Warmongers Do Not Represent Me
On Iran’s recent protests, the temptation of “salvation from outside,” and the replaying of the Libya script for Iran
Less than a month ago I wrote—warning in a voice that comes straight from lived experience—that I fear we still have not learned our lesson. I fear that the ink of Libya’s experience has not even dried before some of us suddenly “remember Hindustan” again—this time not merely by writing letters to the White House, but by giving a green light to the very power that now poses as their savior: Israel. I wrote and asked: if Libya was the testing ground then, is Iran now to become the new laboratory for that same failed formula?
And now, bitterly and in disbelief, I see how quickly that “tomorrow” has arrived. The warning had barely been written when a new wave of statements, interviews, campaigns, and lobbying outside Iran surged to the surface—united around one theme: foreign intervention. The same familiar rhetoric. The same seductive logic. The same moral wrapping paper—and the same smell of gunpowder underneath. The difference is that today, alongside the call for America, there is also talk of Israel “entering” the scene; talk of commandos, special operations, security assistance, and rapid action. And at the same time, in the heated streets, blood is being spilled from both sides—and the arena is becoming, by the hour, more ready to be hijacked.
I do not say this out of ignorance of the Islamic Republic’s crimes, nor out of naïveté, nor from the position of someone who watches the fire from far away. I have been one of the victims of repression in Iran. I spent the best years of my youth in the prisons of the Islamic Republic. I endured the worst forms of torture. I lived under a death sentence for two years—years in which every day could have been my last. Throughout my life—whether in prison and solitary confinement, or after my release, or during years of pressure and threats, or after forced exile—I have not stopped struggling. My struggle has been—and remains—for the establishment of a democratic, independent, and just system.
But precisely for that reason, I say out loud: warmongers do not represent me.
And anyone who today prescribes for Iran the “solution” of bombs, missiles, special operations, and “salvation from outside” is not only not a representative of the Iranian people—they are, in practice, part of a project to destroy Iran: whether knowingly or unknowingly, whether driven by a thirst for power or by a naïve impulse to “help.”
This must be said clearly, without ambiguity and without polite evasions: no nation becomes free by inviting foreigners to attack its own land.
And no freedom built on the ruin of the homeland is freedom. It is ruin. It is revenge. It is profiteering. And it is often the prelude to a new despotism, civil war, fragmentation, and social collapse.
Protest is a right; the hijacking of protest is even more dangerous
The Iranian people’s protests are a right. The people’s anger is a right. The demand for freedom, justice, and dignity is a right. People have the right to stand against a regime that for decades has turned corruption, poverty, and injustice into instruments of rule and repression. People have the right to protest a system that has institutionalized prison, torture, and execution. No human being with even a shred of conscience can deny this right.
But alongside this right, there is a danger that always rises in moments of crisis: the danger of a protest being hijacked.
What does hijacking mean? It means a movement born from the people’s real pain falling into the hands of forces that neither understand that pain, nor have paid any price for the people, nor have lived with the people, nor are going to breathe alongside them in the day after destruction. These are the very actors who are always lying in wait: opportunists in exile, power lobbies, war-driven media, foreign security networks, and political figures who—just to reach power—are willing to turn a country into ash.
And this hijacking usually begins through one route: a single deceptive word—“salvation.”
In moments when the streets are inflamed, when the internet is cut, when the death toll rises, when families are in mourning, when hope and rage are knotted together, suddenly an external current declares: “So international help is necessary.”
And exactly here we must ask: what does “international help” mean?
If by help one means legal support, media support, and diplomatic pressure to open the space of information, to free prisoners, and to stop repression—this is a separate discussion. But what is being raised today in many statements and campaigns is not of that kind. What is being demanded today is “action.” But action means what, exactly? New sanctions? Cyber operations? Strikes on military facilities? Targeted assassinations? A no-fly zone? Or full-scale war?
These are not just “words.” They are mechanisms of destruction.
And anyone who proposes these mechanisms must have the courage to accept responsibility for their consequences.
I—the former prisoner and victim—do not prescribe war
I come from the Islamic Republic’s crimes. I come from an experience many cannot even bear to picture: threats of execution, torture, solitary confinement, humiliation, sleep deprivation, interrogation, the denial of one’s humanity. I know what a system looks like when it plays with the life and psyche of human beings. I know how the machinery of repression works. And precisely for that reason I say: calling for war is not calling for salvation; it is calling for catastrophe.
Having seen torture, I cannot pin my hopes on bombs and missiles.
Having seen prison, I cannot wish for foreign commandos to enter the streets of my homeland.
