Iran: "Life Is Unbearable Under the Islamic Republic"

(Cover Image: Footage of an 8 January 2026 protest in Bandar-e Anzali, northern Iran, shared via Telegram.) On 28 February of this year, the United States and Israel launched attacks against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a military operation that has been ongoing for three weeks at the time of this broadcast. The assault has brought a large swathe of the Middle East into conflict, with Iran launching retaliatory attacks on Israel and U.S. facilities in Iraq as well as military and civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Most shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway for global oil and gas transport that supplies roughly one-fifth of the world’s crude oil, has been halted since hostilities began. The conflict comes on the heels of what by all accounts was a mass slaughter of protesters by the Islamic Republic’s security forces inside Iran earlier this year, with the death toll being placed well into the thousands. Joining us to discuss the situation on Notes From the World today are Arash Azizi, a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale University and contributing writer at the Atlantic, and Arina Moradi, a spokeswoman for Hengaw, a human rights organization that focuses on reporting and documenting human rights violations in Iran.