Understanding Iran Without Iranians
An exile's reflection on a sold-out discussion, a missing nation and the voices that never reached the stage.
The car park at Fitzpatrick Castle Hotel was already full when I arrived. Cars were lining the approach roads and people were making their way towards the venue on what was one of those rare Irish summer afternoons that tempt people away from conference halls and into gardens, beaches and cafés. Yet the room for Understanding Iran was sold out. Hundreds of people had chosen to spend part of their weekend listening to a discussion about my homeland, and as I walked towards the entrance I felt something that many Iranians in exile still feel whenever Iran briefly captures public attention: hope.
For those of us who have spent decades watching our country reduced to headlines about uranium enrichment, sanctions, missiles and regional conflict, the possibility of genuine understanding exerts a powerful pull. We hope that beyond the geopolitical analysis there might finally be room for the people themselves. We hope that someone will speak about the mothers waiting outside prison gates, the fathers whose pensions have been emptied of meaning by inflation, the young women risking arrest for refusing compulsory veiling, the students filling prison cells for demanding freedoms that others inherit at birth and the countless ordinary citizens who continue resisting despite decades of disappointment. We hope that the story of Iran will finally be told through the lives of Iranians rather than through the calculations of governments.
The panel brought together Ramita Navai, Avi Shlaim, Sally Hayden and Alan Shatter under the moderation of Colm O'Regan. Between them sat decades of experience reporting on the Middle East, analyzing conflict and commenting on political developments across the region. The title of the event promised understanding, and the audience appeared eager for it.
The discussion began with Ramita Navai describing the resilience of the Islamic Republic and explaining why recent military strikes had failed to bring about regime collapse. Much of what she said about the structure of power inside Iran was informative and important. She outlined the role of the Revolutionary Guards, their influence over politics, intelligence, the judiciary and the economy, and the ways in which the regime had spent decades preparing for threats to its survival. Any serious attempt to understand contemporary Iran must grapple with these realities, and in those opening moments the discussion seemed to be moving in a promising direction.
Yet as the conversation continued, I became increasingly aware of a growing absence. The machinery of power was being described in detail, but the people living beneath it were slowly disappearing from view. The discussion moved repeatedly towards Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Hezbollah, military strategy and regional geopolitics. These are serious subjects that deserve serious discussion, and no honest observer of the Middle East could dismiss them. Yet as the afternoon unfolded, I found myself returning to a simple question. How could an event called Understanding Iran spend so much time discussing everything around Iran while devoting so little attention to the people living under one of the most repressive political systems in the modern world?
The deeper irony was difficult to ignore. Iran was present throughout the discussion, yet Iranians themselves seemed strangely absent. The country's rulers, its nuclear program, its regional alliances and its geopolitical significance all received attention. The people living beneath those realities rarely did. A nation of more than eighty million citizens was slowly being transformed into a strategic problem rather than a human society.
Avi Shlaim devoted much of his contribution to arguing that Israel represented a greater threat to regional stability than Iran and repeatedly returned to the role of Israel in shaping events across the Middle East. Sally Hayden spoke movingly about Lebanon, displacement, civilian suffering and the devastating human consequences of war. Again, these issues matter. Human suffering deserves attention wherever it occurs. Yet as I listened, I could not escape the feeling that Iran itself was slowly vanishing from the discussion. What emerged was a pattern familiar to many Iranians in exile. Discussions that begin with Iran often end somewhere else. The conversation drifts towards Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, regional conflict or great-power politics. These subjects matter and deserve attention. Yet each shift carries a cost. The more attention devoted to the region around Iran, the less attention remains for the lives of the people inside it.
What troubled me was not disagreement. Iranians disagree passionately among themselves about politics, history and the future. The issue was not that the panelists held different views. The issue was that ordinary Iranians seemed largely absent from a conversation supposedly dedicated to understanding their country. There was little discussion of political prisoners. Little discussion of executions. Little discussion of internet blackouts. Little discussion of the women who continue to resist compulsory veiling despite immense personal risk. Little discussion of the families who have spent decades living beneath censorship, fear and economic decline.