Having spent two years under a death sentence, I cannot join the chorus of anyone who wants to turn my country into a theater of special operations, assassination, and proxy conflict.
If freedom is to come, it must come from the will of the people.
Not from operations rooms, not from foreign lobbies, not from security networks, not from bombing.
“Humanitarian intervention”: the century’s greatest moral lie
No phrase in contemporary politics is as seductive—and as blood-soaked—as “humanitarian intervention.” It is like a piece of moral chewing gum that powers pull from their pocket whenever they want to make war palatable to public opinion.
In Libya, that phrase worked.
They said Benghazi was on the verge of genocide. They said if we do not intervene there will be a massacre. They said we have a “Responsibility to Protect.” They said “R2P.” They said “no-fly zone.” They said “protecting civilians.” But what happened in reality?
Libya’s sky burned under NATO fire. Its army and infrastructure were destroyed. Gaddafi was killed. And the country fell into a vacuum of governance—out of which tribal militias, extremist Islamist groups, human traffickers, and then ISIS emerged. A country that—with all its faults, authoritarianism, and corruption—still had at least order, stability, and a measure of social welfare became an arena for proxy wars and de facto fragmentation.
What happened in Libya was not an “accident.” It was a natural consequence.
When a central state collapses, when the army, police, and civil administration disintegrate, when the structures of governance are destroyed, no vacuum remains ownerless. The vacuum is filled by organized and armed forces, by mafias, by extremists, or by foreign powers.
And Libya is not the only example. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria—each is a variation of the same story.
The names differ; the logic is the same: Destroy it now—talk about democracy later.
And that “later” usually never comes.
The standard for intervention is not morality or human rights; it is interests
If in global politics the true standard were “saving people,” we would have to ask:
Why is it that when—daily—dozens and hundreds of human beings in Gaza and Lebanon are killed under bombardment, the very same champions of “R2P” fall silent?
Why is that war-loving French philosopher who played the angel of salvation for Benghazi now mute?
Why is it that European governments and the United States—who once, under the banner of “Responsibility to Protect,” turned the world upside down—today cannot even produce a binding resolution to stop mass killing?
Why is it that when the victim is Palestinian, “humanitarian intervention” is suspended, but when another country is in question, global morality suddenly awakens?
The answer is clear—and anyone unwilling to see it has chosen blindness:
In many cases, “humanitarian intervention” is simply another name for power politics.
War does not begin with ethics; it begins with interest. Ethics is merely the media cover.
So if today someone says “Iran must be intervened in,” we must understand what interests and what projects may lie behind that sentence. Many do not see Iran as the people’s home, but as a piece in a regional and global puzzle. And when that is the lens, “saving” people becomes “seizing,” “engineering,” and “controlling.”
Turning protest into a proxy battlefield: a golden gift to the regime’s repression
Any claim about the presence of foreign forces in the unrest—whether true or fabricated as psychological warfare—has one certain consequence: it becomes a golden gift to the apparatus of repression.
Because the repressive state is always searching for one thing: “security legitimacy.” It wants to transform protest from “the people’s demand” into “the enemy’s project.” It wants to claim: this movement is not organic; it is “infiltrated,” “affiliated,” “Mossad,” “CIA,” “Israel,” “commandos.”
When you, from outside the country, openly invite military intervention, you are handing over the raw materials of exactly that narrative:
you are telling the repressor, “Here you go—this is the document; this is the official invitation; this is the justification.”
And this is not merely a propaganda game. In real life it costs blood. Because when protest is turned into a “security battlefield,” repression becomes “unlimited.” It finds its pretext. Its hand becomes freer. And the victims are the people.
What does “a fifth column” mean? It means: “Destroy Iran so I can rule”
It must be said plainly: anyone who, to reach power, clings to Netanyahu, Trump, special operations, and bombing is effectively telling the Iranian people: Burn your country so I can build power from its ashes.
That logic is not the logic of freedom. It is the logic of opportunist fascism.
This is how fascism spreads:
through normalizing crime, laundering war, turning bombs into medicine, and presenting ruin as salvation.
And more shameful still is that this slippage is not limited to a group whose politics has long revolved around dependency. More painful is seeing that—from former reformists to yesterday’s interrogators and “repentance-manufacturers,” from sociologists to regime propagandists, from media faces to newly-minted “experts”—everyone seems to converge at one station:
the station of war; the station of foreign intervention; the station of Reza Pahlavi–Iran International–support for war and intervention.
This convergence is not accidental. It is a sign of the collapse of political ethics—a sign that when power becomes the goal, the homeland can become the sacrifice.
