An open letter from the center of Iran to America – Do not surrender on us

I awoke on Saturday, February twenty eighth, to the sounds of a terrifying explosion.

However we knew what was taking place. We’d all been ready for it.

Tears of pleasure started operating down my smiling face, swelling from the underside of my coronary heart.

This emotion could also be stunning to foreigners; your nation is underneath assault, but you might be overwhelmingly joyful.

However Iranians all over the place will perceive: We now belief the international bombs greater than the regime.

We’d somewhat die with the regime falling, than reside underneath it eternally.

From the window of my I residence in Narmak, Tehran, I noticed smoke rising from the house of former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

My first thought is: I hope they’re additionally received Ayatollah Khamenei.

I keep in mind Ahmadinejad’s function in killing and imprisoning younger individuals throughout the peaceable protests in opposition to his re-election on in June 2009.

He known as the protesters who took half within the Inexperienced Motion “mud and grime”, and on the UN he had mentioned that Israel needs to be wiped off the map. Now he’s the one who’s mud.

For a few years, we tried to peacefully demand change and reform.

Throughout these protests we chanted “Obama, Obama ba oona ya ba ma ya” (“Obama: you’re both with us, or with them”).

However Obama selected ”them.”

Each try we’ve made to peacefully push for democracy since has solely led to extra suppression and executions.

So once I noticed the explosion and the smoke rising from Ahmadinejad’s residence, I felt joyful a person chargeable for a lot struggling was useless.

I stood by the window and recorded the smoke with my cellphone. Maybe someday it might develop into a part of a movie.

My filmmaking received me in deep trouble in November once I was arrested only for filming younger individuals simply joyously dancing in entrance of a avenue musician in a park in Tehran.

The morality police beat me with batons whereas threatening and insulting me, arresting me and taking my cellphone for examination.

It was the short actions of my associates after my arrest saved me. They contacted my household in America, who erased my iPhone’s iCloud and all the info.

The identical technological restrictions which makes life so onerous in Iran really saved me from jail, or perhaps worse.

That very same police station the place I used to be arrested and tortured simply months earlier than is now rubble.

One other buddy arrested every week earlier than the bombing hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

We pray he’s nonetheless alive and hasn’t been tortured too badly.

The bomb that exploded in Ahmadinejad’s home made me understand President Trump had heard our cry for freedom – he’d remembered the defenseless, unarmed individuals, after telling us: “Assistance is on the best way.”

Individuals had develop into so determined {that a} wave of suicides or executions in prisons had been about to start.

The Trump assault turned the web page and adjusted every part in favor of the individuals, appropriately beginning with the killing of the terrorist Ayatollah.

His loss of life within the first hours introduced all of us again to life once more. 

Ever for the reason that bombing began, we have now gone with our neighbors to our rooftops and balconies.

Regardless of the terrifying sounds of bombs, we chant “Lengthy reside the Shah” and “Dying to Mojtaba Khamenei”, our slogans multiplying our braveness and endurance, regardless of the regime’s brokers firing bullets on the home windows from the place we chant. 

Not like the twelve-day conflict between Iran and Israel in June 2025, when individuals fled Tehran and different massive cities, no-one intends to go away. Most of my neighbors are nonetheless right here, coping with the identical parking issues.

We intend to remain and take again our metropolis and homeland from the terrorist regime.

It was throughout the 12-day conflict, we realized to belief Israel and America. They killed many IRGC members and only a few harmless individuals, whereas the regime killed greater than 30,000 in simply two days.

The regime has as soon as once more shut down the web, and we solely obtain information by means of foreign-language radio stations, even because the regime continues its smear campaigns and broadcasts false info on state tv.

Armed brokers parade by means of the streets on vehicles and bikes to create concern, shouting by means of loudspeakers that the residents ought to go to the mosques.

