“It is not enough to cut your hair here in the West. You have to break your ties with the mullahs,” said Massih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist and activist who has been in open conflict with the theocratic regime for years, in a firm voice. A mode that does not hide what will take her to the executive squad if she turns back. “Everywhere in Iran there are pictures of me with a noose around my neck,” he says cynically. And here in the United States, where she lives in exile, she is in danger of being kidnapped or murdered at any moment. But Masih does not bend, she has learned to endure the gaze of the regime and the presence of FBI agents around her.

She starts talking to me about the unique opportunity that the “revolution” creates, and I subtly interrupt her to ask if this is really a revolution and if these protests are different from those in the past. “This is the first time the main ideological pillar of the regime, the mandatory wearing of the hijab, has been challenged on such a large scale. In addition to countless protesters on the streets and at universities, they are now being abandoned by famous athletes and actors who have legitimized the mullahs for years and represented them abroad. This column is beyond repair, as soon as it collapses there will be catastrophic changes; The hijab is as powerful a symbol as the Berlin Wall, and once it collapses, the whole system will collapse by the roots.”

I ask her how she thinks things will play out after so many weeks of protests, and she explains that the regime currently has only two options, both equally self-destructive: “Keep killing protesters, which will ignite public anger, or reform.” . . But that will be the end of him, because he is based on this oppression: if he tries to reform, he will cease to exist.”

“If we were now in Tehran, and not in Washington, we would both be threatened with prison. Or being sentenced to a spanking just because our hair sticks out,” she says, as if she needs to convince me, to win me over to her side. As if she needs to convince the West as a whole of the justice of her struggle, the constant effort, which I understand, leaves her bitter and frustrated. “I told National Security Adviser John Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken when I met with them that we are not asking you to save us, we are asking you to stop saving the regime. Stop funding him, negotiate a nuclear deal with him (JCPOA), give him the opportunity to participate in the UN, legitimize him every day.”

I legitimately wonder how Americans react behind closed doors. “Sullivan told me they don’t want to change their policy, they don’t want to get involved, they want Iran to be nuclear free. They don’t understand that Iran without a regime is a game changer.”

I ask her who could lead the next day, given that there is no united opposition front. “Once the prisons are open, the leader will be found, our prisons are full of sensational minds and intellect. For the first time, all opposition groups inside and outside of Iran have united. We ask that the regime leave so that free elections can be held. We will find a leader.”

The hijab is as powerful a symbol as the Berlin Wall, and once it falls, the entire mullah system will be uprooted.

She recalls her childhood in Iran, a dystopia reminiscent of the fictional Gilead from Margaret Atwood’s Playboy Story. A dictatorship that kills, rapes and humiliates its women, she emphasizes. “It makes me angry that people in the West are watching The Handmaid’s Tale while eating popcorn for fun. It’s like they’re watching our own lives for fun. I grew up watching my brother and his friends dive into rivers, ride bikes and laugh. I was constantly afraid, watching on black-and-white TV, how the mullahs threatened me that if they saw a lock of my hair, they would hang me on it.

“And how did you become who you are today when you had no guide, no window to the world, no tools for enlightenment?” I think. “I didn’t have a single book, I had uneducated parents, darkness is everywhere. But my brother was a symbol of my freedom, a light when at the age of 7 I had to cover my life with a scarf so that I could go to school.” Mashih, as a young journalist in Iran, almost reflexively took a stand against the Deep State. The dilemma on the part of the authorities was not long in coming: to remain silent or leave Iran. He left in 2009 and moved to the US in 2014. Here, she has built a powerful network of millions of social media followers, which is essentially multiplying her influence.

The mullahs consider her actions so dangerous that they have passed a law that anyone caught sending her videos or materials out of the country risks a 10-year prison sentence. “But the new generation is not afraid, since the beginning of the protests I have received thousands of videos every day,” he notes, and shows me a few of the most recent ones. I understand that we in the West really have no idea about the scope of the outrage.

In 2021, US authorities thwarted a plan to kidnap her and smuggle her to Venezuela, and from there to Iran. Last July, they arrested a heavily armed man who tried to break into her Brooklyn home. “This time the motive was to kill you,” as he admitted to the FBI himself. A few days later, Salman Rushdie was attacked, and high-ranking Iranian officials openly declared that it was Masih’s turn.

“What is it like to live in constant uncertainty, to constantly feel their heavy breathing on you?” I wonder.

“If the girls in Iran, protesters without a headscarf, risking a headshot, are not afraid, then what should I do? I’m not afraid of their threats. What scares me is that the dictators of our world, Khamenei, Putin, Xi, Maduro, Erdogan, are few. More united than the leaders of the democratic world. Yes, it keeps me awake at night.”