Commentary
Maysoon Majidi: The Iranian people are victims of two kinds of violence
The greatest part of the population do want, most of all, that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei finally step aside. But that doesn’t mean they will accept interference from Israel or anyone else.
In a Southwest Asia riven by ever-deepening tensions, the Iranian people once again find themselves trapped in a story they never wrote. They have no voice in the decisions that matter, no sway over the regional and global power plays around them, and so millions are turned into passive subjects of forces that have nothing to do with their own safety or future.
The latest Israeli strikes on military sites inside Iran do nothing to break the logic that has ruled the region for decades – a proxy-war logic that treats whole populations as expendable pawns. Analysts may frame the raids as an effort to cripple the Islamic Republic’s armed apparatus or even to hasten regime change, yet one fact holds true: civilians always pay the highest price. Men, women and children are excluded both from planning the wars and from drawing up the outlines of any peace.
At the same time, Iranians are facing not just an external threat but a profound internal crisis. In the wake of the Israeli attacks, the government of the Ayatollahs has tightened its grip under the pretext of a state of emergency. The country has seen an escalation of repression: night-time arrests of activists, raids on dissidents’ homes and heavy internet blackouts have been reported in several provinces. The government is exploiting a state of war to justify institutional violence, shrink public space and control political speech. The clampdown is fiercest in Kurdistan and Sistan-Baluchistan – regions already battered during the recent uprisings, when they paid the steepest toll in terms of lives lost.
None of this is new. Over the years the Islamic Republic has honed what might be called an “ethnic-conflict engineering” strategy – divide and rule – to weaken protest movements. By stoking fear of federalism and pitting the center against the periphery, state institutions have managed to sideline the social-justice demands of marginalized nationalities: Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs and Turkmen.
Ground-level reality shows that despite relentless repression, these communities, subjected to historical discrimination, have been – and remain – central to the civil resistance against authoritarian rule. They are doing this by demanding legal equality, political participation and social justice, despite the repression and the crushing costs they are made to pay. Every demand, every free voice, is branded an assault, a cry for separatism; every act of resistance is cast as treason.
Yet Iran’s present turmoil reaches far beyond its borders. The crisis lays bare how the absence of democracy and accountability has turned the country into a battlefield for outside powers. Nuclear programs, rising military spending and opaque decision-making have not only drained national resources, but have created the conditions for foreign meddling.
Today Iranians are enduring two kinds of violence: the internal violence of a state that represses, censors and tortures, and the external violence of rival powers jockeying for influence over a nation that has never known real peace.
To these we must add a third kind of violence, more subtle but no less devastating: international abandonment.
The greatest part of the population do want, most of all, that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei finally step aside. But that doesn’t mean they will accept interference from Israel or anyone else. The future perspectives are made even murkier by the lack of a strong, recognized political alternative and any concrete blueprint for what should come after the Islamic Republic: a vacuum which feeds deep collective anxiety about the country’s fate, as the brutally repressed protests in recent years have shown.
Against this backdrop, it is the responsibility of the international community – especially the European Union and states that claim to uphold human rights – to move beyond the passive role of a mere observer.
Europe, and Italy in particular, should put forward an independent narrative of the reality in Iran, one not subordinated to geopolitics but aligned with human rights and social justice. They should exert sustained diplomatic pressure to halt internal repression, offer open support for independent media and activists, safe political asylum pathways for those in danger and tangible backing for non-violent democratic movements. Only such concrete measures can prove that Europe truly stands on the side of human rights.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/il-popolo-iraniano-vittima-di-due-violenze on 2025-06-17