For millions of Iranians, the crisis is not an abstract question of geopolitics, oil prices, nuclear negotiations or the Strait of Hormuz. It is not a debate conducted in conference halls or diplomatic meetings. It is the daily humiliation of standing in a queue at an ATM hoping to withdraw a small amount of one's own money. It is pensioners watching inflation rise while their income loses value. It is families discovering that the price of food has increased again before the month's wages have arrived. It is workers holding multiple jobs while falling further behind. It is young people postponing marriage, children and ordinary dreams because the future has become increasingly uncertain.
Only recently my own brother described life in Iran in a message so ordinary that it was devastating. The banking system was struggling. People were queuing to access their own money. Pensioners were watching inflation rise while their purchasing power declined. Nobody knew what tomorrow would bring. This is not the language of geopolitics. It is the language of everyday survival. This is the Iran that rarely appears in conference halls. It is the Iran of pensioners struggling with inflation, young people emigrating in search of opportunity, women confronting restrictions on their daily lives, workers holding multiple jobs and families wondering how much more expensive tomorrow will become. These realities shape the lives of millions of Iranians far more directly than the geopolitical debates that so often dominate discussions about their country. Yet these realities barely entered the room.
One voice, however, consistently returned the discussion to the nature of the regime itself. Alan Shatter spoke with a seriousness that suggested he understood his views might not be popular with large sections of the audience. Rather than accepting the dominant framing that was gradually emerging, he repeatedly redirected attention towards the Islamic Republic, its regional activities and its role in sustaining instability across the region. He challenged assumptions that others appeared content to leave unchallenged and drew upon his own experiences and meetings with political figures in the Middle East.
What struck me was not that he disagreed with Avi Shlaim. Intellectual disagreement is healthy and necessary. What struck me was that he was one of the few speakers who repeatedly brought the conversation back to the regime itself and to the suffering of the people living under it. He spoke about executions. He spoke about repression. He spoke about the dangers posed by a government willing to imprison, torture and kill its own citizens. He reminded the audience that Iran funds and supports proxy organizations across the region and that any attempt to understand Middle Eastern instability must reckon with that reality.
Whether one agrees with every aspect of his analysis is ultimately beside the point. What mattered was that he repeatedly brought the discussion back to something that was otherwise in danger of disappearing entirely: the fact that the Islamic Republic is not merely a geopolitical actor. It is a government whose first and most enduring victims have been the people it claims to represent.
The moment that troubled me most came later when Shatter was accused of repeating Israeli propaganda. The question that lingered in my mind was not whether propaganda exists. Every conflict produces competing narratives. The question was why some narratives were subjected to intense scrutiny while others appeared to pass largely unquestioned. The Islamic Republic has spent decades investing in regional influence, information networks and ideological projects beyond its borders. Any serious attempt to understand the Middle East must examine those realities with the same critical attention applied elsewhere. Sitting in the audience, I found myself wondering whether anyone had paused to consider that propaganda can travel in more than one direction. Throughout much of the afternoon, the audience had been invited to view the region through a framework in which Israel occupied center stage while the role of the Islamic Republic often appeared secondary. Yet the Islamic Republic has spent decades cultivating its own narratives, funding its own networks, shaping its own information environment and presenting itself as a defender of the oppressed while simultaneously oppressing its own citizens at home.
As I sat among an audience that had come to understand Iran, I found myself increasingly wondering whether Iran was actually the subject of the conversation at all. The discussion openly acknowledged that the Islamic Republic is a deeply repressive system, yet the moral center of gravity repeatedly drifted elsewhere. The regime's first victims have always been Iranians themselves. It imprisons, tortures, censors and executes its own citizens while presenting itself internationally as a defender of the oppressed. Yet much of the discussion seemed more interested in examining the actions of Israel than in exploring the daily realities of the people living under the Islamic Republic. I began to feel that Iran's name had once again become the vehicle through which another conversation was being conducted, while the voices of ordinary Iranians remained largely unheard.
