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Hello Reader,
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fragmented Dispatches from the Rebellion
On January 8th, at least 1.5 million people filled the streets of Tehran in defiance of tyranny. On January 9th, security forces began the massacre. At least 12,000 are dead. Despite the mass killing, half a million persisted the next day.
Over 300 dead, bloodied bodies piled in one morgue on a single day.
The regime now charges families for the bullets that killed their loved ones—$480 to $1,720 per bullet. The average Iranian worker earns less than $100 monthly. Families who cannot pay do not receive their children's bodies.
This is the most violently repressed protest movement in the 47-year history of the regime.
I've spent three days piecing this story together from fragments—the X accounts of the Iranian diaspora, their Instagram feeds, exiled journalists, a woman whose father the regime kidnapped and executed, and who recently testified before Congress, Iran International—all with direct contact inside Iran. These opposition-linked sources reported the figures above.
I did so because the American media won't tell you the full story. They've decided Trump is a tyrant, and that narrative has blinded them to 12,000 dead in the streets of Tehran. So I've assembled what I can from voices the mainstream ignores, trying to accurately capture the scale of the regime's barbarity.
And here's what I'm asking you to do: hold impossible contradictions in your mind simultaneously.
Opposing Ideas
Here are the contradictions I’m grappling with:
Trump is increasingly authoritarian at home while his actions—strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, backing Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah, capturing Maduro, unprecedented sanctions—have created an historic opportunity to end one of the most evil regimes on earth.
Grieving for Palestinian suffering in Gaza while recognizing the Iranians dying for their freedom are not hapless agents of Zionists or American imperialism.
Regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan were catastrophic failures—and regime change can still be justified in the face of such evil. The question isn't whether to support Iranian freedom, but how to avoid repeating those disasters.
This moment raises profound questions American foreign policy hasn't honestly confronted in two decades: When do we intervene? Who do we back when every option is terrible? How do we ensure stability without empowering another dictator? Can we avoid the catastrophic mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan and still help Iranians achieve their freedom?
All I want is for 90 million Iranians to be free. Free of fear. Free of tyranny.
That's not Trump's goal—his motivations are complex, contradictory, self-serving. But 90 million Iranians are trapped under a theocratic nightmare that has murdered thousands in days. They're begging for the regime to fall. Many are begging for our help.
The Islamic Republic is crumbling. What replaces it will shape the Middle East for generations. America must choose—and every option is fraught with risk.
The following stories examine what voices to trust, how media coverage has failed, and the impossible choices America now faces.
If you can hold two opposing thoughts and still function, read on.
Opposition Voices
If there's one thing I've learned covering global politics for three years, it's this: to know what's really happening in Iran, you must listen to the people who live there—or those who escaped and still talk to those inside.
Listen to the Iranian business owner who told reporters: "This is the same system that helped kill hundreds of thousands in Syria to keep Assad in power. How many do you think it's willing to kill for its own survival?"
Listen to Masih Alinejad, who stared down Iran's foreign minister at the UN yesterday and reminded him the regime sent assassins to kill her—three times. She's still standing. Still speaking. And she just excoriated a Western analyst for suggesting Iranians don't want American help, saying "then you don't care about us!"
Listen to Gazelle Sharmahd whose father Jamshid the regime tried to assassinate in 2019—on American soil—for hosting a website sympathetic to the monarchy. When assassination failed, they kidnapped him. Then they executed him.
Listen to London-based Iran International—a Persian-language news network staffed by Iranian exiles with deep contacts inside the country. Yes, they may receive Saudi funding. Read them with skepticism.
Read updates from the National Council of Resistance of Iran —but know the regime has executed thousands of their members, creating deep bias. Know they seek to replace one Islamist government with another, rooted in their Islamist-Marxist origins.
But they're providing updates the mainstream media is either unable to verify—or deliberately ignoring.
Most importantly, listen to what the protesters are chanting.
