The unheard sirens coming from Iran itself

The sirens in Israel are louder than ever. Many here feel a renewed sense of existential fear, not only of missiles from above or enemies at the border, but of a Western world projecting hesitation and weakness in the face of escalating chaos.

While global leaders debate how and when to confront the growing aggression of the Iranian regime, the people of the Middle East, especially women, can no longer afford to wait. In Israel, sirens warning of missile attacks from Iran and its proxies have become a chilling backdrop to daily life. But there are other sirens, too, less audible. These are the cries rising from inside Iran itself: from women stripped of rights, from protesters silenced with bullets, from civilians crushed by a regime increasingly emboldened by the world’s silence. This is not just a regional crisis; it is a moral test for Western civilization.

For too long, global leaders have deferred decisive action, clinging to the illusion that diplomacy might tame a regime that has shown only contempt for human rights, international law, and regional stability. Iran is not merely Israel’s problem. It is a global exporter of terror, repression, and chaos. Its reach extends from Tehran to Gaza, from assassinations in European cities to the destabilization of global energy markets.

But perhaps its most brutal war is waged at home against its own people, particularly its women. We must remember the name Mahsa Amini, brutalized and killed for uncovering her hair in public. We must remember the thousands imprisoned, tortured, and executed for daring to demand basic freedoms. Women in Iran endure not just systemic inequality, but state-sanctioned violence and the weaponization of law, morality policing and public beatings, all designed to instill fear and enforce silence.

And still, the world waits.

In international law, we speak of the Responsibility to Protect, the principle that affirms the duty of the global community to intervene when a state manifestly fails to protect its own people from mass atrocities. That threshold has long been crossed in Iran. My friend and fellow human rights activist Masih Alinejad has said it best:

“To those in the West who romanticize diplomacy with dictators: Don’t ask us to mourn the deaths of IRGC commanders. These aren’t diplomats; they are the negotiators of terror. You didn’t mourn Osama bin Laden. Don’t expect us to mourn the killers of Iran.”

Her words pierce through the dangerous illusion of moral equivalence between oppressors and their victims. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is not a political wing of diplomacy – it is a machinery of terror. One that funds Hamas, arms Hezbollah, and executes teenagers in its own cities. The West must stop pretending otherwise.

A head-to-toe veiled woman walks past a mural of a mosque, in downtown Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. Candidates for Iran’s March 1, parliamentary election began campaigning Thursday in the country’s first election since the bloody crackdown on the 2022 nationwide protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

As an Israeli, I see the convergence of threats with painful clarity. When Hamas launched its massacre against Israel on October 7, slaughtering families, committing sexual atrocities, and taking hostages, it did so with Iranian financing, training, and ideology. The sirens we hear in Tel Aviv are tied to the cries heard in Tehran. The same extremist networks that target Israeli families with missiles are those who imprison teenage girls for daring to remove a headscarf.

The connection is not abstract. It is immediate. It is brutal. And it is undeniable.

Let me address the elephant in the room. Yes, Prime Minister Netanyahu launched a strike. Western leaders don’t like it. They weren’t consulted. I’ve never supported him – I’ve marched against his government’s policies. But Netanyahu is not the cause of this crisis. And disliking his policies cannot be the excuse for failing to support Israel’s justified actions against Iran.

This fight is larger than any single politician. It is the feminist, legal, and moral struggle against a regime that brutalizes women, exports terror, and destabilizes the world. We can and must critique how we got here. But we must also tell the truth about what must be done now. We cannot allow political battles to obscure moral clarity. We must speak in this moment with courage and conviction.

I didn’t choose the timing or the strategy of this escalation. But I will not be silent while the Iranian regime, the world’s foremost oppressor of women and leading sponsor of terrorism, threatens civilians in Israel or anywhere else. The world must respond – not with partisan calculations, but with principle.

The Responsibility to Protect is not a slogan. It is a moral and legal imperative. This is why the time to act is now. We need bold, principled leadership – leaders who understand that defending human rights is not just about values, but about global security. We need a coalition, led by the United States, joined by democratic allies, and backed by women’s movements worldwide, that takes seriously the duty to protect, not only from war, but from regimes that wage war on their own people.

The wider the global participation, the less blood is going to be shed and the faster the world can bring Iran’s aggression to a decisive and less devastating end.

The question is no longer whether we should act; the question is how long we will wait and how many more will suffer while we do.

This is a moment that demands moral clarity.

Will the world answer?