President Trump recently urged the Iranian people to take over [their] government" once the U.S.-Israel-led campaign on Iran has ended. If only it were that easy.
The Islamic Republic has spent decades ensuring that Iran’s citizens cannot unite against it. It has intentionally divided the people and deliberately created leadership vacuums. Any movement building has been defeated through the most brutal violence.
Regime change in Iran cannot happen with a wave of a magic wand, or even with force alone. The selection of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his successor underscores how entrenched Iran’s political system remains. Real change in Iran will come from its people and from the courageous dissidents who have already put their lives on the line to push for change.
For years, those very people have been rounded up and detained, or forced into exile. Many were already imprisoned or under constant surveillance long before the strikes began; others were detained as soon as they happened.
Now, security forces patrol the streets in armored vehicles, armed and masked. Iranians are afraid to go on the streets. There is no internet and, therefore, no way to know whether anyone is safe. Under these conditions, organizing mass resistance becomes extremely challenging.
Building a democracy requires intention, it requires strategy, and it requires people from all walks of life coming together and collaborating. Freeing Iran’s thousands of political prisoners will be a vital step to turn President Trump’s urging into real action.
In an emblematic case, women’s rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi, has spent nearly a decade behind bars for her activism. Recently, she was handed another six-year prison sentence for speaking out against state violence during the funeral of a human rights lawyer who had been found dead.
And Mohammadi is only one among thousands of political prisoners in Iran. Iranian authorities routinely imprison anyone who dissents — even in the smallest ways — seeking to crush any opposition before it takes shape.
In May 2024, writer and translator Hossein Shanbehzadeh famously tweeted a single period in response to a post by late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — an ironic correction of the Leader’s punctuation. Hossein was sentenced to 12 years in prison, including torture and solitary confinement. When Israel attacked Evin Prison on June 23, 2025, in an attempt to free political prisoners, Iranian authorities quickly transferred Shanbehzadeh to another prison to ensure he would not be released.
And in December 2024, Reza Khandan, husband of renowned human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh was arrested and detained — simply for supporting women’s rights. Sotoudeh was imprisoned multiple times, and Khadan was with her every step of the way. He now pays the price of his activism against the compulsory hijab laws.
Any attempt at mobilization on the streets of Iran has been met with overwhelming violence. The regime’s most recent crackdown alone killed an estimated 20,000-30,000 protesters and led to more than 18,000 arrests. The few grim videos that managed to leak out of Iran showed piles of unidentifiable body bags, families desperately trying to identify loved ones. And in the last week, another 1000 citizens and innocent bystanders have reportedly been killed.
Many other Iranians who might plausibly “take over” the government are no longer in the country at all. They live in exile, having fled the country at various stages of political turmoil. Many were targeted; others left because life in a system that polices speech, movement, and bodily autonomy became unbearable.
Iranians are understandably scared. And with their most trusted voices and leaders imprisoned, disappeared, murdered, or forced into exile, the idea that citizens can simply “take over” their government — as President Trump has suggested — ignores the brutal reality on the ground.
When the strikes ease and negotiations restart, the U.S. administration, as well as the international community, should prioritize the release of all political prisoners and the end of judicial harassment for others who are living in constant fear.
Freeing political prisoners would strengthen the burgeoning democratic movement that is being called for. If the U.S. and the world want to help build a free Iran, the place to start is demanding the release of the very architects capable of building it.
The brave Iranian people have shown time and again that they are ready. They have risked everything to fight back against their brutal government. During the latest regime crackdown, young Iranians took to the streets with their names and phone numbers on tags stuck to their chests, in hopes that if they were killed, they would not die anonymously.
The people of Iran deserve to be free, led by the very voices that the regime has worked so hard to silence.
Hannah Van Dijcke is a Legal & Research Officer, and Claudia Bennett is a Legal & Program Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. HRF has submitted individual complaints to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Iranian political prisoners Hossein Shanbehzadeh and Toomaj Salehi. Toomaj was released five months after HRF’s submission.
