The response to the regime’s massacres must be concrete: severe sanctions, asset freezes, the closure of embassies and an end to the indulgent fiction that this is a normal state with which business can continue
January 21, 2026 11:54
For the Iranian people, this is their October 7. Not only because of the scale of the brutality, but because of what it has irrevocably changed. What is unfolding across Iran mirrors what the world witnessed when Hamas invaded Israel: the calculated use of terror against civilians by Islamists who glorify violence, rule through fear, and treat human life as disposable. The same regime that has long armed and funded Hamas is now turning its weapons on its own people.
And just as Israelis concluded they could no longer live alongside Hamas and its permanent threat of violence, Iranians are now determined that this regime must go.
For the West, this means a moral obligation and a strategic interest to help them remove it. For the sake of the Iranian people, and for the security of Western societies themselves, this is the moment to act.
Consider the events of recent weeks, in which the Islamic Republic has unleashed extraordinary violence at home. More than 18,000 people may have been killed. In excess of 6,000 protesters were deliberately shot in the eyes, leaving them blind, according to credible reports. More than 35,000 have been arrested, many facing capital charges without due process, legal representation, or even the pretence of a fair trial.
This is not crowd control. It is war. Snipers, machine guns, and military-grade weapons are being deployed against unarmed civilians. In multiple cities, protesters were hunted through the streets as though they were enemy combatants. In Rasht, security forces reportedly set fire to a market and then shot those attempting to flee the flames. Thousands were killed.
Not even hospitals were spared. Wounded protesters were shot inside medical centres or dragged into the regime’s terror dungeons. Some of those injured on the streets were left on the ground, only to be later executed at close range. In Tehran, bodies were reportedly left piled in the streets as a warning. Entire towns were sealed off, no entry, no exit. Food had to be smuggled in while residents were trapped inside. Witnesses describe war-zone conditions, with entire buildings destroyed by the regime.
Even in death, cruelty was policy. Families attempting to retrieve the bodies of loved ones were sometimes charged for the bullets that killed them, sums running into thousands of pounds. Others were forced onto state television and compelled to lie, claiming their children were members of the Basij or IRGC and had been killed by “terrorist protesters”. Extortion, humiliation, propaganda: after nearly five decades, the regime has perfected repression.
The Iranian people are as unarmed and defenceless as the Israeli civilians murdered on October 7. They are resisting with courage alone after 47 years of dictatorship, standing against a regime that possesses overwhelming force and zero moral restraint.
The West must grasp what this moment represents. This is the same Islamist logic at work as on October 7. Just as Hamas has taken the Palestinian people hostage to its jihadist project, the Islamic Republic has hijacked the Iranian state. The state exists solely as a tool of ideological domination, at home and abroad.
While the West is united in insisting that Hamas must be disarmed and barred from any future role in governing Gaza, that same clarity must now apply to the mullahs ruling Iran.
This is the point at which the West must decide whether its values are real or just rhetorical. No one should pretend that intervention is easy or universally effective. It is not. But this is not merely an internal Iranian matter. The regime has plotted terror attacks across Europe, armed Russia’s war machine, and works relentlessly to undermine free societies, including here in the UK. Supporting the Iranian people is therefore not only a moral imperative; it is a matter of national security.
The response must be concrete: severe sanctions, asset freezes, the closure of embassies and front organisations, and an end to the indulgent fiction that this is a normal state with which business can continue.
To defend Iranians is to defend the principles the West claims to uphold. The Iranian people need support. Not later. Now.
Gio Esfandiary is a member of the board of Lotus advocacy
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