Iranians do not want to live another 47 years being brutalized by the Islamic regime, but sentiments could change very quickly if civilian infrastructure starts receiving the brunt of American attacks, Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay told The Jerusalem Post late on Sunday night.
Her warning came only weeks after US President Donald Trump threatened that a “whole civilization will die” if Tehran refuses to meet Washington’s demands, a threat that continues to hang as a more permanent agreement has yet to be signed in Islamabad.
Despite McKay’s apprehension, she asserted that military intervention was exactly what the Iranian people were calling for in the face of the regime’s killing of thousands of protesters in January, who took to the streets to demand change after the country’s dire economic state worsened.
“What many people don't realize in the West, especially from the left of the political spectrum, is that the Iranian people were calling for this intervention. For 47 years, they've been so oppressed, they've tried everything, negotiations, reforms, nothing has worked. And as we saw in January, there were tens of thousands massacred with machine guns because the Iranian people are bare-handed, and they could not stand up for themselves,” she said.
“And so, out of desperation, they were so excited when President Trump said, 'We have your back, we're going to come to your aid.’”
That excitement grew, she said, when top IRGC officials were killed off and command centers blown up, even if there were civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.
“They understood that there is a cost to freedom and that there was going to be collateral damage, and they were willing to pay that price because they said they have nothing else to lose,” she explained.
The initial feeling of excitement has given way as US rhetoric on the conflict has changed, McKay warned. “We just have to wait and see whether President Trump is going to take it to that level, but for the Iranian people, that would be so devastating, because the Iranian people are America's and Israel's best allies… sentiment could turn very quickly if they feel like the aim isn't the same anymore,” she cautioned.
Trump has repeatedly “emphasized that the aim was never regime change, that the aims are more to dismantle the nuclear capabilities of the regime and to extract the uranium and to weaken the missile program, and, now, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. The Iranians are not naive. We just hope that the United States considers Iranian voices at the table,” she continued.
“It seems like President Trump is leaning towards a Venezuela-style takeover, where he would replace one regime official with another. That's not a regime change, and the Iranian people know all too well that just by taking out the top commander and replacing him with another regime official is not going to benefit anybody, not to the Iranian people, and, of course, not to the United States or Israel. They will find some other way to rebuild their nuclear and missile capabilities with that same mindset and ideology that they have worked under for the past 47 years.”
The Iranian-Canadian human rights activist and writer has been no stranger to Iran’s brutality. Despite being only a baby when her family fled, she grew up hearing about how her father, the former head of the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran, was tortured for failing to quickly adapt to the country’s new Islamist practices.
He didn’t understand that music, dancing, and fraternization between men and women were no longer allowed under the new dictatorship.
The Revolutionary Guards lashed McKay’s father so severely that he couldn’t sit for weeks after he was released pending a meeting for an executionary decree.
He was very nearly one of the thousands killed after Ayatollah Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini seized power, spared only as the judge set to sentence him to death had a car accident on the way to court. He used his brief release to flee to Spain and then Canada, where his family came to join him months later.
Impassioned by her own family’s experience and disturbed by the continued humanitarian violations committed by the regime, McKay spent her life campaigning for the women and children of Iran. She cofounded the organization Stop Child Executions, served as a Global Youth Educator with the Red Cross, and crusaded tirelessly to save the life of Nazanin Mahabad Fatehi, an Iranian teenager sentenced to death in 2005 for stabbing one of the three men who attempted to rape her and her young niece.
The more than $40,000 McKay raised allowed Fatehi to make bail and ultimately saved her life. For this, the books she published and her many other campaigns, McKay was awarded the Global Citizenship Award, the Human Rights Hero, and the Emerging Leader Peacemaker Award.
When she founded Stop Child Executions, 160 children were awaiting the death sentence as Iran maintained girls were criminally culpable at 13 and boys at 15. Now, nearly 20 years after its founding, there are still children in prison awaiting hanging, the legal age of marriage is 13, and the regime has continued to recruit child soldiers in violation of international law.
Amnesty International warned that there were two 17-year-olds at risk of execution for their role in the January protests, and human rights groups have complained that thousands remain missing after security forces cracked down on the public dissent.
Despite her many awards, published works, and an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Western Ontario, her title as Miss World Canada 2003 is what her critics have reduced her to. She enrolled in the Miss World pageant on the suggestion of her sister, who thought it could help expand her platform, having felt the message of “beauty with a purpose” resonated with her.
“They (Miss World) aimed to raise money for children's charities, I thought, ‘well, this is a pageant that aligns’ and competed at Miss Canada, and then a few months later, the international competition in China for Miss World… It helped give me somewhat of a platform to talk more about some of these issues that I was concerned about, or gain more access to the media when there was an issue that was of concern. So in some ways it helped, and in other ways it also, it's like a label that has stuck to me in a negative way,” she shared.
“Over 20 years have passed, a few degrees later, merit-based awards, etc. And I still have people online who say very misogynistic comments like, ‘You're just a beauty queen, what do you know about politics?’ Or ‘The only reason you are where you are is that you married a Canadian politician,’ and it's very demeaning and misogynistic.”
Those comments, she said, came not just from the same Islamists who want to see women forcibly covered but from Western public figures and activists with open profiles.
“I think there's more learning to do, even among those who ascribe to championing democracy and women's rights, and have been chanting ‘woman, life, freedom’ in these rallies, and yet, then they are not living their words,” she shared.
Strictly non-partisan, born to a family of monarchists but willing to work with any group for the betterment of the Iranian people, McKay shared that some members of the Iranian opposition had also been behind the campaign to disparage her.
“At the end of the day, if we're going to topple this regime, we need everybody. We need the monarchists. We need the Democrats, everybody, all ethnic groups,” she asserted.
“We have to recognize the rights of the ethnic minorities and their right to their mother tongue and their culture. We just have to acknowledge that Iran is so diverse, and we should embrace that diversity and utilize the skills and what everybody brings, and then topple the regime. And then, at the ballot box, everybody can debate whatever they want, whatever politics they have at that stage.”
Asked what The Post readers could do to support Iranians, McKay stressed the necessity of people educating themselves, listening to Iranian voices, and supporting diaspora organizations with funds, presence at protests, and connecting them with officials able to influence international change.
Issues will 'collect dust' until those responsible are held accountable
So far, she said, the international response hasn’t been as urgent as the situation requires. The UN fact-finding mission’s report on the regime’s mass murder of protesters after the murder of Mahsa Amini, and on the more recent protests, will continue to “collect dust” until those responsible for the massacres can be held accountable in a court of law.
“It'll be very important one day for documentation purposes. We hope that those implicated in these mass atrocities will be tried in an international tribunal one day, like at the International Criminal Court. It's very important. I just wish that there was more concrete action if those documents had been taken to the Security Council, and there was some kind of expedited process where the International Criminal Court could have more teeth,” McKay said, acknowledging the difficulty in ensuring justice when Iran has yet to sign the Rome Statute.
“I just wish that more countries would form a coalition on their own to pressure the regime more solidly. We saw that the US and Israel took unilateral action in this intervention. It was never agreed to at the Security Council, and we know that it (the UNSC) never would [agree to such action] with China and Russia having veto power there. So the United Nations is very limited in what they can do… but I just wish more countries, including Canada, would have taken a stronger stance and provided them (Iranians) with more tools.”
More countries should have found ways to provide Iranians with internet freedoms, even now, as Iran has exceeded 50 days in the blackout. The global community should provide VPNs, satellites, and access to independent media, she asserted.