For decades, I have worked with people struggling for human rights and freedom under authoritarian governments around the world. During my years as president of Freedom House and throughout my subsequent work on democracy and human rights, I learned an enduring lesson: Dictatorships depend not only on repression at home, but also on the assumption that the outside world will eventually look away.
I have also learned that those truly struggling against such regimes rarely ask outsiders to fight their battles for them. More often, they ask to be heard, to have their rights recognized, and to know that democratic nations will not legitimize their oppressors while ignoring those risking their lives for freedom.
That lesson is particularly relevant to Iran today.
Nongovernmental organizations have an indispensable role in shaping policy, not only by providing lawmakers with expert analysis, but by transmitting the voices and experiences of people living under repression. At their best, NGOs create a bridge between those confronting dictatorship and policymakers who have the power to hold their persecutors accountable.
Iran urgently needs such a bridge.
In recent years, a growing number of Western lawmakers, scholars, former officials, and policy experts have concluded that meaningful democratic change in Iran must come from the Iranian people themselves, particularly through organized opposition to the ruling theocracy.
Thousands of Western lawmakers and public figures have endorsed the democratic aspirations represented by the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the 10-point plan advanced by its President-elect, Maryam Rajavi. That platform calls for free and fair elections, separation of religion and state, equality before the law, and a non-nuclear Iran.
The NCRI has proposed that Rajavi serve as transitional president for no more than six months after the overthrow of the current regime, with the central task of organizing elections for a constituent assembly and transferring authority to representatives chosen by the Iranian people.
These principles should not be controversial in Western capitals. They are principles that democratic governments have championed around the world for generations.
Yet, when it comes to Iran, Western policy has too often been constrained by a false choice: accommodation with the existing regime or foreign military intervention. There is another option, recognizing and supporting the Iranian people’s resistance to determine their future.
That has become more urgent as Tehran intensifies its repression.
Since mid-March, at least 40 political prisoners have been executed, including members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK, and dissidents arrested during the January 2026 uprising. Two were hanged publicly. Dozens more remain on death row.
This wave of political executions is taking place on a scale unseen since 1988, when 30,000 political prisoners were killed in one of the darkest chapters of Iran’s modern history.
The executions follow the nationwide uprising in January, when protests spread across Iran and challenged the regime’s authority. Thousands were killed as security forces sought to regain control through overwhelming violence. The executions are Tehran’s tool to avert another uprising.
Having watched authoritarian governments respond to challenges over many decades, I recognize the pattern. Executions, mass arrests, and intimidation are not signs of confidence. They are instruments used by governments that fear their own people. And when the international community responds with silence, repression becomes easier.
Unfortunately, the January uprising and the bloodshed that followed have already begun to recede from international attention. That is precisely why human rights organizations, democratic governments, and those of us who have spent our lives advocating freedom must keep the spotlight on Iran.
On Sept. 22, thousands of Iranian Americans are expected to gather outside the United Nations in New York as world leaders assemble for the General Assembly. President Donald Trump is scheduled to address the U.N. that day, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to speak the following day.
The demonstrators will demand international action to stop political executions, hold the regime accountable for its human rights abuses, and recognize the Iranian people’s right to achieve democratic change through their own struggle and organized resistance.
Their presence matters.
The Iranian Americans gathering in New York will bring not only their own experiences but information from contacts inside Iran about repression, public sentiment, and the continuing struggle against the regime.
The United States and other democracies do not need to choose Iran’s future. Nor should they. That choice belongs exclusively to the Iranian people.
But democratic nations do have a choice of their own: whether to remain silent while political prisoners are taken to the gallows, or to stand with those demanding the same freedoms we have defended elsewhere for decades.
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I have spent much of my life believing that solidarity with people struggling for freedom matters. Experience has only strengthened that conviction.
The people of Iran are not asking the world to liberate them. They are asking the world to listen to them, and to accord their organized resistance the recognition it has earned through decades of struggle, sacrifice, and resistance to tyranny.
R. Bruce McColm is president of Institute for Democratic Strategies and was the executive director of the Freedom House.