What might once have passed as defiance now feels like self-inflicted irrelevance, an empty gesture that deepens the country’s loneliness.
“(Foreign Minister Abbas) Araghchi said they won’t engage with those who threaten Iranians,” says my friend Sima, an emergency-room doctor. “Well, no one has harmed and threatened us like the Islamic Republic does.”
We’re sitting in a crowded café in central Tehran. The air is thick with the scent of coffee beans and the sound of drab Iranian ‘fusion’ music. Almost no woman wears a headscarf.
I started the conversation, admittedly forcing the topic. My friends were reluctant at first, wary of repeating the same hopeless arguments. But once you start bashing the Islamic Republic, you can’t stop.
“Who gave Araghchi the mandate to talk on our behalf?” Sima continues. “Did they ask us if we wanted them to go to Sharm el-Sheikh? Have they ever asked if we want to be friends or foes with the United States?”
‘Unnecessary isolation’
As glaring as the vanishing hijab is, the fact that no one whispers when politics come up—not because the state has relaxed its grip, but because more and more people are simply assuming their liberty.
“Posturing is all that’s left for them,” says my other friend Amir, a digital marketing manager. “What’s to gain from not being at the table? They’re more irrelevant than ever. Another generation has to suffer this unnecessary isolation.”
Across the table, Elham, a musician, nods. “Listen, I do care about Palestine—and not many around me do, honestly. But what these idiots do, and have been doing for decades, does nothing for the Palestinian cause. You don’t recognize Israel and then what? It’s just empty sloganeering.”
“I don’t think it’s posturing,” Sima interjects. “It’s calculated. Think of Iran as a business worth hundreds of billions. Real change means losing privilege. Why would they?”
‘They don’t want to be normal’
As we speak, I keep checking my social-media feed—with a VPN, of course. Photos from Sharm el-Sheikh flood in: Trump landing, surrounded by world leaders from Europe, the Arab world, and beyond.
For once, Iran wasn’t excluded. It excluded itself.
“They don’t want to act normal,” Amir says, agreeing with Sima, “because behaving normal might be the end of them.”
Elham adds, “Truth is, because elections aren’t free, we never even have the option to show what we want. Only those who toe Khamenei’s line get through. So we can’t even vote for someone who says: stop this madness and be a normal country.”
Her tone isn’t angry—just flat, like someone long past expecting change.
‘Nothing to lose’
Amir smiles bitterly, making it hard to gauge if he's serious or joking.
“Once Khamenei’s gone, things could change," he says. "Khamenei is nearly ninety. He’s got nothing to lose—unlike us. He wants to be remembered as the one who stayed the course. He doesn’t care that his course leads us to ruin.”
This isn’t a typical conversation in Tehran. Most people talk about rent, prices or finding medicine. But scratch the surface, and the anger spills out.
Everyone I know, in one way or another, links their daily struggles to what they see as a deluded, self-defeating foreign policy—one that isolates Iran while pretending to defend its dignity.
As Sima put it, calling this foreign policy “violates the word itself.”
