The Iranian people are not synonymous with the regime governing them. Netanyahu contrasted with Pezeshkian. Opinion.
Negar Karamati
Published: Sep 25, 2026, 6:24 AM (GMT+3)
Netanyahu holds a Starlink device in the UNAvi Ohayon (GPO)
Negar Karamati is a journalist and former Persian language news editor, and an anchor who works in the legal field. She writes on Iran‘s political and social issues, including women’s rights and Iran’s religious minorities, particularly the Baha’i.
At the United Nations this week, two radically different versions of Iran were presented to the world.
On Wednesday, Islamic Republic President Masoud Pezeshkian portrayed the Islamic Republic primarily as a victim of Israel, of the United States, of terrorism and of foreign aggression. He insisted that Iran has acted defensively and rejected the portrayal of his government as a threat.
A day later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at the same podium and delivered a very different message.
His argument was unapologetic: Israel will defend itself; it will confront those who seek its destruction, and it will not entrust its survival to diplomatic assurances from regimes that have demonstrated hostile intentions.
On Iran, Netanyahu was especially clear.
He defended Israel’s decision to strike Iran and its nuclear infrastructure, describing the decision to act against Iran’s nuclear program as one of the easiest decisions he had made. His reasoning was straightforward: when a regime has repeatedly threatened Israel, Israel cannot afford to wait until that regime possesses the means to turn those threats into an existential catastrophe.
He expressed the hope that the Iranian people will be able to change their government soon.
For Israelis, this is not an abstract debate.
For decades, Netanyahu has warned the international community about the Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions and regional activities. He has often been criticized for the intensity and persistence of those warnings. Yet Iran’s military capabilities, its support for armed groups across the region and its confrontation with Israel have made the question impossible to dismiss as mere rhetoric.
Netanyahu’s broader speech carried the same theme. He defended Israel’s conduct in Gaza, rejected accusations of genocide, confronted his critics inside and outside the hall and portrayed Israel’s wars since October 7 as a struggle for national survival.
One may debate individual policies or military decisions. But the principle at the center of his speech was unmistakable: Israel will not outsource its survival.
On Iran, I believe Netanyahu is right. And I say this not only as someone who supports Israel’s right to defend itself, but as an Iranian who knows that the Islamic Republic’s victims are not limited to Israelis.
Some of its longest-suffering victims are the Iranian people themselves.
That is what was so striking about Pezeshkian’s speech the day before.
Listening to the president of the Islamic Republic describe Iran almost exclusively through the language of victimhood, one could easily forget what his own government has done to those who challenge it.
Only months ago, Iranians took to the streets demanding dignity, freedom and an ordinary life.
The response was brutal. Tens of thousands were shot dead in cold blood in the streets. And the repression did not end when the streets became quieter.
It simply changed form.
The United Nations fact-finding mission on Iran reported this week that between March and the end of August, Iranian authorities executed at least 29 men in connection with the protests, including five in public. More than 70 people including women and boys were reported to remain at imminent risk of being sentenced to death or executed.
Human-rights investigators have documented proceedings marred by forced confessions, denial of access to lawyers and serious violations of due process.
This is the Iran that was missing from Pezeshkian’s speech.
The Islamic Republic wants the international community to distinguish between attacks on its government and attacks on the Iranian people.
On that point, I agree. But that distinction must work both ways. Iran is not the Islamic Republic. The Iranian people are not synonymous with the regime governing them.
They are the women who refused to surrender their lives to compulsory ideology. They are the young men and women who walked into the streets knowing that protesting could cost them their freedom or their lives. They are political prisoners. They are families waiting for news outside prisons. They are the Iranians who simply want the freedom to live ordinary lives without the state deciding what they may wear, say, believe or dream.
And they should be central to any serious discussion about Iran’s future.
There is also a political reality that should no longer be casually dismissed.
Prince Reza Pahlavi seems to be the only qualified and nationally recognizable alternative for leading a transition away from the Islamic Republic. That assessment is reinforced by something far more meaningful than endorsements from politicians abroad: Iranians inside the country have risked their freedom and lives while chanting his name and pro-Pahlavi slogans.
Yet Pahlavi has repeatedly said that this is not about taking power for himself. He has said that his mission is to help facilitate a transition and that the Iranian people not foreign governments and not any individual leader must ultimately choose their future system through a democratic process.
That is precisely the distinction between transition and another revolution that merely replaces one form of imposed rule with another.
Israelis should pay attention to this distinction as well.
The relationship between the peoples of Iran and Israel is far older than the Islamic Republic. The hostility that has defined relations between the two countries for nearly half a century is the policy of a regime not an eternal conflict between two peoples.
That is why Netanyahu’s Iran message matters beyond nuclear facilities, missiles or military strategy. Israel is confronting the Islamic Republic from the outside.
The Iranian people have been confronting it from within.
Those are not the same struggle, and they should not be confused. But they have encountered the same regime from opposite sides.
For years, much of the international community hoped that negotiations, economic incentives, carefully worded resolutions and diplomatic restraint could manage the threat posed by Tehran.
Netanyahu’s message at the UN was that Israel could no longer afford to gamble its existence on that assumption.
The Iranian people have learned their own version of that lesson. They have heard promises of moderation before. They have watched presidents change while the machinery of repression remained. They have seen protesters killed, prisoners tortured and executions continue.
So when Pezeshkian stands before the United Nations and asks the world to see the Iranian people as victims, there is an answer:
Yes. See them. But see all of them. Look beyond the UN podium. Look inside Iran’s prisons. Look at the gallows.
Look at Pezeshkian’s victims and the victims of the government he represents.
Look at the families of protesters. Listen to the voices coming from Iran’s streets. And recognize a truth that should unite Israelis, Iranians and anyone who genuinely cares about the future of the region:
The Islamic Republic is not Iran.
Netanyahu’s speech was ultimately about Israel’s determination to survive.
The struggle of the Iranian people is about something equally fundamental, their determination to reclaim their country and their future.
For Israel, a free Iran would mean something far greater than the disappearance of one enemy. It could mean the restoration of a relationship between two ancient peoples that should never have become enemies in the first place.
That possibility is worth imagining.
And, more importantly, it is worth listening to the Iranians risking everything to make it possible.
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