Jonathan Harounoff - What does a free Iran look like?

Jonathan Harounoff is a leading voice on Iran, Israel and the Middle East, he currently serves as Israel’s international spokesperson at the United Nations and is the acclaimed author of Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt.

Listen to his 18 min talk at our first ever KEN talks event in London.

Brought to you by Joice Global & Shalom Speakers. Supported by Israel Bonds.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

There's this image that I can't stop thinking about. It was taken in December twenty twenty-five. And it shows a man crouched, head bowed, sitting in the middle of the street in Tehran. This is that image. He's unfazed despite the looming threat. And approaching him are a dozen regime officials on motorbikes. Now this photo tells you more about the Iranian people than 1,000 headlines ever could. And the reason for that is simple. Because we sometimes talk about Iran as a problem that needs to be solved, a nuclear problem, a geopolitical quagmire, a fundamentalist regime that just has to be extinguished. But Iran itself is not the problem. It is a people. The regime governing and brutalizing the Iranian people is the problem. And that's what brings me here today. This evening, I want to talk about a question that doesn't get explored enough. It's a question that looks at what does a free Iran look like? Away from the headlines, away from the government, away from the religious fanatics, but the people focusing on the people itself. What could a free Iran look like? And it's a question that I've spent the past 10 years or so trying to answer. Trying to answer by looking back at my own Persian heritage, speaking to Iranians inside Iran, and across the diaspora, where there are millions and millions of Iranians, all of which culminated in the book I recently wrote, Unveiled, Inside Iran's Women Life Freedom Revolt. Now, if I ask anyone outside of Iran what comes to mind when you hear the word Iran, you're likely going to hear a number of quite predictable responses, which include probably Supreme Leader, Ayatollah, nuclear missiles, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, sanctions, or perhaps more recently the Strait of Hormuz. But there is so much more than that. What I'm focusing on is the fantastic people inside Iran away from the regime. One of the greatest misperceptions when it comes to Iran is that the regime and the people of Iran are the same. That the 93 million people inside Iran are the same as the 47-year-old regime that has brutalized the people of Iran for so long. And one of the even bigger misperceptions is that the greatest pressure that Iran is facing is from the outside, from the United States, from Israel. The reality is the greatest pressure that the Islamic Republic is facing is from within. And that pressure really reached a breaking point in September of 2022. It started with a young Iranian Kurdish woman named Masa Jina Amini. On September the 13th, 2022, Masa was visiting Tehran with relatives. She was just weeks away from starting a microbiology program at university, on her way to realizing her dream of becoming a doctor. She came from a predominantly Kurdish city called Sakhez. But on that particular day, she was visiting Tehran. And as she left the metro station of Tehran, she was stopped by the country's morality police, the notorious agency designed and introduced in order to uphold the country's very strict mandatory dress codes. She was arrested, accused of not wearing her head covering too strictly, she was wearing it too loosely, she was taken to a local police station, and she was beaten to a pulp. Three days later, on September the 16th, 2022, she was declared brain dead. And her killing created a nationwide uproar, an international outrage. It brought about this revolution, this uprising that we've all come to know as the Woman Life Freedom Movement. And it wasn't just a movement with empty slogans. It had one particular slogan that packed a whole load of meaning, which is very relevant to tonight's talk. Woman Life Freedom, Zan Zandagi Azadi. And behind this slogan, again, wasn't just empty words. It encompassed an entire vision for what a free Iran could actually look like. Where there are extraordinarily brave people who are able to unlock a freedom that they no longer, that they were never experiencing before. Brave people like Rahale Amiri, a trained psychologist from the city of Kerman. I had the honor of meeting her and welcoming her to the United Nations on International Women's Day this past March. She was unbelievably composed, extremely eloquent, but the thing you noticed almost immediately is her eye. On November 2022, she took part in one of those women life freedom protest movements. She stood at the front of one of these uprisings. And like thousands of other women inside Iran, she was shot in the eye. She was left permanently blind. And instead of using, wearing that injury as something to be ashamed of, she's worn it as a badge of defiance. In a free Iran, Rahele wouldn't have to use some of her injuries as a tool of defiance. She would just be able to live freely, wholly, unafraid. Or people like Saleh Mohammadi, 19 years old, a talented wrestler, someone who had aspirations for representing his country and eventually the Olympics. But his life was cut short. In Iran, his strength and his talent was not what mattered. His defiance mattered. And for that, he was executed earlier this year. In a free Iran, Saleh would be lauded and celebrated for his athletic prowess. He would be standing in the limelight and not in the gallows. People like Shiva Ramini, another extraordinarily brave lioness, very talented athlete. She was a futsal player, indoor football, and she got to represent her national team. She wore her kit proudly, but unfortunately, she had to flee her country because she was photographed one day playing the beautiful game with her hair uncovered. She was another extraordinary person I had the privilege of welcoming to the United Nations this past March. In a free Iran, Shiva would be able to play the beautiful game however she likes, with her hair covered or with her hair uncovered. And then there are individuals like Giselle Shamad, a quite extraordinary individual. She was born two years after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Her father, Jamshid Shamad, or Jimmy, is an Iranian German businessman and software engineer. He's also a US green card holder. And in December in 2020, he was on a business trip flying through Dubai, where he was stopped and abducted by agents part of the Islamic Republic and smuggled back to Iran, where he was put on death row. Now Giselle, who's a trained emergency room nurse who's based in California, dropped everything and she transformed her life in order to get her father back home. She traveled the world. She petitioned every single government accessible to her. She even spoke at the United Nations, all to free her father Jimmy. At this point, Jimmy, who had been held on death row for about three or four years, had started to develop Parkinson's disease, yet had no access to his family or the outside world. And on Monday, October 28th, 2024, Giselle received the phone call that anyone would dread, much less a child. She was informed that her father had been executed. And worse, the regime refused to return her father's body in his death. There was a whole struggle to return his body. Now, you might be wondering, what does a free Iran actually look like? Well, in my view, I would contend that a free Iran is a country where women are empowered and not controlled, where there's no compulsory dress code, no morality police, where women are able to thrive in the fields of art, government, business, economics, what have you. And I oftentimes think of individuals like Mariam Bani Hashimi, who in her 30s climbed the very difficult corporate ladder in Iran to she became CEO. And it was one of the most unprecedented things to happen in such a place like Iran. However, within a few years, she had to leave her country because she faced relentless persecution and harassment by IRGC agents. In a free Iran, Mariam would be able to scale the heights of the corporate world uninterrupted, unimpeded, and regardless of her gender. In a free Iran, you would have journalists who were able to report on what's really happening in there without having to worry about their freedom or their lives. In a free Iran, you would have the millions and millions and millions of first-generation and second-generation Iranians who were forced to leave their country return to Iran with the opportunity to make Iran great again. And there's no coincidence that today some of the biggest Fortune 500, FTSE 100 companies and governments consists of talented individuals of Iranian heritage. You just have to look at the current CEO of Uber, co-founder of Tinder, co-founder of Dropbox. And you also look at government officials across Europe, from Belgium to Germany to Sweden, so many people who are talented Iranians, and that's one of the greatest tragedies of the past 47 years of the Islamic Republic, this enormous brain drain that has taken hold and has deprived the beautiful country of Iran of such great talents when these people have ended up taking their talents elsewhere. If this vision of a future free Iran is so clear and so uncontroversial, one might wonder why hasn't this happened yet? Why hasn't it come to fruition? What's the holdup? And the answer is quite simple. There is immense power and force that's trying to prevent this from happening. There is a system of repression in the Islamic Republic that will do whatever it takes to shut down dissent. There is currently an internet blackout, one that has gone exceeded 70 days, and the UN's Department of Human Rights has called it one of the longest and most severe shutdowns ever recorded globally. But I'm still hopeful. And you ask, we ask, what next? I want to end. I've spoken for a bit of time, and I recognize that I've been speaking about women's rights and about women cutting their hair in protest, and I'm neither a woman nor do I have any hair. But this is something that's very emotional to me. So I want to end on this note. Rather than me talking about what a future Iran could look like and how it could transform the Middle East and the world, and how in a free Iran, you would have an Iran that is focused not on, doesn't have this maniacal obsession on exporting terrorism, on arming proxies, uh, on funneling billions and billions of dollars into pumping up a dangerous and expensive foreign policy, but would instead be in reinvesting all of this incredible capital into its own people, into its own environment. Iran is an extraordinary country. It's a country that I haven't yet been able to go to, but a country that my grandparents and great-grandparents came from, and my friends and family friends come from, and they wish one day that they can go back to. So I'm hoping that we can all one day visit Mekaliyah to Iran, or at least visit Iran. And I'd like to close with a message of hope, not by me, but by two of the incredible Iranian women that I had the opportunity to speak to and that I spot I gave a spotlight to in this talk, Giselle and Mariam.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Evening, London, and good evening to all the great people here at Kent Talks tonight. My name is Gisel Sharma. The Islamic Ayatollah regime in Iran kidnapped, tortured, and murdered my own father. Our two people, the Jewish people and the Iranian people, have experienced massacre after massacre by jihadists. And we know this doesn't stop until we stop the jihadists. So the two great diasporas, then the Jewish diaspora and the Iranian diaspora have been doing great work. Continue what you're doing to shed light on their darkness, to show truth where they're lying. Because when Iran is free, Iranians and Israelis will be friends again. I think we've been for millennia because no jihadist force can break the bond that has been formed over thousands of years.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

