Keyvan Shahbazi – Speech Amsterdam, April 11, 2026

I want to speak to you about war.

A war that consumes human lives every day. A merciless war. Not a war of maps and analyses. A war with many, many dead. A war in which tens of thousands have been taken prisoner. A war in which tens of thousands have been tortured, mutilated, broken. Where bodies are destroyed and souls are crushed.

Iran Protest in Amsterdam

This war has no front line. No clear beginning or end date. No name and no official declaration of war. And that is precisely why it is so insidious.

Because what is not given a name, what is not recognised as war, can continue endlessly.

It has been going on for 47 years. 47 years of oppression. 47 years of fear. 47 years in which generations have grown up with the realisation that freedom is not a right, but a risk.

It is the war that the Islamic Republic is waging against its own population. Against the Iranians.

A war that takes place in prisons, in interrogation rooms, on the streets, and in the silence of the night.

In Iran. Where a knock on the door does not announce a visitor, but disappearance. Where an opinion is not an opinion, but a crime. Where a young girl has no future, but a file.

A war in which thoughts are controlled, and lives are broken to sustain a system that has long since lost its legitimacy.

And every single day there are victims. Every single day a life is broken. Every single day this regime chooses fear over humanity, violence over justice, power over truth.

This is happening now, today, while we stand here. While the world watches. Or rather: chooses to look away.

Looking away is not neutrality. Looking away is complicity.

And to those who today call for peace, I say: your peace is not peace. Your peace is the continuation of our oppression. Your peace is another 47 years of the same. Your peace is the death of the Iranian people, in slow motion.

Keep your peace to yourselves.

There are experts, respected experts, with academic titles and airtime on talk shows, who claim that ayatollahs with nuclear weapons bring stability to the Middle East.

Stability? Stability for whom? For the prisoner in Evin? For the mother who does not know where her child is? For the girl with a file instead of a future?

That is not analysis. That is a license for mass murder.

Ayatollahs with nuclear weapons mean a second Holocaust for the Jewish people. That is the logic of the executioner, not of civilisation.

Do not believe them, do not believe them who, blinded by ideology and hatred of the West, look away from the crimes of that regime.

Do not believe those who claim that ayatollahs with nuclear weapons bring stability. Do not believe those who apply human rights selectively, who remain silent about forty thousand murdered Iranians but raise their voices for their favourite conflict.

That is not morality. That is grotesque hypocrisy.

Forty thousand. Let that number sink in.

And then there are the callers for peace. The Islamists. The agents of the regime. And the useful idiots who echo them.

They say: You cannot achieve freedom with bombs.

Look around you. At this beautiful free country. This country was liberated by bombs. By people who chose to act when words were no longer enough. By soldiers who died so that we can stand here free.

Freedom is never given. Freedom is fought for.

Something has changed in Iran. A regime change has already taken place. And those who refuse to see it are consciously choosing to look away.

The Revolutionary Guard used to be an instrument in the hands of the ayatollahs. They held the power. That relationship has now been fundamentally reversed.

Today it is the Revolutionary Guard that rules. Not as a servant, but as a ruler.

The ayatollahs have been reduced to decoration. To puppets. To religious makeup meant to conceal the true face. An empty shell of legitimacy.

What remains is no longer an ideological regime. What remains is a terrorist power system. Bare. Harsh. Cynical.

A system that has hollowed itself out. A system that lives on control, but is losing control. A system that lives on fear, but is itself the most afraid. Afraid of its own people.

Compare it to a football team whose A squad and B squad have already disappeared. Not by chance. Not by bad luck. But wiped out, by bombs.

And those who say bombs do not bring freedom are not looking properly. Again: this beautiful free country was liberated by bombs.

What remains of that regime is the residue of a C team. An ayatollah-less ayatollah regime. A team that is not only weakened, but also internally divided. A team in which no one trusts each other. Where rivalry is stronger than loyalty. A team that no longer knows what it is playing for. That has no strategy. That is only trying to stall for time.

But time is exactly what this regime no longer has.

Because how do you control a population that has lost its fear? How do you suppress a generation that has nothing left to lose? How do you govern a country that no longer believes in you?

We are not waiting for a foreign power. Not for tanks. Not for marines. Not for mediation and negotiation.

To the people behind these walls, to President Trump, I say this: You have set something in motion. You must not let it go. We do not ask you to fight our war. The Iranian people are brave enough. We ask you one thing: Do not betray us. Do not make a deal that gives this regime breathing room. Do not choose the convenience of an agreement with our executioners over the dignity of our people.

Because if you bend, if you look away, you will not pay the price. They will pay the price: The prisoners. The tortured. The mothers. The girls.

That blood will then also be on your hands.

No, we are not waiting for a foreign power. We are waiting for the Iranian people themselves. For the final blow. For the moment when Iranians say: Enough.

Enough fear. Enough bloodshed.

For the moment they shatter the remnants of this regime and reclaim their country.

For Iran. For the Iranians. For their future.

And make no mistake, that future will not be given. It will be taken.

Freedom is never given. Freedom is fought for.

That day is not far away. Not because we hope so, but because everything points to it.

Because systems that are this rotten do not endure. Because oppression has limits. Because fear wears out. Because truth, however long suppressed, always returns.

That day will come.

And when that day comes, the world will have to answer why it waited so long, why it hesitated so long, why it looked away so often.

But that day will also come because of pressure from outside. Because of people like you who speak out. Because of societies that refuse to accept moral relativism. Because of countries that choose principles over interests, truth over convenience.

Thanks to you, Iranians, who, despite everything, keep hoping, keep fighting, keep living. You are the final blow. And you, the Dutch, who stand beside us, who empathise with us, who do not look away.

Our friends. Forever.

Because this is not the struggle of one people. This is the struggle between oppression and freedom. Between lies and truth. Between fear and courage.

Neutrality does not exist here.

And this struggle, must be won. And will be won. Keyvan Shahbazi - Amsterdam 11, April 2026

Image credits: BeNews