The Lion Women & Men of Iran

I’ve always had a quiet fascination with Iran both before and after the Islamic Revolution. Not in the way headlines frame it, but in the way history lingers there. Iran feels like a place suspended between versions of itself, constantly negotiating what it was, what it became, and what it’s still trying to be.

In much of mainstream media, Iran is reduced to a caricature: a hostile, monolithic place defined entirely by ideology and conflict. A country flattened into a warning label we are all supposed to fear and avoid.

But that version has never aligned with the Iranians I’ve encountered. The Iranians I’ve met have been thoughtful, respectful, modern and smart. They carry history lightly, but not forgetfully. There’s a gentleness to them that feels at odds with the image imposed from the outside.

That disconnect stays with me, and it’s made me realize to always separate a government from its people. Do you notice how easily entire societies are misread when power becomes the only story we’re willing to tell?

What's going on Iran?

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve probably heard about what’s unfolding in Iran right now. Protests are spreading across cities, resurfacing with a familiarity that feels unsettling rather than surprising.

This isn’t a sudden explosion of anger, it’s exhaustion after years of reigns under the current administration and it all comes down to economics.

For years, ordinary Iranians have lived under an Islamic regime, but lives and the economy have been deteriorating steadily. Inflation eats away at salaries and everyday necessities cost more each month. This is a familiar setting for us ordinary citizens of any country, but Iranians have had enough of the intimidation displayed by the current regime. When people are already struggling to afford food, rent, and dignity, intimidation loses its leverage, that’s basic economics. You can threaten people with punishment, but you can’t threaten them back into believing.

What’s happening in Iran right now is scary, and unfortunate and my prayers are with the brothers and sisters of Iran. Indonesia is surprisingly quiet about Iran. I wonder why that is?

Anyway, I’m here not to give commentaries on the social upheaval Iran is going through. You have better sources out there.

The Lion Women of Tehran

What I want to talk about is the book I read called “The Lion Women of Tehran” and how it gives me a new perspective about what’s going on.

I was reading the book before what’s happening in Iran right now, and now only do I understand the book not as a story of history, but as a prophecy of human resolve.

The novel follows the lives of Iranian women across decades of political upheaval, friendship, betrayal, and survival, and there were two main characters Homa and Ellie. Reading The Lion Women of Tehran sharpened that awareness for me.

The novel doesn’t ask you to understand Iran through slogans or spectacle, instead it asks you to sit with its people, especially its women as they navigate love, friendship, ambition, fear, and compromise under shifting regimes. History in the book isn’t dramatic, it’s invasive, and somehow relatable. It wasn't action packed, but they were chaotic none the less.

That’s why watching Iran now feels so heavy. The people protesting reveal the same intelligence, restraint, and quiet resolve I’ve seen in individuals, now expressed collectively as a nation.

It becomes clear that what’s unfolding now isn’t sudden, and it isn’t irrational. We’ve seen the protest over the years, the women and the men who have come up and speak up against the morality force, and the people who have died for it.

It’s the long echo of a country whose people have always been more complex, more modern, and more patient than the system governing them ever allowed.

Similary, the women in the novel don’t experience history as grand events. They experience it as interruptions, when their choices were made smaller and smaller, tightening around their ordinary lives. That’s what makes watching Iran now so inspiring, the men and women in the streets look like thousands and thousands of Homa and Ellie.

In the novel, resistance doesn’t arrive cleanly, in fact it's the opposite. It fractures families and frienships, and it demands sacrifices that are never evenly distributed. Reading it, I realize that bravery is rarely rewarded and often hated. I hated Homa sometimes throughout my reading.

As someone who lived through real riots and protests in 1998, I understand how visceral and frightening these moments are. It’s easy, from a distance, to romanticize unrest and label it a revolution, calling them heroes. But on the ground, it isn’t symbolic or cinematic, it’s raw, unstable, and deeply human.

It is not a revolution.

So why am I talking about the book and what does it have anything to do with what’s going on in Iran?

What The Lion Women of Tehran reminded me of  and what Iran is showing us again now is that resistance is rarely beautiful in real time. It’s frightening and it is divisive. It asks ordinary people to carry extraordinary weight. Most of the time, it doesn’t even feel brave while you’re in it, it just feels necessary.

That’s why I hesitate to call what’s happening a revolution, and not because it isn’t important, but because that word flattens the cost. What’s unfolding in Iran is not a story meant to be consumed or admired from afar. The women in the novel understood this, so do the people in the streets now. They are not chasing glory or history, but they are responding to pressure, to narrowing lives, to a system that keeps asking more while offering less. Those are not revolutionary ideas, those are just ordinary people asking for ordinary rights that every one deserves.

If there is anything to take from this, from the book, from Iran, from history, it is this: real change is never clean, never cinematic, and never free. It doesn’t announce itself as heroism, instead it shows up as refusal, and once that refusal becomes collective, even the most intimidating systems begin to realize that belief, once lost, is the hardest thing to reclaim.

Just how I have enjoyed this fictional novel that gave me hope, I hope one day my children get to read the book titled The Lion Women and Men of Iran and muster the same hope and love for the right to be ordinary.

Praying for all my Iranian brothers and sisters.