Sulaymaniyah, Iraq — On the third day of the Iran battle, air strikes destroyed the detention centre in western Iran the place Wyra Hassan was tortured.
For 102 days, brokers of Iran’s state safety equipment held Hassan on the constructing in Sanandaj.
So when he heard it had been razed, he was glad.
Now he’s hoping the Islamic regime that persecuted him for expressing his opinions will quickly be gone too.
However with the battle launched by the U.S. and Israel into its third week, that is still an unsure consequence of the battle, which the Trump administration mentioned on Sunday would “finish within the subsequent few weeks.”
Whereas Iran’s navy has suffered vital losses for the reason that assaults started on Feb. 28, hardline clerics and politicians nonetheless management the nation.
Ought to they continue to be in energy, Iran would be the equal of a automobile that wanted a brand new engine however solely obtained a tire change, based on Hassan.
“If the battle ends with out eradicating the regime, will probably be a catastrophe for the Iranian individuals,” he instructed World Information in an interview within the e book store he now runs in Sulaymaniyah.
Born three years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution introduced a theocracy to energy, Hassan is one in all many Iranians who’ve skilled the brutality the state makes use of to crush dissent.
A journalist and member of the nation’s persecuted Kurdish minority, he was arrested in 2006, accused of organizing an Worldwide Ladies’s Day demonstration.
When the police had been completed torturing him, they instructed him he can be launched however that he needed to go away Sanandaj and was forbidden from writing.
Unable to just accept such shackles, he escaped to Sulaymaniyah, a metropolis ringed by mountains in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan area, simply 100 kilometres from the Iran border.
He turned the director of the Jamal Erfan Cultural Basis, a hangout for e book lovers that was constructed on the positioning of one in all Saddam Hussein’s torture centres.
As soon as a spot the place Iraq’s late dictator forcibly stifled concepts and freedoms, it’s now devoted to the free circulation of concepts.
Most of the books are within the Kurdish language, which has been suppressed in Iran as a part of an effort to get rid of the minority’s distinct identification.
Hassan mentioned Iran’s response to the mass protests that erupted in January, and the battle that started the next month, have proven the true face of the Iranian regime.
Professional-regime forces quashed the rebellion by opening fireplace on demonstrators, killing hundreds.
Have been the regime to emerge from the battle nonetheless in authorities, circumstances for activists will solely deteriorate, Hassan mentioned.
“We all know if the regime is allowed to rebuild and get its energy again, they may crack down worse than ever,” he mentioned.
In the meantime, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched tons of of missiles and drones at neighboring nations.
Except it falls, the regime will proceed to pose a risk to not solely Iranians however all the area as properly, Hassan mentioned.
He hopes that gained’t occur.
He needs to return to Sanandaj to open one other e book centre, this one on the website of the detention facility the place he was as soon as held.
“I wish to return there and set up the identical library in the identical place that I used to be tortured,” he mentioned.
Wished for an Instagram submit
Three hours away in Erbil, one other refugee pressured to flee Iran for expressing his views sits in a resort lounge streaming the Instagram video that obtained him in bother.
Within the video, Ali Rezaei Majd started by introducing himself as a youngster “residing beneath concern and oppression each single day.”
Iranians need freedom and a greater future, he mentioned earlier than interesting to the USA to “stand with the individuals of Iran, assist us deliver again gentle to our nation earlier than it’s too late.”
Posted on Jan. 6, the video ended the life he had recognized.
When it went viral amid rising protests towards Iran’s regime, he heard from associates that safety officers had been in search of him.
He packed a bag and fled to Iraq.
Ali Rezaei Majd posted this Instangram video recorded in Dorud, Iran on Jan. 6, 2026.
Two months later, Majd acknowledged in an interview with World Information that he in all probability hadn’t given sufficient thought to the implications of his phrases.
He additionally appeared incredulous at what his nation had turn into: a spot that will not even indulge a heartfelt video lasting lower than two minutes.
Majd mentioned he joined the opposition motion after fighting authorities over his Christian religion and his enterprise, a gymnasium in Dorud, an industrial metropolis in western Iran.
However it was U.S. President Donald Trump who tipped the stability, he mentioned.
On Jan. 2, Trump posted on social media that if Iran killed protesters, the U.S. would “come to their rescue,” writing “we’re locked and loaded and able to go.”
Inspired by the president’s phrases, Majd stood on the railroad tracks in Dorud and recorded two movies — one in Persian, one other in English.
World Information verified the movies by geolocating them to a spot close to the Dorud practice station, the place Majd mentioned a good friend helped him make the recordings.
“In the present day I’m rising up in darkness,” he mentioned within the video. “Our voices are silenced, our desires are being destroyed, and our persons are struggling, not as a result of we did one thing mistaken however as a result of we wish to dwell free.”
He mentioned Iran was not America’s enemy and that if the U.S. helped Iranians regain their freedom, they’d by no means cease repaying the debt.
“Please don’t overlook us. Stand with the individuals of Iran.”
Because the video racked up greater than 800,000 likes, Majd obtained phrase from associates that safety brokers had been asking about him. Fearing he was about to be arrested, he went into hiding, he mentioned.
As he made his technique to the border, he mentioned he witnessed the violent crackdown on demonstrators on Jan. 8 and 9, and finally discovered a bunch of smugglers who helped him cross to Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah.
From his present refuge in Erbil, he has adopted the battle to see if it can mark the exit of the federal government he believes Iranians ought to have tossed out way back.
However whereas Trump initially mentioned the regime needed to go, and that he needed a say in deciding on its subsequent chief, he has since appeared to backed off from these statements.
As an alternative, the Trump administration appears to have shifted the objective of the battle to degrading the nuclear, navy and missile threats posed by Iran.
Majd mentioned he was uncertain Iranians would be capable to simply take again their nation. Even in its weakened state, the regime reveals no limits when its feels threatened, he mentioned.
“I feel they may combat to the dying and we’ve to be ready,” he mentioned.
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca
