Dare to Imagine a Free Iran. It’s Time.

Tens of thousands have been killed by the regime’s security forces. And still, the Iranian people march. Not because they are reckless, but because they are resolute. They march because liberty is not an abstract idea to them. It is the very air they breathe. Why have leftists and feminists, who once stood far from even the notion of monarchy, publicly united behind Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi as a transitional opposition figure? Why are lifelong pacifists now speaking the unspeakable, arguing that the world may need to confront the Islamic Republic with force? What breaks a society so profoundly, so deeply, and so painfully that even its gentlest voices begin to speak in the language of urgency? Khosro Isfahani will explore these questions and more through a tapestry of personal witness and national history. Khosro was born and raised in Tehran, where he lived for over three decades, working as a journalist and frontline human rights defender until 2021. He infiltrated secretive missile facilities. He smuggled classified documents beyond the regime’s reach. He delivered aid quietly to communities placed deliberately in harm’s way. Those choices carried consequences: interrogations, threats, surveillance, and finally exile. But exile did not silence him. Over seventeen years reporting on Iran’s political and human landscape, Khosro has transformed lived experience into disciplined research and strategic advocacy: he found Hashem and His tribe — not as a metaphor, but an anchor. Today, he serves as Research Director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran (NUFDI), documenting abuses and articulating a pathway toward a democratic transition. This is not merely a lecture about geopolitics. It is a call to moral imagination… to dare and imagine a free Iran. And to also recognize that the time for imagining alone has passed.