be rooted domestically.
At one point, a caller argued that anyone associated with the state must be punished. Another responded that a society cannot be rebuilt on the promise of mass retribution. Justice, he said, requires distinction, between those who committed crimes and those who merely survived within a coercive system.
In most democracies, such an exchange would pass unnoticed. In Iran, it is revolutionary.
It is precisely this kind of public, imperfect, unscripted reasoning that authoritarian systems fear most.
The Islamic Republic today appears brittle. Its supreme leader speaks of progress while citizens search for medicine and hard currency. Parliament performs loyalty. The judiciary enforces obedience. State media manufactures fake optimism. Yet none of these institutions command belief.
What they cannot tolerate is unity that does not require uniformity.
A national conversation produces legitimacy, among citizens. It generates shared language, moral boundaries, and, eventually, political imagination. Once people agree on what the problem is, power loses its monopoly on explanation.
Speech connects. Connection organizes.
Silence, by contrast, is a slow death. It corrodes trust. It persuades people that their doubts are solitary.
They are not. Iran does not lack courage. It lacks space.
Every Thursday night, that space opens briefly on my show, long enough to remind people that the most radical demand is not vengeance, or even freedom, but the right to speak, to be heard, and to understand one another before history forces the conversation in blood.
That, ultimately, is what terrifies Iran’s supreme leader.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.