“It is the sixth day of the war, and the smile has not left my face. That is not without reason. For the first time, we see that we are united like never before. We see that only people directly connected with the regime support it,” said Mahsa Movafegh on TV Republika, an Iranian woman who has lived in Poland for 13 years.
Attack on Iran
On Saturday, February 28, Israel and the United States launched Operation “Epic Fury” targeting the Iranian regime. The headquarters of the Supreme Leader in Tehran and Iranian military targets were attacked.
Iranian authorities confirmed on Sunday the death of the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Pakpour, and influential security adviser Ali Shamkhani. Iran responded with attacks on Israel and U.S. military targets in the Persian Gulf states.
Iranian woman living in Poland: “It is the sixth day of the war and the smile has not left my face”
Mahsa Movafegh, an Iranian woman who has lived in Poland for 13 years, was a guest on the program “Friends of Republika,” where she was asked how she assessed the events of recent days.
“It is the sixth day of the war, and the smile has not left my face. That is not without reason. For the first time, we see that we are united like never before. We see that only people directly connected with the regime support it,”
she said.
She also recalled that Iranian citizens “had been begging foreign powers for more than a month and a half to support us and carry out any kind of intervention.”
“Only we, Iranians, can see what this regime is capable of. We need help from outside, because we cannot defeat this brutal regime with our own hands,”
she said.
She emphasized that the lives of Iranians looked much better before the Islamic Revolution, and that the national currency had greater value at that time.
“I think the problem was that large cities expanded very rapidly. The distribution of goods to smaller villages was not even; it was unfair. Rural residents had no access to electricity or water,”
she explained.
Shocking memories
Movafegh also spoke about her traumatic memories.
“Fifteen years ago, when I was nine years old, I witnessed people in Iran being doused with boiling water, gassed, beaten, and thrown into mosques. Members of my family were arrested, and for several months we had no information about them. They killed my nanny—a woman who had been trying to have a child with her husband and was four months pregnant,”
she recounted.
“This is about freedom”
When she was nine years old, she herself was detained by the “morality police.”
“I was in a police car for eight hours as they kept adding more girls to the vehicle. The problem was that I was wearing white trousers and a navy-blue shirt, which attracted attention. It was traumatizing,”
she said.
She added that “this is not about Iran’s economic situation or about Islam, but about human rights—the world must know about all of this.”
“Since childhood we knew we would not live in Iran. My mother came to Poland a little earlier than we did. When we arrived, she said that she felt there was a strong family culture here. She also said there were not many immigrants from Muslim countries. We trusted her, stayed in Poland, and never regretted that decision,”
she emphasized.
Asked what the alternative to Islam in Iran could be, she replied:
“Freedom. That is what this is all about. Cyrus the Great wrote about human rights on his cylinder for the first time. On that cylinder it was written that in conquered lands the faith of local people, their culture, and their language should be respected.”
She concluded:
“Iranians have no choice. We had to ask for intervention. It is a country incredibly rich in resources. We hope we will be able to save it. There are many political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. There should be an end to Islam in Iran. The end of Islam in Iran would mean good not only for Iran but for the entire Middle East.”