What They Are Saying
For over two weeks, millions of Iranians have flooded the streets shouting "Death to the Dictator," "Death to Khamenei."
But listen to what else they're chanting:
"Not Gaza, not Lebanon—my life for Iran." They're rejecting the regime's foreign wars while they starve.
"This is the final battle, Pahlavi will return." They're calling for the monarchy—most have never lived under it. "Bring back the Shah." "Trump, help us."
The Shah they're nostalgic for ruled until 1979. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi presided over rapid modernization—universities expanded, women entered professions, the economy grew. His regime was authoritarian, suppressing dissent through SAVAK, his brutal secret police. But Iranians could drink alcohol, women could choose whether to wear hijab, and Tehran rivaled Istanbul as a cosmopolitan capital.
Then came the Islamic Revolution. The mullahs promised freedom. They delivered theocracy. 47 years later, protesters who never knew the Shah are chanting for his son.
Meanwhile, Tehran's mayor confirmed 61 mosques were torched during the protests. This isn't random vandalism. It's civilizational rejection.
Persians are not Arabs. While Shia Islam has deep roots in Persian culture, Khomeini's theocratic system was imposed in 1979, a form of governance that never aligned with a culture that historically prized poetry, law, and pluralism. For decades, opposition came primarily from ethnic minorities—Kurds, Baluch, Ahwazi Arabs—allowing Tehran to dismiss it as peripheral separatism.
What changed: Persian Iranians themselves are now demanding the Islamic Republic's complete destruction. Younger Iranians increasingly identify with their pre-Islamic Persian heritage over the theocratic system imposed in 1979. The mosque burnings symbolize the rejection of Arab Islamism on Persian soil.
Iran's most famous musician, pop icon Googoosh, wrote to Trump this week: "I am pleading with you, Mr. President, to stand with the Iranian people and take urgent and decisive action." She survived the regime's attempts to silence her for decades.
The voices are screaming. American newsrooms aren't listening.
The Fractured Resistance
The 1979 revolution was never one movement—it was a shotgun marriage of enemies united only by hatred of the Shah. Leftist students, Marxist guerrillas, moderate clerics, and Khomeini's hardline Islamists toppled a monarchy together in February. By summer, they turned on each other.
The People's Mujahedin of Iran—the MEK—sprang from the same Islamic-Marxist soil as the theocracy itself. Founded in 1965, they bombed SAVAK headquarters and assassinated American contractors under the Shah. When Khomeini's constitutional referendum transferred sovereignty from elected representatives to senior clerics in December 1979, the MEK resisted. He branded them mohareb—those who war against Allah. Between 3,000 and 5,000 MEK members were executed in 1988.
Desperate and decimated, they fled to Iraq in 1986. Saddam Hussein gave them bases and weapons. During the eight-year war—one million dead, teenagers sent across minefields—MEK fighters launched raids into Iran from Iraqi territory. That choice branded them permanent traitors. Today Maryam Rajavi leads from Paris, speaking pluralist democracy's language while remaining fundamentally Islamist. Inside Iran, they command little support.
Reza Pahlavi draws enormous crowds chanting "Long live the Shah!" Recent polling shows 31% support him, far above any rival. He presents an excellent transition plan emphasizing independent democratic institutions—speaking this newsletter’s language. But he hasn't set foot in Iran in 50 years and is advised by a former SAVAK torturer. Both Pahlavi and Rajavi have learned to speak the West's language—whether from conviction or calculation remains unclear.
The opposition fragments into secularists, monarchists, federalists, leftists—each faction despising the others. Meanwhile, the IRGC remains powerful and loyal, showing no signs of mass defection. Any revolution would need support from high-ranking officers. It would need their weapons. Trump's hesitation may acknowledge this reality: his Venezuela approach—backing the vice president who controls the guns over the democratic opposition—reveals his preference for stability over principle.
There are no easy choices. But JD Vance's proposition to negotiate with the regime would grant them a lifeline of legitimacy that abandons the Iranian people entirely.
