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** A Thirst for Freedom: The Case for Supporting Iran's People ([link removed])
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by Majid Rafizadeh • August 23, 2025 at 5:00 am
* How can the West, particularly European states, which never hesitate to lecture others on democracy and human rights, stay silent when one of the most oppressed peoples in the world was risking everything for those very ideals?
* It is high time for an approach that does not cower behind diplomatic fears or economic loss.
* To the European Union: stop delivering lectures on human rights while turning your back on those who fight and die for them.
* The shift from empowering a regime to empowering its people would mark the first time in more than four decades that Western policy truly aligned with democratic values.
* It is also worth asking why is it considered acceptable for Iran's rulers to openly call for the assassination of a U.S. president and attempt to assassinate Western officials, yet somehow unacceptable for Western leaders to plainly say, "we support the Iranian people's right to freedom"?
* The choice facing the West, particularly European governments and the Trump administration, is simple. Continue down the path of quiet complicity, driven by fear and greed, or choose to be remembered as champions of freedom.
* History does not remember as heroes those who stayed silent in the face of tyranny.... This is the moment to choose which side you will be on.

Iranians have taken to the streets again and again, often at unimaginable personal risk, demanding the right to live in dignity and determine their own future. Each time, they have been met with the full force of a ruthless regime. During these moments of crisis, Western governments often chose silence. The Obama administration, in particular, stood aside during the 2009 Green Movement, when millions of Iranians filled the streets, demanding their stolen votes back. Pictured: Iranians march at a Green Movement protest on June 16, 2009, in Tehran. (Image source: Milad Avazbeigi/Wikimedia Commons)

For more than 40 years, the people of Iran have lived under a suffocating dictatorship that has stripped them of their freedoms, denied them basic human rights, and crushed any glimmer of hope for a better future. Yet despite the unrelenting repression, the Iranian people have never stopped dreaming of liberty. They have taken to the streets again and again, often at unimaginable personal risk, demanding the right to live in dignity and determine their own future. Each time, they have been met with the full force of a ruthless regime that treats dissent as treason and humanity as an afterthought. This struggle for freedom is not a fleeting political cause — it is the very heartbeat of a nation that refuses to surrender its spirit.

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