Roya Hakakian on Iran’s Uncertain Future

In this episode of Jewish Crossroads, Tamar Ish Shalom sits down with Iranian-American author and journalist Roya Hakakian, a leading voice on Iran, exile, and the lived experience of life under the Islamic Republic.

Born into a Jewish family in Tehran, Hakakian left Iran at 19 in the years following the revolution, carrying with her both the memory of a vanished world and a deep understanding of the regime that replaced it. Her work, spanning memoir, journalism, and political analysis, has consistently illuminated the human realities behind Iran’s ideological machinery, tracing not only the repression within the country but also the broader influence of the regime beyond its borders.

Moving between past and present, personal memory and political reality, they explore how the current war reshapes our understanding of Iran’s trajectory. What has changed in the regime’s position, and what has not? How should we interpret the possibility of internal transformation? And what does it mean to speak about Iran not only as a geopolitical actor, but as a society still struggling under the weight of its rulers?

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