Executed by the Islamic Republic in 1980.
11.01.2026
My homeland is living through fateful days. As someone with recent lived experience there, I write this to narrate my own story. What built me. What broke us.
The Shah and the Shahbānu made it possible for every child in Iran to go to school, to be educated and nurtured, regardless of family background.
Both of my parents received their education under that pre-1979 system. They did not have to pay a single penny. I, too, went to a grade school founded in 1953, in our own neighborhood.
That was not ideology. That was infrastructure. That was investment in minds.
To even consider a professional future, I had to learn English, and learn it properly.
That path took me through the Iran Language Institute (ILI), the place that taught me English, the place that taught me how to think and speak in another language. To this day, I have not found a more effective language education.
This institute later became associated with the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, known in Persian as Kānūn-e Parvaresh-e Fekri.
Once again, this was founded by the Shahbānu, before 1979.
I studied at the Engineering School of the University of Tehran. It was founded in 1934, under Reza Shah. This was the place that taught me to be an engineer. To value clean design over quick results and only trust what looks professional.
The strongest technical universities of Iran were all built before 1979. They were designed to produce engineers, scientists, builders.
Not ideology carriers. Builders.
This part belongs to my generation.
From grade school, children were forced into religious education. To enter university, for any major, religious studies were tested. During undergraduate studies, every student had to take around 40 ECTS of “general knowledge” courses. Which meant religion again. The curriculum was inflated to 280 ECTS because of this.
These are all artifacts of the Islamic Republic.
Throughout my education, I had one survival rule: Avoid contamination. Do not let this nonsense settle in your mind.
In June 2025, at the most exhausting stage of my graduate studies in Gugging, I went home only because I was homesick and wanted to see my parents. Instead, the actions of the Islamic Republic forced me into a war experience. I was not afraid of Israeli missiles. Their targets were not civilians.
What crushed me was the chaos. Finding a way out. My father spending an entire day on the phone trying to secure safety. Eventually, my parents and I fled to Armenia. What was supposed to be rest turned into survival.
Now it is January 2026. My eyes are dry from staring at screens, waiting for news from Iran, waiting for communication blackouts imposed by the mullahs to end, waiting to hear that my family is safe.
In my 25 years of life, everything that built me came from the era of the Shah. Everything that drained me, controlled me, distorted me, came from the Islamic Republic.
The mullahs burdened my education. They filled my family’s life with anxiety. They turned ordinary existence into constant tension.
I do not want clerical rule in my country. I do not want it anywhere. Its time must end. Its grip must be broken.
Now that my people are standing at the edge of reclaiming their home, I cannot “turn off the TV.” I turn the volume up.