--- title: My Dream for Iran description: Arash Azizi imagines a democratic, inclusive Iran after the 2022 protests—where culture, freedom, and pluralism can finally thrive. canonical: https://time.com/7362283/iran-future-democracy-dreams/ author: Arash Azizi article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-02-03T13:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-11T00:51:58.127Z article:section: Ideas og:title: My Dream for Iran og:description: Arash Azizi imagines a democratic, inclusive Iran after the 2022 protests—where culture, freedom, and pluralism can finally thrive. og:url: https://time.com/7362283/iran-future-democracy-dreams/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt70f384bc3406e912/6998cd56e2d64be776c600ae/iran-tehran.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: IRAN-ENVIRONMENT-DROUGHT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: My Dream for Iran twitter:description: Arash Azizi imagines a democratic, inclusive Iran after the 2022 protests—where culture, freedom, and pluralism can finally thrive. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt70f384bc3406e912/6998cd56e2d64be776c600ae/iran-tehran.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # My Dream for Iran > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. Feb 3, 2026 1:00 PM UTC  A rainbow at sunset following several days of rain in the Iranian capital Tehran on Dec. 10, 2025. A rainbow at sunset following several days of rain in the Iranian capital Tehran on Dec. 10, 2025. Atta Kenare—AFP/Getty Images by [Arash Azizi](https://time.com/author/arash-azizi/) ## Arash Azizi Arash Azizi is a lecturer at Yale University and author of “What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.” Feb 3, 2026 1:00 PM UTC For years now, I have held on to a very specific dream. I am somewhere in Tehran, my hometown, canvassing for an election. I knock on an apartment door, and an elderly woman answers. “Madar Jaan,” I address her, using the Persian term of endearment and respect. “Will you consider voting for the Left Party of Iran?” Sometimes, in the dream, she tells me to get lost. Other times, she shows interest, and I explain that our party is socialist, that we want to build more Metro stops and open a new factory in the neighborhood. She says she’ll think about it. The biggest dreams sound so ordinary. The scene from my dream is commonplace not only in my adopted home, the United States, and other liberal democracies, but even, in a constrained fashion, in the neighboring Turkey and Pakistan. For it to come true in Iran, much would have to change. I was born in Iran in 1988\. For all but the first year of my life, my homeland has been ruled by the same man: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who has final authority over every major decision but is accountable to no one. I have voted in the elections of the Islamic Republic but every candidate on every ballot was vetted for total fealty to Khamenei. A political party sharing my own convictions of democratic socialism couldn’t dream of legally existing in Iran. Neither could any political party outside the Islamist framework. This prohibition has kept me away from Iran for years now. My politics renders me persona non grata. Every protest in Iran is a reminder of the Islamic Republic’s cruelty and a renewed call for its demise. Even the slightest improvement seems unimaginable without an end to the regime. But I have never believed it enough to simply declare what we oppose, what we don’t want. We must also dream of what could be. My very specific fantasies about the Iran of the future are my way of keeping the political imagination alive and open. One day at the height of the anti-regime mass protests in Iran in 2022, I had a long, tearful conversation with a dear friend. We allowed ourselves to alternate our mourning with dreams about the future. My friend and I, like most Iranians, are embarrassingly exceptionalist about our homeland, convinced that Iran can rival any country in its offerings. We dreamed of working for the Iranian tourism board, designing ad campaigns to lure travelers from every corner of the world. Iran’s Shia shrines already draw millions of pilgrims from Muslim countries. We dreamed of a day when millions of Jews might also visit the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan, and millions of Baha’is could visit the holiest land of their faith. We dreamed that the Saadi Foundation, a government-run institution dedicated to promoting Persian language, might host well-attended classes in Lisbon, Montreal and Johannesburg. Instead of its current fare of dour Islamist pretension, it would offer the best of Iranian arts and culture: our cinema, our poetry, perhaps even our wine. I am sure my more artful compatriots would come up with something less tacky but we did come up with a tagline: “Taste the Shiraz Wine That’s Actually from Shiraz.” Of Iran’s many squandered possibilities, the waste of our soft power stings the most. Even if Iran never became a robust democracy, couldn’t its institutions at least align more closely with our national interests and our cultural heritage? Couldn’t we use them not to further some regressive ideology but to disseminate our culture and leverage it for economic growth? Some might argue that fantasies, by definition, know no bounds. I don’t dream of democracy as some promised land of milk and honey but as what it actually is: a parliament composed of representatives freely chosen by the populace; a chance, I would have, to persuade a fellow Iranian to vote for my politics. I know that, no matter what follows the regime, we are not about to be Denmark. All I want is for us to have a chance to serve our country. The Iranian state was a founding member of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Ours is one of a handful of countries never colonized by Europeans. Freed from the ideologues who have held them hostage, even most bureaucrats serving in the Islamic Republic today could rediscover the best of our history and reorient their efforts toward our nation’s improvement. In my dreams, I always remember that Iran is not mine alone. Like any other country, we have our social progressives and our conservatives, our devout and our atheists, our saints and our crooks. And with so much murder and mayhem in our contemporary history, many Iranians treat one another with suspicion and rancor. But I continue to set my north star with a slogan once used by Iranian reformists: “Iran for all Iranians.” I dream, then, of lazing on the beautiful beaches of the Caspian Sea or the Persian Gulf, where some Iranians would don a bikini and others a burkini. I dream of frequenting a leftist bookstore on Tehran’s fabled Enghelab Avenue while others browse its Islamist or libertarian counterparts. In my fantasies, we all share the country together, without tearing it apart for the sake of our vision. As Iranians mourn and bury their loved ones—killed in their thousands by the regime this month—it is hard to speak of fantasies. Though I see writing on the wall for the Islamic Republic, I know we have no easy path to democratization. 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