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For nearly three decades, Iranians have tried to change their country through peaceful means. In 1997, as a teenager, I witnessed the euphoria of people voting for what many described as the “least bad” candidate in a state-supervised election, hoping incremental reform might lead to something better.

Again and again, that hope was shattered.

Every couple of years, there comes a period when I wake up in Canada to the news of protests, deaths and arrests: the demonstrations of 2017 over rising food prices, the countrywide uprising in November 2019 over a spike in gasoline prices, the uproar in 2022 following Mahsa Amini's death in police custody and most recently this January, when in just two days, at least 7,000 civilians lost their lives.

The moment that felt most personal to me was the downing of Ukrainian Flight 752 over Iran in January 2020. Several of the passengers were Iranian Canadians — people like me. It could easily have been me on that flight, had I travelled to visit my family for the new year holidays.

Meanwhile, daily life in Iran has steadily grown more difficult. Pollution chokes major cities. I sometimes have to ask my parents to stay home until rain clears the air. Power outages disrupt ordinary routines. My mother, who has mobility issues, has to remain at home when the elevator stops working. Strict dress codes remain enforced. A worsening water crisis looms. And basic freedoms — from freedom of expression to the rights of women and 2SLGBTQ+ people — remain tightly constrained.

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Like many Iranians, I fear the war. But I also fear what it would mean if it ended and nothing changed.

Living in Canada adds another layer to that conflict. I’m surrounded by well-meaning people for whom the moral lines seem much clearer: war is wrong; violence only brings suffering; surely there must be another way.

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Part of me agrees instinctively — maybe, after all, my parents were better off living in a poor, broken country than under bombs looming overhead. But another part hesitates, because the reality is not a straightforward choice between war and peace. It’s a choice between a political system that has repeatedly resisted meaningful reform and the unpredictable, frightening consequences of its collapse.

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Part of me agrees instinctively — maybe, after all, my parents were better off living in a poor, broken country than under bombs looming overhead. But another part hesitates, because the reality is not a straightforward choice between war and peace. It’s a choice between a political system that has repeatedly resisted meaningful reform and the unpredictable, frightening consequences of its collapse.

Holding those two emotions at once isn’t easy to explain. Which is why, in conversations with well-meaning Canadians, what matters most to me is often the simplest thing: their willingness to listen — to us, contradictions and all.