Letter-writing for war: from Libya to Iran today
In Libya, before the missiles were fired, letters were written. Moral pressure was manufactured. “Academics” and “intellectuals” played their part. They said if we do not intervene there will be a crime. They said we have a responsibility. They said we must act. And that moral pressure became exactly what politicians needed to make war appear legitimate.
Today we see the same machinery at work.
Some write: “Exiting the crisis and preventing catastrophe requires international assistance.”
They say: “Now is the time to act against the machinery of repression and fulfill your promise.”
They say: “With every minute of delay, the scope of the crime grows.”
But again the same question: action—meaning what?
If this action is “military intervention,” it is an invitation to war.
If it means “striking military facilities,” it is the beginning of war.
If it means “special operations,” it is a formal entry into a proxy battlefield.
And all of it means one thing: opening the door to a catastrophe whose ending no one can control.
At this point, a very simple moral question arises:
Is the one who calls for an attack willing to accept responsibility for the consequences as well?
If Iran is pushed into Libya’s fate—if the country is torn apart, if a long civil war begins, if rival armed groups form, if terrorism is born, if millions are displaced—will they say, “I was wrong”?
Or will they, like many of yesterday’s signatories, simply fall silent again?
Libya’s bitter lesson: state collapse means the birth of monsters
Those who imagine “the regime falls and everything becomes fine” have either not read history or refuse to understand it. The collapse of a state in a complex country usually means the birth of monsters. Power does not disappear; it is only transferred. And when social, political, security, and administrative structures collapse, power moves into the hands of those who are more organized, more armed, and more ruthless.
In Libya, that is exactly what happened.
A country under the rule of a strong central authority—when that authority fell—the state fell with it.
When the state fell, a vacuum emerged.
When the vacuum emerged, militias and extremists arrived.
And then the country became a proxy battlefield.
And the people—the very people who were supposed to be saved—became the victims.
Now the vital question for Iran is this:
If Iran is pushed toward state collapse, who will fill the vacuum?
Which armed forces? Which organized groups? Which mafia networks? Which regional powers? Which extremist currents?
Does anyone truly imagine that a country as large as Iran, in the heart of a region full of rivalry and hostility, can move “peacefully” to democracy after state collapse?
That fantasy is not only naïve; it is dangerous—because it is paid for with the lives, homes, and future of the people.
Why these invitations are shameful
Because the claim of freedom cannot be reconciled with an invitation to ruin.
Because independence cannot be reconciled with begging a foreign power to attack the homeland.
Because national dignity cannot be reconciled with celebrating the bombing of cities.
Because no honorable nation applauds the destruction of its own home while holding the flag of a foreign state.
This stain of disgrace that some place on their own forehead today will not be erased from the memory of history for years. And the world does not trust a nation whose some members, in the name of “freedom,” have demanded bombs and invasion. This mark settles not only on individual names, but on the memory of an entire people.
And with all my being I say: woe to us if we allow this stain to be recorded in the name of the Iranian people.
The struggle is hard, but it is the only path: freedom by the hands of Iran’s people
I still believe—and despite all my wounds I still hope—that the Iranian people’s struggle will succeed without Mossad’s meddling, without foreign-state intervention, and without the opportunism of warmongering exiles. Iran will be freed by its own people inside the country.
This is not daydreaming. It is realism. Because any real alternative for Iran’s future must emerge from Iranian society itself:
through organization, solidarity, real networks of civil resistance, strikes and civil disobedience, breaking the machinery of repression from within, linking social, class, and generational forces, building collective politics rather than hero-centered politics.
Foreign intervention may wound the government, but it shatters society.
It may remove one head, but it creates multiple unrestrained heads.
It may produce a “media victory,” but it leaves behind a “historic ruin.”
Final word: hands off—criminals on every side
I am a victim of the Islamic Republic, but I will not become a victim of a foreign war.
I fight repression, but I also fight the destruction of Iran.
I am the enemy of a system that crushes human beings; but I am also the enemy of any power that seeks to turn Iran into a testing ground for operations and seizure.
Away with the criminal hand of Netanyahu and his hired agents from our homeland.
And away with the hand of any Iranian warmonger who, from abroad, demands bombs and missiles for the homeland.
And away with the hand of any foreign politician who sees Iran not as the people’s home, but as an instrument for bargaining and rivalry.
Iran will be freed by the Iranian people—not by NATO bombs, not by pleading letters, not by “savior” poses, and not by blood-soaked power scenarios.
And if anyone still does not understand, it must be repeated once more:
Warmongers do not represent me.
Reza Fani Yazdi
January 18, 2026