Whatever America's involvement, abandoning 90 million cries for freedom should not be an option.
Counterstrikes
I, like 72% of Americans, don’t trust the mainstream U.S. media.
The final straw came in November when I researched a story on Nigeria—outlets from CNN to The Economist dismissed Nigeria's Christian slaughter as "supposed," all citing the same politically correct source that stripped religious motive from massacres. Over 50,000 dead Christians since 2009, but Trump was just "watching too much Fox News."
The truth didn't fit their preferred narrative.
So when the media mob attacked CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss last month for pulling a 60 Minutes story on El Salvador's CECOT prison, I wasn't buying the outrage.
The controversy: Hours before airtime, Weiss pulled a segment featuring Trump administration deportees describing torture and sexual assault at CECOT. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi—who'd sought comment from DHS, State, and the White House—called it "political censorship." Critics pounced: Weiss, installed after Paramount's $16 million Trump settlement, was killing stories to appease the president.
Paramount's owner, Larry Ellison—Oracle's billionaire founder and Trump ally—financed the merger. His son David runs the company. Trump calls them "friends" and "big supporters." The conflict of interest is glaring.
But here's what critics missed: The piece was two months old. The New York Times, ProPublica, and Human Rights Watch had already documented CECOT's horrors. What made this 60 Minutes worthy? Without administration officials on camera—not just written statements, but actual interviews—the story added nothing new. That's not censorship. That's editorial standards.
And Weiss is no Trump lackey. The Free Press has shredded Trump's protectionism, his crypto conflicts, and his Venezuela policy. She voted for Romney, Clinton, and Biden. When ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel under Trump pressure, The Free Press called it coercion. This isn't a MAGA propagandist—it's an independent thinker demanding the story be bulletproof before airing on journalism's gold standard.
Trust in media collapsed long before Weiss arrived. CBS initially dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation in 2020, then took two years to verify it—airing the confirmation only after the 2022 midterms. 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl told Trump the laptop "can't be verified" weeks before the 2020 election.
Then CBS broke the Iran story everyone else missed: 12,000 to possibly 20,000 killed, citing sources inside Iran that other outlets hadn't cultivated. Iran International confirmed the figure hours later.
That's courage. CBS ran the most explosive death toll in the world while other networks played it safe with lower numbers.
The CECOT story will air. Weiss said so explicitly. But it will air when it's worthy of her editorial standards—with administration officials forced to defend the indefensible on camera, not hiding behind "no comment."
Americans don't trust their media, with good reason. Demanding excellence over expedience is a small step toward restoring that credibility.
The World Holds Its Breath
Iran International quoted an anonymous Tehran business owner: “The city smells of death. As if human ashes have been spread all over Iran.”
Protests have wound down since the massacre. Multiple outlets report pervasive despair. Donald Trump's rhetoric emboldened protesters—then he hesitated. Will he follow through, or abandon them?
“I'd say Trump attempting regime change is as likely as Trump making a deal,” the business owner said.
The world holds its breath. So do I.
I wanted to deliver a comprehensive analysis of American foreign policy choices—when to intervene, who to back, what comes next. But first, I had to synthesize the voices. I had to understand who was speaking, what they were demanding, whether their claims were credible. I had to piece together truth from fragments while frantic updates rolled in.
This is the most consequential moment for global freedom since the fall of the Soviet Union. I wanted to get it right. The questions don't have clean answers. They require holding contradictions: Supporting Iranian freedom while maintaining moral consistency. Promoting freedom while respecting sovereignty. Trump as both authoritarian and liberator. Recognizing regime change can be both morally justified and catastrophically executed.
What I do know: 12,000 Iranians have been murdered. They're burning mosques and chanting for the return of the Shah. They're begging for freedom. And America must choose.
I'm still grappling with what that choice should be. Next week's Friday edition will dig deeper into the foreign policy implications—the precedents, the risks, the path forward. For now, I'm staying with the voices.
They're screaming. Will America listen?
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