By KENNETH BLACKWELL, Originally Published on Stars & Stripes, November 11, 2025
Kenneth Blackwell is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
Iran stands at a historic crossroads. The gap between a crumbling theocracy and a defiant, freedom-seeking society has never been wider. The clerical regime faces an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy — its authority hollowed out by corruption, economic collapse, and waves of popular unrest. From the streets of Tehran to the prisons of Mashhad, Iranians are risking everything to demand the one thing the ruling elite cannot grant: freedom.
Against this backdrop, Washington, D.C. will host the Free Iran 2025 Convention on Nov. 15, bringing together Iranian scholars, activists, professionals and community leaders from across the United States. The gathering will examine the accelerating movement for change inside Iran, strategies for achieving democratic transition, and the role the Iranian diaspora can play in shaping the country’s future.
The Washington convention follows a groundbreaking series of youth gatherings last month in London; Paris; Bonn, Germany; and Geneva, where young Iranians from across Europe presented their vision for a free and democratic Iran.
Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a broad coalition of democratic opposition groups, addressed those conferences, declaring that the opposition is “closer to overthrowing the clerical regime than ever before.” She called on Iranians abroad to help “build a free and prosperous Iran, where all talents flourish and human capital returns.”
Her confidence is not misplaced. Over the past several years, Iran has witnessed a succession of nationwide uprisings — January 2018, November 2019, and the September 2022 protests sparked by the killing of Mahsa Amini — each exposing the regime’s deepening fragility. The 2022 revolt, which swept more than 280 cities, was described by international media as the most serious challenge to the theocracy since 1979.
Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/opinion/2025-11-11/repression-to-resolve-iranian-dissidents-19729630.html
Source – Stars and Stripes