As images of protests, repression, and internet shutdowns in Iran intermittently reach Dutch newsfeeds, the situation in the country often appears as a distant crisis: urgent, violent, but difficult to grasp. For Iranian and Iranian-Dutch students and staff at VU, however, the developments are not abstract. They are lived, through disrupted contact with family, anger at political narratives, and uncertainty about what comes next.
Dr. Younes Saramifar, an anthropologist who researches political Islam and power in the Middle East, is critical of the way Iran is commonly framed in Western media and in parts of the diaspora. “Iran is not just the government, and it’s not just protesters”, he says. “It’s also people who oppose the protests, and we need to ask why they support the Islamic Republic and engage in what it is they want for Iran’s future.”
Selective representation
According to Saramifar, public debates often treat the Islamic Republic – Iran’s current political system – as a small group of elites imposed on a uniformly resistant population. That view, he argues, overlooks the social base that sustains power. “A government is not only commanders or leaders. It’s a set of interests, ideologies, and people who actively participate in violence or benefit from it.”
He is especially critical of what he describes as a dominant Persian diaspora narrative in Europe and North America, one that, in his view, presents regime change through foreign intervention and Israel as inevitable and desirable. “These voices have access to Western media and political institutions. But why should they determine Iran’s future?” For Saramifar, this selective representation has consequences. “It produces exclusionary politics and Islamophobic, sometimes racist views that imagine a ‘liberated’ Iran by erasing religious people, rural populations, and minorities.”
Reduced to passive victims
Soraya Oskouie, a 24-year-old Iranian-Dutch engineering student who grew up in the Netherlands, agrees; she visits Iran every year and pushes back against the image she often encounters here. “People here see Iran as a poor, war-torn country. But in many ways it’s very modern, like in food, fashion, and technology. It’s more diverse and vibrant than people think.”
‘Iran is more diverse and vibrant than people think’
She does not deny the presence of repression or danger. But she worries that Western narratives reduce Iranians, especially women, to passive victims. “When I was there, more than half the women weren’t wearing headscarves. The idea that liberation only means leaving religion behind doesn’t match reality.” At the same time, the violence feels close. Several of her cousins’ friends were shot during protests. “Families had to search morgues without being told where bodies were taken. And then they had to pay for the bullets used to kill their loved ones before they could bury them.”
Universities under repression
For Saeid (who preferred to omit his last name), today’s protests are part of a longer cycle. The VU PhD student in history of photography studied and taught in Iran before moving to the Netherlands three years ago. As a student at the University of Arts in Tehran during the 2009 Green Movement, he witnessed the effects of the protest, such as arrests and killings, up close. “Some students from our university were killed or imprisoned. One of them, Sane Jaleh, became a symbol of the movement”, he recalls. “At the same time, we were living with anger, grief, struggle, and resistance within an atmosphere of humiliation, restriction, and repression imposed by the ruling authorities.”
After graduating, Saeid returned as a lecturer, only to see the same patterns repeat during later protests in 2018, 2019, and 2022. Following the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, he was dismissed from his teaching position for supporting students. Now at VU, distance has not brought relief. “I feel more distressed than before”, he says. “I can’t access my country, and I’m confronted with horrifying news every day, sometimes every hour.” Like many Iranians abroad, he lost contact with family during internet shutdowns. “For two weeks, there was nothing. Then a brief phone call.” While his relatives survived, some friends were injured. Since then, a very slow internet connection has been re-established, making online contact possible again.
Engineering student Oskouie, too, has struggled to contact her relatives in Iran. While her parents and sister also live in the Netherlands, she tries to reach out to the rest of her family in Iran. “The longest I went without contact was about a week”, she says. But through using a VPN, Oskouie and her family can maintain contact quite easily.
Misreading Iran
All three interviewees express frustration at how unevenly global attention is distributed. Saeid notes that, unlike conflicts such as Gaza, Iran’s protests unfolded under near-total internet blackouts, without international observers or journalists on the ground. Saramifar goes further, arguing that Western institutions often rely on familiar scripts. “There’s a handbook: the Islamic Republic is evil, regime change will fix everything, and foreign intervention is framed as salvation. But we don’t listen to what the people in Iran as a whole want.”
Oskouie notices this disconnect on a more everyday level. Her parents strongly believe in regime change, even foreign-backed alternatives. But she does not share that belief. “I don’t dare say that either, and I stop discussing it when my parents are around because they say that I would be taking away their hope.”
Hope for the future
When asked about their sense of hope, their answers diverge sharply. Saeid hesitates to speak of hope at all. “This is collective trauma”, he says. “We need time before we can even talk about hope. Historically, Iranian society has survived many crises, even to continue its cultural and social life as a nation, but that doesn’t make this easier.”
‘Hope is a powerful currency’
Saramifar, meanwhile, questions whether hope itself can be dangerous. “Hope is a powerful currency”, he says. “It can push people to wait for saviours, like the US, Israel, a reinstated monarchy, instead of building community and solidarity from within.” He suggests that abandoning false hope may open space for more grounded forms of political organisation. “From hopelessness, something else can grow.”
University’s role
None of the interviewees expect symbolic statements from VU to change their situation. Oskouie says she feels supported only on an individual level, through her study advisor. Saeid values academic attention but sees the university’s main responsibility elsewhere. “The task of universities is to analyse, document, and refuse dehumanisation”, Saramifar adds. “If a university cannot stand against dehumanising politics, then what is it for?”
What unites all three is the need for finding complexity and nuance in conversation. Iran, they insist, cannot be reduced to a single narrative or a single future. “You can’t understand this from the outside alone”, Saeid says. “You understand it when human dignity is violated, when you are forced to look for your child among bodies for hours.”