Ideological responses do not help the people of Iran. War and hope can (and do) coexist.

Airstrikes on Iran have created two predictable reactions abroad. One is an anti-war absolutism, rooted in the history of imperial interventions and sobering precedents. After 20 years of American presence in Afghanistan, women’s rights have rolled back to Taliban-era restrictions. The other is the celebration of the fall of the dictator Ali Khamenei, responsible for the execution, mass arrest and the violent suppression of dissent. People in Iraq also danced when their dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled. It was a brief relief before chaos ensued. Both responses are understandable, but neither captures the lived reality inside Iran.

My family’s intermittent messages are delayed by internet disruptions and in their voices I hear something Western debates rarely make room for: simultaneous relief and terror. The unimaginable relief of parents who buried their children shot during uprisings. Terror because the Revolutionary Guards, the Army and the Basij are still armed. Political prisoners are still languishing. One death at the top does not dismantle a system fortified over 45 years.

Wars promise resolution and deliver wreckage. I was born into one (the one with Iraq) that lasted eight years. Civilians have been and will be caught in the crossfire, like the schoolgirls killed on day two of the war, Saturday, Feb. 28. When the United States killed General Qassem Suleimani in January 2020, Iran’s air defenses shot down the Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, killing 176 civilians. When Israel attacked Iran in summer 2025, the regime expanded arbitrary arrests and deported Afghan migrants. Civilians bear the cost of both domestic repression and international escalation.

To acknowledge that history, however, is not to deny another truth. After two decades of periodic protest and brutal crackdowns, many inside Iran have concluded that peaceful mobilization alone cannot topple an armed state. Many now weigh the uncertainty of escalation against the certainty of suffocation. That is a desperate calculation. It is also the reality.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince, positions himself as a transitional leader, but his proposals would concentrate authority rather than distribute it. Also, his dismissive response to calls for decentralization has alienated millions, especially the Kurdish population. Durable democracy in a multiethnic country requires coalition building and respect for regional rights.

The divisions are not only inside Iran. In Los Angeles, a portion of the diaspora have aligned themselves with Republican politics and hard-line Israeli positions. Some seek not democracy, but a restoration of monarchy-era hierarchy that marginalizes ethnic minorities and LGBTQ+ citizens.

Regime change and democracy are not the same. 

Regional powers will also calculate their interests. Russia, Saudi Arabia and others may view an independent, democratic Iran as a strategic threat.

For all these reasons, the international community must resist ideological reflexes, whether blanket opposition to any pressure or uncritical enthusiasm for confrontation. This is a time of both possibility and peril; the outcome can be renewal or collapse.

To honor those who have paid with their lives, we must hold both truths at once: The end of suffocation can bring relief, and it can also bring ruin. 

AVA HOMA is a lecturer at CSUMB and the award-winning author of Daughters of Smoke and Fire.