The US and Iran are nearing the conclusion of the temporary truce.
Internet blackout in Iran has entered its 50th day and several Iranian dissidents continue to be at the risk of executions.
The interview discusses in detail the implications of the ongoing conflict for Iranian citizens, their rights and their resistance.
The US-Israel war on Iran has once again arrived at a fragile juncture as the temporary truce nears its end and no conclusive talks among the warring countries seem to be falling in place. Meanwhile, the internet blackout in Iran has entered its 50th day, which is being termed “unprecedented” by watchdog agencies. Political dissidents in the country continue to be at the risk of executions, even as verified news trickles out at a painful pace from the region.
While the media is flooded with updates from the diplomatic talks determining the geo-political power play, the Iranian people, whose lives remain hanging in the balance, are barely at the centre of these narratives.
Sara Hassani, a Canadian-Iranian assistant professor of political science and women’s and gender studies at the Providence college, US, speaks to Apeksha Priydarshini for Outlook on the implications of the ongoing conflict for the citizens of Iran and the political consequences they’re faced with due to their own struggle against the Islamic Regime’s rule. Edited excerpts:
Can the US-Israeli war on Iran be perceived as a cultural war? Is it being perceived as an attempt to erase the Iranian identity, due to the geopolitically significant position that Iran occupies?
While I don’t think this war is about “erasing Iranian identity” per say, it does seem that, contrary to the disingenuous claims that the war is being waged in the interests of the Iranian people, at least some of the US and especially Israeli war hawks are seeking to realise state collapse and civil war of some kind. It is also worth noting that all three adversaries are invoking ultra conservative and religious nationalist ideologies that can be said to have a cultural dimension: In the United States, where the administration has the support of MAGA’s Christian nationalism, this open ultraconservative nationalism is explicitly invoked by the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s crusade rhetoric; in Israel, which is now ruled by its most conservative administration ever, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet now consists of key Otzma Yehudit politicians like Ben-Gvir who boasts ultraconservative Kahanite views; this, while the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the world’s only theocratic and fascist dictatorships, defines itself as a harbinger of “Islamic Revolution.” Each of these ultraconservative religious nationalisms can be said to have a loosely defined cultural dimension that informs the rhetoric of state officials, but it’s important to recognise that the war is ultimately about imperial interests: specifically, the rivalry between the competing imperial projects of the US and Israel, on the one hand, and the Islamic Republic, on the other hand. In a sense, each of these three right-wing governments are now engaged in the war as a matter of political survival.
The cultural tone of the war can also be traced to the aftermath of the January 2020 assassination of IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani, when President Donald Trump threatened that any Iranian reprisals against US forces would result in the targeting of 52 Iranian sites, some of them of deep cultural and historical significance. As recently as March, such threats have become a reality, particularly in the wake of US-Israeli strikes on historically protected sites, among them the Qajar-era Golestan Palace, the 17th century Chehel Sotoun Palace, dozens of museums, and prehistoric caves and structures near the Khorramabad Valley, much of the damage confirmed by UNESCO. Sites such as these are supposed to be shielded under international humanitarian law and the 1954 Hague Convention, to which all parties are signatories. Their destruction represents a deeply tragic and costly violation of that law. Yet none of these losses—as grievous as they are—are as precious as the lives of ordinary Iranians, who have been left utterly defenseless against US-Israeli bombardment by a tyrannical government that deploys self-serving nationalist and cultural rhetoric, while investing billions in offensive war capabilities and virtually nothing in the protection of its own population from the horrors of modern warfare.
Seven weeks into this horrid war, it is my view that Iranians find themselves desperately wedged between an increasingly fascist and totalitarian government that for 47 years has waged both a cultural and existential war against its own diverse peoples, and a relentless US-Israeli bombardment that threatens their lives, livelihoods and essential means and infrastructures of subsistence. However dire the implications of this war for Iran’s historical and cultural heritage, they pale in comparison to the existential threat it poses to civilian life itself. Iranians seeking dignity and freedom deserve real allies; instead, they are being further victimised and terrorised.
