Iranian civilians are bombed, sanctioned and brutalized, and then asked, “Why don’t you rise up?” As if uprising were a matter of mood. As if war has ever birthed a peaceful transition into democracy. As if removing a dictator automatically dismantles the structures of inequality that sustained him.

It never has. Not in Chile. Not in Iraq. Not in Libya. And yet, Iran is expected to perform what the world has never managed: to bleed its way into freedom while foreign powers light the match and walk away.

The missiles have stopped, for now. But peace has not followed.

In Iran, the regime’s war against its own people never pauses. It only shifts tactics. After Israel struck the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in June, killing men responsible for torture, executions and massacres, some civilians felt momentary relief. But that relief was quickly replaced by dread of bombs and civilian casualties.

From California, I watch the aftermath unfold.

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Rights groups report a surge in arbitrary arrests and secret executions among ethnic minorities. These are not side effects. They are a strategy. Every time the regime is threatened, from abroad or within, it cracks down harder.

I grew up in a Kurdish region where resistance was long familiar but solidarity was rare. That changed in 2022. For the first time, Kurds, Persians, Baluchis, Azeris, Arabs, rich and poor, devout and secular, moved together under one cry: “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (that is, “Woman, Life, Freedom”). A chant born in Kurdish pain echoed through the whole country.

The regime responded with greater violence. In Mahabad, ambulances were blocked and donated blood was confiscated. In Zahedan, children were gunned down. The regime treats minorities, women and the poor not just as collateral but as camouflage. Their bodies are offered up to preserve power and save face.

And still, from the outside, calls for regime change grow louder. Often from people who have never lived under a military dictatorship. Exiled monarchists, Western think tanks and media outlets, such as Fox News, push forward Reza Pahlavi, the former Shah’s son, as an alternative. But Iranians remember 1979, when one autocrat promised to be transitional and then drowned a revolution in blood. Another patriarch wrapped in modern language is not what people would fight for. Another foreign-backed savior who may consolidate instead of dismantle power.

Today, no figure, religious or secular, monarchist or reformist, has the trust to lead a country fractured by design. That is the regime’s genius: it doesn’t just repress, it divides. It turns neighbors into strangers, men and women into adversaries, ethnic groups into enemies, the young into suspects.

The global response plays along. The tools remain the same: silence, sanctions or bombs. But destruction is not liberation. Collapse is not transformation. And solidarity is not saviorism. If the world truly supports Iran’s people, it must stop mistaking ruin for rebirth.

This is a critical juncture in Iranian history: the people have no side to turn to, not their own regime, and not foreign powers. Will fear push them to turn on one another, especially the most vulnerable, or can they hold on to a fragile sense of unity? In a climate where trust is scarce and danger is constant, even dialogue becomes a risk.

A friend of mine, once fluent in Hafez and Sartre, now drifts through sleepless nights playing video games. He texted me: “Ask the sun not to rise.” He asks the light to undo itself. That is what this war does. It teaches the young to fear the dawn. I write for him. For those in bread lines. For the women whose names never make it into headlines, not to offer answers, to refuse complicity.

California prides itself on justice. But slogans are not lifelines. Are we listening to Iranian voices or projecting ourselves into their struggle? Are we standing with or speaking for?

Ava Homa teaches at Cal State Monterey Bay. Her books include the novel “Daughters of Smoke and Fire.”