We will be free again. Good evening, people here at Chem Talks. My name is Mariam Bani Hashemi. An Iranian woman, lived in Iran for 34 years. My whole life has been shaped by the struggle and fight for freedom under the Islamic Republic. For years, I dreamed of a free Iran where no girl would ever feel like a second-class citizen. But to be honest, it's not just about women. It's about 19 million Iranians held hostage by a regime who has stolen their prosperity, freedom, and future. So I dream, I hope, a free Iran which is in peace with the whole world, where there is no kid is forced to chant get to Israel, get to UK every morning before going to the classroom. Please don't stop talking about Iranian people and their struggles until we all celebrate free Iran.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

What does a free Iran look like? We've spent about 15 minutes potentially talking about what a free Iran looks like and how it's probably not a matter of if but when. But there's another question that we should also be talking about. Because a free Iran isn't just going to come out of the blue, it's not a passive exercise. And I would suggest that we also explore the question of what is our responsibility, what we can do to help bring about this future. Can we reach out to our friends and colleagues and family relatives of Iranian heritage and ask them about their stories, their lives, the vision that they have for a future Iran, and what we can do to help them? You'll be surprised that there'll be very many tangible things that you can actually do from your specific lines of work, areas of expertise that do a tremendous amount of good for these Iranian people. So that the free Iran doesn't just emerge on the sidelines with you as a spectator, but where you're an active participant. Thank you.