Part IV: Who Speaks For Iran?
The questions stayed with me long after the discussion had ended because they pointed towards something much larger than a single event, a single panel or a single afternoon overlooking Killiney Bay. They pointed towards a phenomenon that many Iranians have been confronting for decades. Why is it that a nation of more than eighty million people, with one of the oldest continuous civilizations on earth, so often finds itself represented internationally by voices that do not reflect the experiences of its people? Why do the narratives of the regime travel so much further than the testimonies of its victims? Why does the world appear willing to listen so carefully to those who exercise power while paying comparatively little attention to those who endure its consequences?
The answer cannot be found in any single individual, organization or political tendency. It lies instead in the unequal distribution of visibility itself. The Islamic Republic possesses something ordinary Iranians do not. It possesses institutions. It possesses embassies. It possesses diplomatic networks. It possesses state-affiliated media, religious organizations, cultural centers and decades of accumulated influence. It possesses the machinery required to project narratives beyond its borders and into international conversations.
Ordinary Iranians possess no such machinery.
The pensioner struggling to survive in Tehran does not have a communications department. The mother waiting outside Evin Prison does not possess a diplomatic mission. The worker whose wages no longer cover the cost of living does not have access to international conferences. The student risking imprisonment for demanding freedom does not own a television network capable of broadcasting their story around the world. The ordinary citizen possesses experience, memory and testimony, yet these are fragile instruments when competing against institutions designed specifically to shape public perception. This imbalance explains why so many discussions about Iran feel strangely detached from the realities experienced by Iranians themselves. The voices most readily available to international audiences are not necessarily the voices most representative of the population. They are often simply the voices with the greatest ability to travel.
The consequences of this imbalance are not merely intellectual. They are material. They affect how governments formulate policy, how journalists frame stories and how international audiences understand the country. Most importantly, they affect whose suffering receives attention and whose suffering remains invisible.
For decades, ordinary Iranians have been paying the price for decisions over which they have little control. They have paid through inflation, corruption, unemployment, economic isolation and political repression. They have paid through imprisonment, censorship and the constant uncertainty that accompanies life under authoritarian rule. They have paid through the loss of opportunities, the separation of families and the gradual erosion of hope.
Yet when discussions about Iran take place, these realities often appear only briefly before being overtaken by larger geopolitical narratives.
This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.
The regime's regional ambitions, ideological projects and international influence campaigns are not funded by abstract resources that emerge from nowhere. They are funded by a society whose pensioners increasingly struggle to survive, whose workers often hold multiple jobs while sinking deeper into poverty and whose young people face shrinking opportunities with each passing year. The same population expected to endure inflation, corruption and political repression is also expected to finance ambitions that frequently provide little benefit to ordinary citizens.
Many Iranians therefore look at discussions about regional power and influence with a mixture of frustration and disbelief. They watch billions spent projecting power abroad while hospitals struggle, schools deteriorate and families lose economic security. They watch officials celebrate strategic victories while ordinary citizens worry about rent, medicine, employment and the future of their children. They watch international observers analyze geopolitical achievements while the human cost remains largely invisible.
The irony is that the people paying the greatest price are often the people whose voices are least heard.
This was precisely what made the event at Dalkey so significant. It was not unique because it revealed something new. It was significant because it revealed something familiar. It exposed a pattern that many Iranians recognize immediately. The regime remains at the center of the story. Its enemies remain at the center of the story. Regional conflicts remain at the center of the story. Yet the people themselves remain at the margins.
The festival program had asked a simple question: Who are the Iranians?
The answer, it seems to me, is not particularly complicated, they are not the slogans of the Islamic Republic, they are not the speeches delivered by officials, they are not the propaganda campaigns that attempt to speak in their name, they are not the geopolitical calculations made by governments abroad, they are not the ideological narratives imposed upon them by others.
They are the workers who continue working despite losing faith that their labor will provide a better future. They are the teachers struggling to educate a generation while navigating a system that fears independent thought. They are the pensioners watching a lifetime of effort disappear beneath inflation. They are the women who continue demanding dignity despite intimidation and arrest. They are the students who continue speaking despite the threat of imprisonment. They are the families divided by exile, repression and political violence. They are the millions of ordinary people who continue carrying their country within them despite everything that has happened.
They are also the exiles. They are the people who left but never truly left. They are the people who built new lives in Dublin, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Sydney and Los Angeles while continuing to follow every development in the country they left behind. They are the people who still check the news each morning, still worry about relatives, still celebrate Persian New Year and still carry memories of streets, mountains and voices that remain part of them regardless of distance. They are the people who understand that exile does not end at a border because the homeland continues travelling with them.
Perhaps this is why discussions like the one at Dalkey matter so much. They are not merely intellectual exercises. They shape how entire societies understand a country and its people. When those discussions exclude the voices of ordinary Iranians, even unintentionally, they contribute to the very misunderstanding they claim to address.
The world often behaves as though the Islamic Republic and Iran are interchangeable. They are not. One is a political system. The other is a civilization. One is a government. The other is a people. One has ruled for less than half a century. The other has existed for millennia.
To confuse the two is to misunderstand the country entirely.
For nearly half a century the world has negotiated with the jailor, sanctioned the jailor, feared the jailor and attempted to influence the jailor. Meanwhile the prisoners have continued shouting through prison walls, internet blackouts, censorship, exile and graves. They have continued speaking despite every attempt to silence them. They have continued demanding freedom despite every attempt to convince them that freedom belongs elsewhere.
The tragedy is not that the world has never heard them.
The tragedy is that too often it has chosen not to listen.
The Islamic Republic's greatest success may not have been military, diplomatic or ideological. Its greatest success may have been persuading large parts of the world to discuss Iran without listening to Iranians.
Until that changes, conversations about Iran will continue mistaking power for truth, the regime for the nation and the voice of the jailor for the voice of the people.
The real story of Iran has never belonged to those who rule it.
It belongs to those who have endured it, survived it and refused to surrender their voice despite every attempt to silence them.
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