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The Iranian Voices America Isn’t Hearing

We need to listen to those who oppose both the Islamic Republic’s authoritarianism and foreign military escalation.

Iranians gather at Palestine Square in Tehran carrying Iranian flags, chanting anti-US and anti-Israel slogans to protest the attacks by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026.

When the streets of Iran ran red last January, when mothers searched hospital corridors for sons who never came home, when the internet went dark and the state called its own people “rioters,” something remarkable happened.

From union organizers and writers’ circles.

From Kurdish towns and Tehran universities.

Iranian civil society spoke.

They condemned the Islamic Republic’s mass killings as crimes. They demanded accountability, freedom, and transformational change. They called for a referendum and a constituent assembly. They rejected clerical authoritarianism.

And they rejected war.

Now that war has been launched—after weeks of US and Israeli officials speaking casually about “bombing” and “military buildup,” and many of the people most battered by the Islamic Republic warning that foreign military intervention would not liberate them. It would bury them.

Mir Hossein Mousavi is not an exile or a fringe dissident. He was Iran’s prime minister during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. He was the leading challenger in the disputed 2009 election that gave birth to the Green Movement. For more than a decade he has been confined to his home, cut off from public life, for demanding accountability and fundamental political change.

In the aftermath of the January massacre, which left thousands of protesters dead, Mousavi declared that “the game is over.” He called the killings a historic crime. He urged security forces to lay down their arms. And he proposed the formation of what he called an Iran Salvation Front, a broad national coalition to guide a peaceful democratic transition.

His framework rested on three principles: no foreign interference, no domestic tyranny, and a nonviolent path to democracy.

Four hundred sixteen political and civic activists immediately endorsed his call. They demanded the release of political prisoners, an independent investigation, and guarantees of basic freedoms. They warned that desperation can drive citizens to pin their hopes on foreign powers or authoritarian alternatives. But that path, they cautioned, would only reproduce another form of subjugation.

A similar message came from 17 prominent dissidents in January, including filmmakers, lawyers, and representatives of imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi. They called the mass killings an organized crime against humanity and named Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responsible. They demanded justice and the release of political prisoners. But they also warned that any path that bypasses popular sovereignty risks plunging Iran into catastrophic violence.

Even from behind bars, that same warning was being voiced. From a cell in Evin Prison, Mostafa Tajzadeh, once a deputy interior minister and now one of the Islamic Republic’s most........

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