Freedom Cannot Be Delivered by Missiles

When I first heard about the strikes that reportedly killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, my reaction was not celebration but shock, followed quickly by a heavy sense of dread. For decades, the system he represented has brutalised Iranians, especially women and girls. It has policed women’s bodies, crushed dissent, and punished those who demanded basic freedoms. Yet the idea that ‘change’ might arrive through a decapitation strike, one that reportedly killed thousands of innocent Iranian civilians, does not feel like liberation to me. Even when a regime is deeply repressive, the sudden, violent removal of a leader through foreign military force raises troubling questions about what comes next and who ultimately pays the price.

For years, I have spoken about women’s rights in Iran and the long struggle against institutional discrimination and repression. Removing one man does not dismantle the institutions that enforce repression. The courts remain. The security apparatus remains. The morality policing logic that governs women’s lives does not disappear overnight. The culture of impunity that allows authorities to silence dissent is still there. A moment like this can create openings, but it can also trigger succession battles, harsher crackdowns, or chaos. In such instability, it is often women and children who bear the first and most severe consequences.

Iranian women are not asking to be “saved” through bombs or airstrikes. They are asserting their right to determine what liberation means and how it should be pursued. When violence escalates, it is ordinary families, not political leaders or distant strategists, who lose the most. It is mothers who bury their children, siblings who grow up with trauma, and communities that must rebuild lives shattered by war.

Multiple reports have said that a deadly strike hit a girls’ school in Minab, killing a large number of students. In that moment, the rhetoric of intervention feels painfully disconnected from the lives it claims to help. We are talking about mothers trying to identify their daughters, classmates grieving friends, and families permanently scarred.

I believe it is possible, and necessary, to oppose repression inside Iran while also opposing foreign military intervention. I can condemn a regime that arrests women for showing their hair while also condemning military actions that predictably kill civilians and reinforce cycles of violence. Human rights cannot be delivered like a trophy through force. They are built through legitimacy, accountability, and the consent of the people who must live with the consequences of political change.

Within the Iranian diaspora, I have seen painful divisions emerge in response to these events. Some people believe any blow to the regime is justified, even if it comes through foreign military action. Some have even expressed joy, focusing solely on the weakening of the regime without acknowledging that innocent Iranians, including children, are dying. Others view the strikes as a catastrophe that will radicalise violence and destroy the fragile foundations of civil society.

What worries me most is when grief and anger turn into dehumanisation. When we begin to treat civilian deaths as acceptable collateral damage, or accuse fellow Iranians of betrayal because they refuse to cheer a war, we lose the ethical center that movements for women’s rights depend on.

As someone outside Iran, I believe diaspora voices have a responsibility to speak with humility. Those of us living abroad are not the ones under bombs or facing crackdowns on the streets. The people inside the country carry those consequences. That means we must be responsible in how we speak. We must clearly condemn repression and civilian harm, and avoid rumours or unverified claims. Most importantly, we should amplify the voices of Iranian women and civil society rather than using them as symbols in someone else’s geopolitical narrative.

Iranian women are organisers, students, workers, artists... They disagree with one another, debate tactics, and develop plans for change. Their struggle is not confined to social media or the streets of Tehran. It extends to rural communities and marginalised ethnic regions where economic hardship shapes what resistance can look like. When bombs fall or sanctions tighten, women are often the first to absorb the shock, through lost income, disrupted education, and increased burdens within families.

I hope for an Iran where women have full legal personhood and equal rights. Equal inheritance, equal custody rights, equal standing in marriage and divorce, and protection from both state and domestic violence. Sustainable change requires independent courts, rule of law, free media, accountable security forces, and genuinely competitive elections. Above all, it requires safety. Women’s rights cannot flourish in a landscape defined by airstrikes, fear, and collective punishment. If the international community truly wants to help, the focus should be on protecting civilians, supporting documentation of abuses, strengthening civil society, and creating meaningful accountability, without sacrificing the lives of the very people whose freedom we claim to defend.

(As told to Fozia Yasin)

Pattie Ehsaei is an Iranian-American financial expert, Founder and CEO of AccompliSHE. She lives in Los Angeles.

This article is part of Outlook 's March 21 issue 'Bombs Do Not Liberate Women' which looks at the conflict in West Asia following US and Israel’s attacks on Iran leading to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the world wondered in loud silence, again, Whose War Is It Anyway?