In a conversation organised by the Pulitzer Center, a couple of Iranian filmmakers stated that the Iranian diaspora is currently deeply fractured in terms of political positions. What are your thoughts on this?
My lived experience of Iranian diaspora politics differs sharply from what I read and hear in the headlines. On the one hand, it is true that Iranians in the diaspora hold many divergent political views and readily express their varied political leanings. On the other hand, I believe that in recent months, the media’s push to manufacture consent for the war on Iran has sown and amplified the greatest disagreements among them.
For all their differences, Iranians in the diaspora were already deeply anxious about the safety and wellbeing of friends and loved ones back home before the US-Israeli war on Iran, due to the massacre that transpired in January. That anxiety has only deepened since the bombing began. The converging threats of the regime’s police state and the devastating US and Israeli bombardment campaign have left most people I know feeling horrified, devastated and powerless in the face of their people’s suffering. While the vast majority is eager to see an end to the Islamic Republic, they are equally concerned about Iranian sovereignty and the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Iranians and the critical infrastructures that sustain them—and it is precisely this concern, that, in my experience of the diaspora, informs the majority’s opposition to the war.
More recently, the ultraconservative push in the media to centre the son of the popularly deposed Pahlavi monarch represents the most harmful and divisive effort driving strong disagreement in the diaspora. It aims to legitimise the US-Israeli campaign by selling a false nostalgia for a supposedly “free Iran” that existed before the dark days of clerical tyranny. It is worth noting that very few outside of the inflated monarchist camp—which has captured an outsized platform through US, Israeli and Persian-language media outlets like BBC Persian, Iran International and Manoto—have expressed any support for foreign military intervention. While this faction has been the loudest, it is by no means greatest in number, and as the horrors of this war accumulate, there is ample evidence to suggest that even some of that support is eroding.
Most Iranians I know understand viscerally that bombardment does not produce liberation—it suffocates and forecloses it. The tragedy is that in the consolidated, corporatised media landscape of the United States, these voices rarely break through the noise. Worse yet, where inordinate focus is paid to a “fractured” diasporic politics, we lose sight of the crucial fact that the most important voices to hear and learn from in this moment are not in the diaspora, but in Iran, where an internet blackout has joined forces with a brutal aerial bombardment to silence the views and voices of millions.
How does someone dissenting against the Islamic regime negotiate with the ongoing aggression? Is this a welcome intervention or does it make the struggle even more difficult?
For the dissidents who have spent years building the infrastructure of resistance, the ongoing aggression has been nothing short of catastrophic. Iran has had a vibrant history of dissent against the Islamic regime, dating back to the immediate aftermath of the 1979 revolution. This dissent has only grown more democratic, progressive and widespread, culminating in the country-wide revolts and uprisings of 2017-2018, 2019, 2022-2023 and 2025-2026. As formidable, brave and increasingly organised as these dissidents and their movements are, their efforts have been severely constrained by the martial law and militarised siege that has accompanied the US-Israeli war. As we saw with the regime’s rhetoric during the January 8-9 protests, the war has been seized upon as a pretext to raid homes, arrest suspected activists on charges of complicity without cause, evidence, or legal basis, and redouble the torturous pressure on political prisoners—many of whom have been executed since the start of the war, with thousands more at risk of the same fate. As the regime subjects upwards of 90 million Iranians to an unprecedented internet blackout—cutting them off from communication with friends and family, vital income streams and news from the outside world—it simultaneously severs their access to encrypted domestic communication channels, suffocating their capacity to organise. Despite their mutually performed antagonisms and the often divergent rhetoric of their officials, the US, Israeli and Iranian governments are converging toward the same ends: the stifling of Iranian activists’ efforts, the silencing of their voices and the undermining of their democratic aspirations.
