My earliest memory is a silhouette of chaos framed by a window. I was three years old, peering out from our apartment in central Tehran. Below, the city of my birth was dissolving into a nightmare I was too young to name. I remember the acrid, choking scent of burning tires that seemed to seep through the glass. I remember the rhythmic, guttural chanting of men who sounded possessed. In my toddler’s mind, I made up songs about snakes and guns—innocent rhymes for a world that had suddenly turned predatory. I didn’t know then that the “snakes” were the architects of a violent, hateful theocracy that would spend the next 47 years trying to strangle the soul of my people.
As a Jewish family, we didn’t have the luxury of “waiting to see” what the Islamic Revolution would bring. We saw the shadow falling. We fled to the United States shortly after, arriving as refugees in a land that offered us something the Mullahs had abolished: a future.
I owe this nation a debt I can never fully discharge. The United States took a young boy who had seen fires in the streets of Tehran and gave him the tools to become a physician, a scientist, and a voice in our national discourse. Every time I treat a patient or speak on camera, I am conscious of the fact that I am living the “stolen life” of those I left behind. This gratitude is what fuels me—but it is also what haunts me.
For nearly five decades, I have watched from across the ocean as the most brilliant, cultured, and poetic civilization in history was turned into a prison. This is the catharsis of this moment: the realization that the “long night” is finally, mercifully, coming to an end.
We must be honest about what this regime is. It is not a government; it is a terminal disease. For forty-seven years, they have perverted a faith to justify the blinding of protesters and the systematic rape of women in the dark corners of Evin Prison. They took a nation of musicians, scientists, engineers, and poets and tried to force them into a monochromatic existence of mourning and fear. They banned the very things that make life worth living—singing, dancing, the free exchange of an idea—and replaced them with a cult of death that exported terror to every corner of the globe at the financial and social expense of its people.
But the human spirit has a breaking point, and the Iranian people have reached it.
After years of “false starts” where the world watched in silence as the regime crushed the dreams of the youth, something has fundamentally shifted. This isn’t just a protest; it is an exorcism. The fear that once belonged to the people has been transferred to the tyrants. You can see it in the eyes of the IRGC; they know the math has changed.
This revolution is different because the world—and specifically the American leadership—has finally stopped apologizing for our strength. For years, the regime thrived on Western hesitation. That era ended last June. When President Donald Trump ordered the decisive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he didn’t just destroy centrifuges; he destroyed the regime’s aura of invincibility. It was a signal to every Iranian in the street: The world’s superpower is no longer on the side of your oppressors. Under the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” 2.0, the regime is suffocating. They are bankrupt—spiritually, morally, and financially. And as the people hear the daily, clarion calls for restoration from Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, they see a bridge back to the Iran they lost—a secular, prosperous Iran that values its history and its place in the modern world. Pahlavi represents the dignity that the Mullahs tried to erase.
I am often asked if Iran can truly transition to democracy. My answer is that Iran is perhaps the most “ready” nation on earth for this change. We are talking about a population that respects women, and that is highly educated, tech-savvy, and deeply pro-Western. These are not people who need to be taught the value of freedom; they are people who have been starved of it and are ready to feast.
The fall of this regime will be the greatest “peace deal” in the history of the Middle East. Overnight, the #1 source of global terror will vanish. Hamas and Hezbollah—the butchers who have killed so many of our own American brothers and sisters—will find their bank accounts empty and their masters gone. In their place will emerge a new Iran: a global hub for science, tourism, and trade. A true friend to the United States.
This is the moment for a final push.
To the Trump administration: Stay the course. Your resolve is the oxygen for this revolution. Do not let the “experts” in the legacy media tell you that “stability” is better than this transition. There is no stability in a death cult. The people of Iran are begging you to help end the bloodshed on the streets.
To the legacy media: Stop the “both sides” reporting. There is no “both sides” when one side is shooting girls in the eyes for showing their hair. Tell the truth about the heroism on the streets of Isfahan and Shiraz.
I think back to that three-year-old boy at the window in 1979. Today, there is another three-year-old boy looking out of a window in Tehran. He sees the smoke, and he hears the shouting. But for the first time in nearly half a century, those sounds don’t signal the end of his world. They signal the beginning of it.
The snakes are being driven out. The window is finally opening. And while I will always stand on this side of the glass as a proud and grateful American, I can finally look through it and see a world where that little boy gets to stay, thrive, and be free.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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