Prince Reza PahlaviSix months ago, tonight, Tehran went dark. All of Iran went dark. And into that darkness, millions of Iranians walked out of their homes anyway. January 8th and 9th were not just two nights of protest. They were the night Iran’s silence broke. Millions came into the streets, into the squares, onto their rooftops — but the regime answered them with bullets. Tens of thousands of my compatriots were killed in those forty-eight hours. Tens of thousands more have been arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die since.
They came out, determined and brave. I think of them every day. On those two nights I lost countrymen I will never get to meet. I do not hear a statistic when I hear the number 40,000. I see a son who did not come home to his mother. A daughter who will not sit at her family’s table again. I think of each of them the way I would think of my own child, my own brother, my own sister. I carry the weight of every one of those names. But the families of the fallen I meet with, week after week, hearten our nation’s will to carry on. Their children did not die in vain. They died for freedom, and they died with pride.
History will remember what these men and women did; I will make sure of it. Like the resistance who stood against tyranny in occupied Europe, and like the revolutionaries who fought for liberty in America. But theirs was a particular bravery. They had no army, no air cover, nothing but the belief in what they stood for. They stood anyway. A united nation choosing to face the guns together rather than live one more day in fear. The men and women of the 8th and 9th of January will be remembered in Iran’s history as the greatest generation that preferred to die free and standing than to live cowered on their knees.
To the international community, I ask this: do not let a negotiating table in Geneva or Islamabad erase what happened in the streets of Tehran, Mashhad, and Kermanshah. They died for freedom. And when they are free, the Strait of Hormuz will open. The nuclear threat will end. And we will have true peace.
I have told my compatriots: what you did on January 8th and 9th cannot be undone. Together, we will reclaim our country’s rightful place in the world, our national dignity, and honor the lives of our heroes. Now is the time to reassess, regroup, and rededicate ourselves to victory. We honor the fallen by finishing what they started. A free Iran is no longer a matter of hope. It is a matter of fact.
And know that my brave compatriots are not just fighting for their own liberation but for the peace and stability of the world.
