“No one likes to see their homeland bombed, but the Islamic regime ruling Iran has left us no other choice.”
That’s how a 45-year-old lawyer from a suburb of Tehran described the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran’s military and nuclear sites. We spoke to him on Friday—a week into the Israeli operation and less than 48 hours before American strikes began.
“After 46 years of this regime’s hollow bluster, we’re seeing the first light of victory,” the lawyer, whom we’re not naming for security reasons, said. “I feel the same way the French felt on D-Day.”
This is the voice the Islamic Republic doesn’t want you to hear—and one most Western media aren’t bothering to look for. But over the last week, The Free Press, in partnership with the Center for Peace Communications (CPC), has been doing just that: speaking to Iranians inside the country, even as internet access is throttled and repressions intensify.