What remained largely absent from the discussion was the extraordinary sophistication of that machinery. This is a regime that has invested enormous resources in projecting influence across the region while simultaneously suppressing dissent at home. It has imprisoned journalists, silenced activists, executed protesters and restricted access to information while presenting itself internationally as a champion of justice. Sitting in that room, I felt that many audience members were being encouraged to scrutinize one form of propaganda while remaining largely blind to another.
As the discussion drew towards its conclusion, I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the growing distance between the event's title and its content. The deeper wound was not that people disagreed. It was that the people who should have been at the center of the conversation remained largely absent from it. The regime was discussed. Israel was discussed. Lebanon was discussed. Palestine was discussed. Military strategy was discussed. Regional power was discussed. Yet the daily reality of eighty million Iranians rarely occupied center stage.
Eventually I stood and asked my question. I asked why the suffering of ordinary Iranians seemed so absent from a discussion about Iran. I spoke about those who had been killed, imprisoned and executed. I spoke about the people whose stories never reach international headlines. The exchange that followed was brief, uncomfortable and emotional, but for me it crystallized the central problem of the afternoon.
The deeper frustration was not disagreement. It was the feeling that many people in the room believed they understood Iran while rarely engaging with the experiences of those who live beneath the regime's rule. Iran appeared as a subject of expertise, analysis and theory, yet the people enduring inflation, censorship, imprisonment, economic hardship and political repression remained largely invisible. The country was present. Its citizens were not.
Iran is often discussed, but rarely heard.
The room was full because people genuinely wanted to understand. That much was clear. Ireland's interest in Iran is real, and many of us who found refuge here remain deeply grateful for that curiosity and goodwill. Yet understanding Iran requires more than discussing nuclear negotiations, regional conflict or foreign policy. It requires listening to the people who have spent forty-seven years paying the price for all of them.
As I left the hotel and walked back towards my car, I found myself thinking about how often this pattern repeats itself. The world studies the Islamic Republic. It negotiates with the Islamic Republic. It fears the Islamic Republic. It sanctions the Islamic Republic. It debates the Islamic Republic. Yet the voices of ordinary Iranians too often remain at the margins of the conversation.
If we truly wish to understand Iran, that is where we must begin. Not with governments. Not with ideology. Not with military strategy. But with the people. The central question raised by this series extends beyond a single event in Dublin. It is a question about narrative, representation and voice. Who speaks for Iran? Who benefits when discussions about Iran become discussions about everything except Iranians? And why do the people who pay the highest price for the regime's decisions so often remain at the margins of conversations conducted in their name? Until those questions are confronted, understanding Iran will remain incomplete.
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Part IV: Who Speaks For Iran?
The deeper question raised by this series is not whether Iran is misunderstood. The deeper question is who benefits from that misunderstanding. As ordinary Iranians struggle to make their voices heard above the noise of geopolitics, ideology and competing narratives, a simple question remains unanswered: who has the right to speak for a nation they do not have to live in?
Part III: The Narratives That Replace Iran
For decades, the Islamic Republic has mastered a remarkable political achievement: persuading much of the world to discuss its enemies more often than its victims. While international attention focuses on regional conflicts, ordinary Iranians continue to bear the costs of repression, economic decline and political exclusion. This chapter examines how Iran disappears behind the narratives constructed around it—and who benefits when that happens.
Part II: Was Iran Invited Only to Discuss Israel?
The event was called Understanding Iran, yet as the discussion unfolded, Iran increasingly became the backdrop rather than the subject. Israel was analysed. Palestine was analysed. Regional conflicts were analysed. Meanwhile, the voices of ordinary Iranians faded into the background. This chapter asks a simple question: was Iran invited to the conversation, or merely used as a stage for other narratives?