“I hope all of us in the streets can remove this evil, lying and criminal regime from the cycle of politics and decision-making forever. May the mullahs, the criminal Khamenei and the terrorist army fall and Iran be free!”

This is the final message I received last week from my friend Soheila Hejab, a young Kurdish-Iranian lawyer who had befriended me in 2020, during my imprisonment in Iran. Soheila has already spent years behind bars for her human rights advocacy, and in the past suffered violent beatings at the hands of her captors. This didn’t deter her from taking to the streets once more, alongside thousands of her fellow compatriots in fresh anti-regime demonstrations that broke out in Iran on December 28.

Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain

A few days ago, I learnt that Soheila had been arrested at a protest in the city of Karaj. She is being held in Kachuei Prison. Before her arrest, Soheila gave me permission to write about her anti-government activism using her real name. For activists like Soheila, international media attention helps protect them against abuse and mistreatment in custody.

For the past 10 days, social media has once again been awash with clips of young Iranians chanting slogans like “Death to the dictator” and “We fight, we die, we take back Iran”. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan is popular too, a reference to the unprecedented wave of protests which roiled Iran following the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini, a young Kurdish woman, in 2022. Some protesters added to this “Man, homeland, prosperity”, underscoring the economic concerns which provided the initial trigger for the current unrest.

Another refrain that has made a comeback is “No to Gaza, no to Lebanon, my life for Iran”, a popular protest chant in times past which takes on a special relevance in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran just six months earlier. Iranians have long resented the........

© The Sydney Morning Herald