The Alliance Against the Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) strongly condemns the deeply misguided framing of two recent letters addressed to Iran’s political prisoners: the open letter published in The Guardian, “To Iran’s political prisoners, trapped ‘between two blades of a scissors,’” and Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi’s subsequent “An (Alternative) Open Letter to Iran’s Political Prisoners.” Both claim solidarity with Iranians imprisoned by the Islamic Republic, yet both are astonishingly disconnected from the actual struggle taking place inside Iran.
Iranian political prisoners do not need Western academics to tell them that their struggle is really about “imperialism,” “Zionism,” or preserving the supposedly noble “anti-imperialist pulse” of the 1979 revolution. They know why they are in prison. They live under a theocratic dictatorship where genuine political pluralism does not exist, elections are tightly controlled, ultimate authority rests with an unelected Supreme Leader, and the state polices what people wear, drink, say, believe, and whom they love. Women face legal discrimination in marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance, and other fundamental areas, while polygamy remains legal and discrimination against religious minorities is embedded in the system. Iranians are punished for dancing, drinking alcohol, protesting, organizing, speaking freely, and demanding political change.
This is what Iranians are fighting against. Their struggle is for the right to choose what to wear, to sing, dance, love, speak, believe or disbelieve, organize politically, and live without fear of torture or execution. Ultimately, it is a struggle for the right to live under a government chosen by the people rather than a theocratic dictatorship claiming divine authority over them. Yet the authors of these letters transform this concrete struggle for basic human freedom into a discussion of their own ideological preoccupations: imperialism, Zionism, colonialism, capitalism, and global “carceral systems.”
The Guardian letter acknowledges the Islamic Republic’s torture, executions, sham trials, and repression, but quickly places Iranian prisoners between the Islamic Republic on one side and American and Israeli “imperialist and Zionist forces” on the other. It then devotes substantial attention to Palestinian prisoners, ICE detention centers, colonialism, Israel, and American history. How far can one possibly travel from the lived reality of the people one claims to support?
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi goes even further. He tells Iran’s political prisoners that the resistance of Iran, “the state and the people”, against “imperialist domination and Zionist expansionism” is among the “most cherished achievements” of the Iranian revolution. He then warns the very people imprisoned by that revolution: “Do not allow the imperialists and Zionists to instrumentalize your just causes in order to delegitimize the anti-imperialist pulse of this revolution.” Think about what that means. People are sitting in the Islamic Republic’s prisons because they challenged the system created by that revolution. Some have been tortured, some have spent years in solitary confinement, and some face execution. And your message to them is to make sure they do not delegitimize the revolution?
For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic has used precisely this vocabulary, “anti-imperialism,” “resistance,” and “anti-Zionism”, to justify authoritarianism, censorship, executions, proxy warfare, isolation, and repression. “Anti-Zionism” has even been used to accuse Iranians of being Israeli or Mossad agents and send them to prison or the gallows. These ideas did not liberate Iran. The Islamic Republic used them to destroy it.
The hostility between the Islamic Republic, America, and Israel did not emerge in a vacuum. The regime seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979 and held American diplomats hostage for 444 days. For decades, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” became official political rituals, and confrontation with both countries became central to the regime’s identity. Yet in these letters, history seems to begin only when America or Israel reacts. Recent negotiations make this framing even harder to defend: Washington has demonstrated a willingness to offer major sanctions relief and economic incentives in exchange for limitations on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while the Islamic Republic continues to use confrontation, regional militancy, and the Strait of Hormuz as political leverage. Does “imperialism” only exist when America or Israel acts?
Most offensive of all is the timing. August marks the anniversary of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran, when thousands of prisoners, many already tried, sentenced, and serving their sentences, were brought before so-called death commissions, executed, and secretly buried in unmarked mass graves. Families were denied even the right to know where their loved ones were buried or to mourn them openly. Nearly four decades later, Iranian prisoners continue to face executions, torture, arbitrary detention, forced confessions, and sham trials. And this is the moment you choose to lecture them about anti-imperialism and Zionism? Is this your idea of solidarity?
Real solidarity begins by listening to Iranians rather than imposing Western ideological frameworks upon them. The defining slogan of the 2022 uprising was not “anti-imperialism.” It was Woman, Life, Freedom. The song Baraye, which became an anthem of that uprising, spoke of the ordinary things Iranians had been denied: freedom, dignity, happiness, clean air, personal choice, and a normal life. When millions of Iranians again poured into the streets across hundreds of cities in January 2026, their slogans were not about imperialism or Zionism. Their slogans were against the regime, for freedom, for Iran, and for their national interests. They reflected the desire to reclaim their country and their lives from the occupying force of the Islamic Republic, a regime they despise and reject, and one that treats Iran and its people as possessions to be controlled rather than a nation to be served.
Thousands were slaughtered during the crackdown, many of them young people and ordinary citizens. They did not die for abstract ideological theories. They died because they wanted to live normally, without constant surveillance, compulsory religion, morality police, censorship, and the fear that a protest, a song, a social-media post, or an opinion could destroy their lives. That is the Iranian struggle.
Iranian political prisoners are not props in anyone’s ideological war against America, Israel, capitalism, imperialism, or Zionism. They are human beings fighting for their lives and freedom. Do not appropriate their suffering to rehabilitate the ideology of the revolution that created their jailers. Do not tell a woman imprisoned for demanding equality that she must protect the “anti-imperialist pulse” of the revolution that stripped her of her rights. Do not tell a prisoner awaiting execution that his struggle must be understood through your theories rather than through the gallows being prepared for him.
Listen to them. They are asking for freedom, equality, secular government, the rule of law, and the basic dignity to live, love, speak, sing, dance, believe, disbelieve, and determine their own future. They are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves who their friends and enemies are and what relationship a free Iran should have with the rest of the world.
On the anniversary of the 1988 massacre, Iranian political prisoners deserve better than another lecture about imperialism and Zionism. They deserve solidarity without ideological conditions. They deserve to have their own voices heard.
They deserve freedom.
Alliance Against the Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA)
August 24, 2026
