From the Heart of an Iranian

via Dr. Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD, Iranian

47 years ago, I stood at a window in Tehran as a 3-year-old boy, smelling burning tires and hearing the chants that would steal my country. I didn’t have words for what was happening. Today, I am watching smoke rise over the same city — but this time the smoke is not the end of Iran. It is, God willing, the beginning of her resurrection.

Several weeks ago, I wrote that the fever of 1979 was finally breaking. I never imagined I would wake up to see that fever confronted so directly. Israel — with the clear support of the United States — has launched a preemptive strike deep into Tehran and against the regime’s military machinery. Explosions in the capital. Military targets hit. The IRGC’s aura of invincibility, already cracked, is shattering in real time.

I do not celebrate war. No decent person does. What I celebrate — what millions of Iranians inside the country and in the diaspora have prayed for in secret for decades — is the possibility that a regime which has no right to exist may finally be forced to go.

This is the same regime that:

• Armed and cheered the October 7 massacre against Israel for no reason other than pure genocidal hatred.

• Murdered tens of thousands of its own sons and daughters who dared to walk peacefully in the streets demanding the most basic freedoms.

• Gouges out the eyes of young women for the “crime” of wearing makeup.

• Hangs teenagers from cranes for posting a tweet.

• Exports terror, poverty, and darkness to every corner it can reach, including the U.S.

No nation, no people, should have to live under that. Not Israelis. Not Americans. Not Lebanese. Not Syrians. And certainly not Iranians.

I am a physician who has spent his life trying to heal bodies and a son of Iran who has spent his life mourning a stolen homeland. What we are witnessing is not aggression — it is surgery. Painful, necessary surgery to remove a tumor that has metastasized for 47 years. The tumor is the Islamic Republic that has hijacked Iran.

To the brave pilots and special operators of the Israeli Air Force and the men and women of the United States military now carrying out this mission: I pray for you with everything I have.

May God shield you from harm. May every missile find its target and every soldier return home safely to the families who love them. You are not invaders. You are the answer to the prayers of millions who have whispered “enough” in the dark since 1979. You are giving our friends the chance to breathe free air again. The entire region will owe you a peace we have not known in my lifetime.

To my fellow Iranians watching from inside the country right now, heart pounding, maybe hiding in basements or on rooftops: Hold on. The end is clearer than it has ever been. The regime’s fear is real. Their eyes — those same eyes that once stared down at us with absolute power — now show something they haven’t shown in decades: panic. The math has changed. The window of 1979 is finally closing.

To the little three-year-old boy I once was — and to every little boy and girl in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz today who hears explosions instead of lullabies: This time the sounds are not the closing of a door. They are the opening of one.

The road ahead will not be easy. Transitions never are. But the direction is unmistakable. A secular, prosperous, free Iran is no longer a dream — it is becoming an inevitability.

I have lived the stolen life so that others might not have to. Today, for the first time in 47 years, I allow myself to believe that the stealing is almost over.

Thank you, Israel. Thank you, America. The Iranian people — the real Iran — will never forget.

The fever is breaking.
The dawn of 2026 is here.
And this time, the light wins.

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