On this international women's day, I want to talk about Iranian women.
Today we celebrate women everywhere.
Women who build families.
Women who build movements.
Women who hold communities together when the world feels uncertain.
Your presence, your strength, and your leadership matter more than most systems ever acknowledge.
I also want to pause and give special recognition to Iranian women.
For decades, Iranian women have stood at the front lines of the fight for freedom. They have protested, organized, written, spoken, and risked everything for dignity and human rights.
Some have received the world’s highest recognitions for courage and human rights leadership.
And many more remain unnamed women whose quiet bravery continues every day.
Some have cut their hair in public as an act of defiance against mandatory hijab laws.
Some kept marching in the streets knowing the cost could be imprisonment. Knowing sexual abuse in prison is likely.
Some in prison. Some missing. Some blinded.
And many mothers, in unimaginable grief, have even danced on the graves of their sons and daughters after they were killed by the regime...
turning mourning into resistance and refusing to let fear silence them.
The slogan that emerged from Mahsa Amini uprising three years ago, says it all:
Woman Life Freedom.
But their courage also points to something deeper.
Freedom movements do not begin in the streets.
They begin inside individuals.
With self-leadership.
The moment a woman decides that fear will not decide for her.
The moment she refuses to surrender her dignity.
The moment she chooses clarity over silence.
🌷And today, we must also acknowledge Iranian women living through war.
Women who protect children, hold families together, carry grief, and still find ways to stand with dignity in the middle of chaos and destruction.
So we celebrate women everywhere.
And we honor the extraordinary courage of Iranian women, whose fight for freedom continues to inspire the world.
Their courage reminds us of something powerful:
When women lead themselves, history changes.
Stay in Power.