However the mosques are stuffed with navy ammunition and weapons, which could possibly be focused by Israeli strikes. Faculties are additionally now utilized by the police. The regime needs numerous civilians there once they do strike, permitting for casualties to offer propaganda materials so left-leaning media begins to strain for the tip of the conflict.

I’ve at all times been hopeful of learning filmmaking at an American college, the place freedom of expression really exists.

I had was admitted into three movie faculties, the NYFA Movie College in Burbank, California, and Georgia State College and the College of Miami in Might 2025.

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However simply days later, all visas for Iranians, together with college students, had been cancelled.

So there was pleasure at being accepted to the college, adopted by deep disappointment as a result of the door was then jammed shut.

Iranians have virtually no likelihood of acquiring international visas, with almost 90 million individuals held hostage by this brutal regime, identical to the 52 People who had been held for 444 days in 1979.

However regardless of my loss, I accepted that President Trump’s visa insurance policies had been to weaken the regime, not damage atypical individuals.

Information of Khamenei’s loss of life felt like a affirmation of that perception to me.

The enjoyment of that second erased the disappointment of the visa restrictions that had stored me from attending a movie faculty.

To younger People who imagine of their nation and its beliefs, I wish to say: we too are able to sacrifice our lives and desires to avoid wasting our nation.

Hundreds of thousands of us went to the January 8 and 9 demonstrations in 300 cities throughout Iran, impressed by calls from the crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi.

Young and old, males, girls, and kids, non secular and secular, monarchists and democracy-seekers, and even authorities staff had been amongst us.

An unwritten settlement amongst us all was we’d stand agency and never withdraw our assist from Reza Pahlavi, as a result of the best way to maneuver past this bloodthirsty regime is unity with the son of the Shah.

Inside each a type of black physique luggage you noticed after the January rebellion was an harmless younger individual, with massive desires and a full coronary heart. One among them was my neighbor.

One other was Sadra Soltani, the good son of my math trainer, Mr. Soltani.

I might have been certainly one of them. On that night time throughout the protest, bullets handed simply inches from my ear as we ran, individuals falling to the bottom behind me. 

I had at all times dreamed working as a cinematographer in a Hollywood film. However that night time, I felt as if I had develop into an actor in scenes so surprising that not Hollywood movie might really ever seize them.

It is a regime that opens hearth with reside ammunition by itself unarmed youth, killing greater than 30,000 in two days. Simply think about what they might do with nuclear weapons or long-range missiles.

When the regime positioned the American flag underneath our toes on the entrances of our universities for us to stroll over, we by no means did.

In an act of defiance, we’d leap over it as a substitute, with out even realizing if you happen to would prolong a hand of assist towards us. Now we prolong our hand towards you and ask you to assist President Trump, so the Hitler of our century (Khamenei), his different allies might also attain their long-desired destiny (martyrdom), and we could free the world from this corrupt regime that funds terrorism the world over.

Most of these concerned within the 1979 revolution now remorse and acknowledge it was a mistake, and what was wanted was reform, not a revolution.

As we speak, there’s no path to reform. Iranian figures similar to Larijani, Rouhani, Hassan Khomeini, Mir-Hossein, Khatami, Zarif, Tajzadeh, Pezeshkian, Ghalibaf, Mohseni-Eje’i , and even Nobel Prize winner Narges Mohammadi are introduced by means of the regime’s propaganda as a type of pretend opposition.

Nearly all of Iranians need Reza Pahlavi to be our transitional chief and information us to the poll field.

We’re all prepared for Prince Reza Pahlavi to present the order for us to return to the streets.

We’re ready for Trump, who even mentioned in his speech that we must always keep in secure locations and, on the proper second, come to the streets and free our nation from this brutal regime. 

We now not wish to chant ‘loss of life to America’ or every other nation. We wish to deal with the entire world with friendship and restore our 10,000-year-old civilization that’s full of affection, pleasure, dance and poetry.

I do know that on the morning that first bomb exploded, a 34-year-old knot in my chest burst, releasing all the enjoyment and freedom the individuals of Iran deserve.