The Israeli military is now conducting strikes inside Iranian territory — not just on military sites or regime infrastructure, but in major cities densely populated with civilians.
This is a grave mistake. The Iranian people have lived under a repressive, authoritarian regime for over four decades. We have been imprisoned, tortured, surveilled, and silenced. Generations have grown up under the boot of a theocratic dictatorship that does not speak for its people and never has. Iranians have risked everything to fight for that freedom, often with no support and no protection from the outside world.
Many Iranians, myself included, recognize Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism. We know full well the threat the Islamic Republic poses not just to Israel, but to the Iranian people and the broader Middle East. We’ve lived it. We’ve lost family to it. We’ve spent our lives resisting the regime from within and in exile.
But this, bombing Iranian cities where civilians are starving, struggling, and crushed under the weight of dictatorship this is not liberation. This is not strategy. This is not justice.
These airstrikes will not topple the regime. If anything, they will embolden it giving the Islamic Republic another excuse to tighten its grip and weaponize nationalism, while deflecting blame for the suffering they themselves have caused. The only people who will pay the price are the very civilians who have already paid too much: the students, the mothers, the workers, the daughters who are already bleeding from both state violence and international indifference.
This kind of action does not weaken dictators. It weakens the people resisting them.
And it threatens to alienate the many Iranians both inside and outside the country who have long supported Israel’s right to exist in peace, who have spoken out against terrorism, and who believe deeply that Israelis and Iranians alike deserve to live free from fear.
You do not win allies by bombing the already oppressed. You lose them. Israel is losing people who have always believed in its right to defend itself, but who cannot, in good conscience, support collective punishment masquerading as retaliation.
This isn’t defense. This is escalation. And the human cost is unbearable.
The Israeli military claims it's only targeting nuclear sites and the homes of top regime officials but how is that possible when the strikes are hitting densely populated cities? Civilians will inevitably die. There's no way around it. And let's be honest this kind of assault doesn't weaken the regime. It strengthens it. The Islamic Republic will use these attacks as propaganda, tighten its grip, and justify even harsher crackdowns on dissent. It sets the movement for freedom in Iran back, not forward. And this will make every day Iranians and Israelis less safe. If I believed for even a second that airstrikes inside Iran would topple the regime, I'd support it 110,000%. But history tells us otherwise. It didn't work in Iraq. It didn't work in Syria. And it won't work in Iran. Bombs don't bring down dictatorships — they strengthen them. And it's always the people, not the regime, who pay the price. You don't liberate people by bombing them. You empower their oppressors.
Iranians and Jews have shared over 2,500 years of history, marked not just by coexistence, but by moments of profound alliance. It was Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, who conquered Babylon and issued the decree allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their Temple. Though he didn’t rebuild it himself, his edict made it possible, and for that, he’s honored in the Hebrew Bible as a liberator. That shared legacy matters. But devastating actions like this by the Israeli government betray that history and play directly into the hands of the Islamic Republic. They hand Tehran a propaganda gift—justification to tighten its grip at home while pouring even more resources into the so-called axis of resistance: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. Meanwhile, the Iranian people continue to starve, suffer, and be silenced under brutal repression. None of this brings peace. It only deepens the cycle of violence and suffocates the hope of those in both nations who long for freedom and dignity.
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