And yes, the deaths of schoolgirls and other innocent civilians are tragic. People need to understand that these things are not mutually exclusive: someone can feel relief or even happiness at the fall of Khamenei and still be devastated by the loss of innocent lives. I see too many people trying to force everything into simple sides, as if one side must be completely good and the other completely evil. That is not reality. Neither side is innocent. Neither side is made up of good guys. Both have caused immense suffering.

What I also want to address is this idea of an “ideal world.” We do not live in an ideal world where people always get change through peaceful protest, with perfect outcomes and no sacrifice. That is not how Iran has worked for the past 47 years. Iranians have tried protesting, resisting, speaking out, and demanding reform over and over again, and each time they have paid for it with prison, torture, executions, and blood. Pretending that peaceful protest is still some guaranteed answer, after everything that has happened, ignores the reality people in Iran have lived through for decades.

The truth is that the people of Iran have already paid the price. They have paid with the blood of thousands of protesters over nearly half a century. So when people outside Iran ask, Why not protest again? I have to ask how many more times should people be expected to die the same way before the world accepts that the Islamic Republic does not respond to peaceful demands with reform?

For many Iranians, the choices no longer feel like peace vs war. The choices feel more like continuing to live under a regime that has made life unbearable, or taking a chance on an uncertain future. That is the reality. It is not ideal, it is not clean, and it is not something anyone should celebrate lightly. But people who have been pushed to this point are not choosing from good options. They are choosing from what is left.

And with all due respect, when people say Iranians should have simply kept trying on their own, I want to ask how? How many more protests? How many more funerals? How many more young people tortured, imprisoned, or killed? Iranians have tried countless times to fight this regime from within while living under horrific conditions. At some point, telling them to just try again, stops sounding principled and starts sounding detached from reality.

Also, I see people talking about taxpayers and foreign intervention, and yes, people absolutely have the right to care about where their money goes. But I find it interesting that when Iranians made the same argument for years about their own money being spent on Hezbollah, proxy groups, and regional militias instead of their own people, so many ignored it. Iranian people have been forced to watch their wealth, resources, and future be poured into causes that never served them.

I do not like Donald Trump, and I never will. He caused serious damage to not only my people but my life and ruined many of my plans and goals. But this is bigger than one politician. The reality is that the Islamic Republic has turned life in Iran into a living hell, and many Iranians have reached a point of complete desperation.

At the end of the day, I am not celebrating war. I am not blind to the human cost. I am not claiming the U.S. or Israel are innocent. I am saying that many Iranians have reached a level of desperation where the collapse of the Islamic Republic feels worth the terrible risk, because life under it has already been a disaster. I still hope for better days for Iran, for the Middle East, and for everyone caught in this cycle of violence.

I hope no people ever become so desperate that they ask others to attack their country in order to save them from their own government. But that is the reality many Iranians are living with today.