Where does the Iranian community stand vis-à-vis the Palestinian genocide?
The Iranian community, whether in the diaspora or in Iran, is far from a monolith and I hesitate to characterise them through a single stance. Nevertheless, we can say that, historically, Iranians have supported the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination and that a great many are deeply troubled by and outspoken against the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Iranian opposition to the Palestinian genocide should not, however, be equated with support for the Iranian regime nor the regime’s own repressive and genocidal rhetoric, politics or policies. Despite the regime’s rhetoric, its actions have proven that it is not a principled or consistent ally of Palestinian liberation. And the Iranian people, while in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, have protested specifically against the regime’s disastrous foreign policy, i.e., its exorbitant funding for the so-called “Axis of Resistance” merely to advance its own regional interests (not the liberation of the oppressed) and to the detriment of the domestic public.
What kind of role do you think Iranian cinema has played in shaping the global perceptions of Iran and its cultural politics?
Iranian cinema is an artform born of severe censorship and state repression and it has responded by becoming both a crucial site of internal dissent and a powerful counter-narrative to the political stereotypes that reduce Iran and its culture to a threat or abstraction. Globally, it has projected an alternative, humanised and relatable image of the country—one that goes beyond the state’s representation and illuminates the diverse and complex social lives of Iranians with an eye to their everyday struggles and forms of resistance.
Iranian filmmakers have often stated that their most beautiful work has emerged through the darkest periods of repression. Do you think this ongoing war will change this?
While adversity has undeniably sharpened the gaze of Iranian filmmakers, I want to resist the premise that war and repression are somehow a gift to art. Though I do not doubt the perseverance of Iranian artists and filmmakers, such a framing risks aestheticising real suffering. Bombing does not sharpen creativity; it destroys the very infrastructure on which creativity depends—schools, studios, archives, the transmission of craft between generations. A music school in Tehran was recently reduced to rubble. Film is no different. Without a ceasefire, what is at risk is not merely creative output of filmmakers but the institutional memory, apprenticeships and human relationships that make the country’s cinema possible at all.
What do you think about US and European countries recognising Iranian cinema for its excellence, yet dehumanising the country’s people and their suffering?
It is, in my view, the height of hypocrisy. There is a self-congratulatory tone every time Iranian artists and filmmakers are celebrated by Western festivals and awards ceremonies and virtually no critical self-reflection about the policies their governments pursue. This year, Jafar Panahi’s critically acclaimed It Was Only An Accident was nominated for an Oscar and the ceremony proceeded—with Panahi present—without any meaningful opposition to, or even acknowledgement of, the US-Israeli bombing of Iran. Lavish festivals and academies generally comment on Iranian politics when it serves a liberal agenda, as they did in the aftermath of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. Otherwise, they applaud Iranian art and remain silent about Iranian lives. That contradiction does not go unnoticed. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime itself censors and bans films and arrests Iranian filmmakers, as part and parcel of its broader system of repression.
How do you imagine a truly free Iran?
A truly free Iran can only be realised from the bottom-up and it would require the collective political imagination and energy of 93 million Iranians. It might look like a secular democratic republic where freedom, equality and parity are assured for all Iranians regardless of gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion or sexuality. A country dedicated to true social justice, improving people’s lives and welfare, with uncontested rights to assemble, unionise, strike—not as a privilege granted by the state, but as a dignity belonging to all. The prisons built to hold dissidents, poets, labour organisers, the poor, environmentalists, outspoken women and students would be emptied, their doors sealed. A justice system so long wielded as a weapon of political terror would be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up—oriented not toward retribution and punishment, but toward restoration and repair. In a truly free Iran, there would be no censorship, no limits on social, artistic, humanistic, or scientific inquiry and no political figure, office, or decision-making body beyond the reproach of the public. A truly free Iran would be free of domestic tyranny at home (whether clerical or monarchist) and free from imperial intervention abroad.
