Opinion: Iranians want one thing: replacement of the terrorist regime

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Iran’s Islamic regime is the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. The regime’s greatest victims are the Iranian people.

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Iranians have been fighting to be free for the last 43 years. A series of protests have broken out in Iran after the killing of a 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who was beaten to death by the morality police in Tehran.

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Now the regime is killing the protesters and, as before, they have shut down the internet to cut off the people from the outside world to conceal their crimes and violations of human rights.

During Iran’s November 2019 protests, the authorities killed over 3,000 people in only three days and carried out mass arrests in its aftermath. As in the previous protests in Iran, the regime’s security forces are using lethal force unlawfully against the vast majority of protesters, shooting them in the head and beating protesters with batons with the intent to kill.  

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The protests in Iran are not about modifying the morality police and hijab rules. Iranians are fighting to overthrow a terrorist regime that, among its other crimes, had banned the purchase and import of COVID-19 vaccines made in the U.S. and the U.K. that would have prevented the deaths of thousands of unvaccinated citizens.

They want to overthrow a terrorist regime that has destroyed the natural ecological balance of the country due to corruption and mismanagement and has imprisoned and killed environmentalists.

They want to overthrow a terrorist regime that is one of the most discriminatory towards LGBT people.

They want to overthrow a terrorist regime that has killed hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters and political prisoners since 1979 and to overthrow a terrorist regime whose Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intentionally shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 that took the lives of 176 passengers (55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents) and crew.

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Even though Canada’s House of Commons passed a motion in June 2018 to immediately list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, no action has been taken by the federal government so far. The IRGC must be immediately listed as a terrorist organization and an explanation is expected as to why there has been a four-year delay.  

I was born in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. My parents had to leave their hometown, Abadan, after Iraqis managed to surround it on three sides. They moved to the Isfahan province, where I was born.

The two pillars of Ruhollah Khomeini’s rule were exporting the “Islamic Revolution” and domestic repression. The war enabled the regime to justify domestic repression. Therefore, the Iran-Iraq war that could have ended as early as 1982 was pursued by Khomeini until 1988.

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My childhood memories are full of stories about running into the underground shelters, air raid sirens, rising smoke from the civilian areas as well as the oil refinery facilities and the sounds of the windows shaking due to the warplanes bombing.

The regime in Iran stole my dreams, my childhood and my youth. I left my country in 2005 and was always scared of travelling back to Iran due to the regime’s arbitrary detention of foreign and dual nationals for political and economic gains.

In 2019, my dad in Iran was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and I took the risk to travel to see him. I was questioned at the airport about my university major, my job and the reasons why I live in Canada. While answering the questions, I was thinking about imploring them to let me see my father only for one minute if they ended up arresting me. It was the last time I was in Iran.

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My father knew how bad his cancer was and begged me not to attend his funeral if he did not survive it. My father passed away in February 2021 and I was not able to be at his bedside and hold his hand.  

He was a man who always encouraged me to stand by my values and not to remain silent in the face of injustice.

The world powers should know that talking and condemning the regime in Iran is not enough. Iran needs urgent global action. Hundreds of pages are needed to list the regime’s crimes since 1979. There are simply no limits to this regime’s brutality.

After 43 years, Iranians are united and what they want can be summarized in two words: regime change. The regime must be brought down in the interest of all Iranians and the world.

Mandana (Mandy) Sobhanzadeh is an associate professor at Mount Royal University. She has a PhD in physics.