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Poet and refugee advocate Roya Hakakian talks about how words can help create change in Iran
Roya Hakakian is a poet, author, journalist and advocate for refugees. Every one of these roles is an offshoot of her own life experience as a child and teenager in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran and as an immigrant to the United States. Her poetry appears in many anthologies around the world, her books take a candid look at life under Iran’s fundamentalist Islamic regime and her documentaries tackle important issues like underage children in wars around the world. In our interview, we discuss what people can do to support the current uprising in Iran and the role poetry can play in revolutions.
These must be emotional times for you and the entire Iranian immigrant community. How are you holding up?
It is very exciting and also, as you can imagine, gut-wrenching to watch teenagers, children, and other people perform these great acts of courage and then suffer as a result of it. So, it’s a heroic time and, like all heroic times, whether in history or in epic stories that we read, it’s always associated with a great deal of tragedy too. And all of that is on full display. I wrote a memoir whose last chapter is called “1984.” It’s the last year I was in Iran, and I was describing what Iran had become and how the entire society was divided between two people—the regime and their allies, and then us, which were the ordinary citizens. I thought it was amazing how much time had passed, and yet nothing had changed in that division I described in that chapter. The circumstances, the frustrations, the inequalities, the injustices are the very issues that have brought a new generation of Iranians onto the street.
Iran once had a thriving Jewish population. Do you have any memories of what it was like to be a Jew in Iran before the revolution?
I was 12 years old when the revolution took place, and all my memories at the time before were happy childhood memories—going to the synagogue with my father. We lived within walking distance of a synagogue. I didn’t experience the sort of things that my father had talked about growing up, of the severe antisemitism that he had experienced as a child in a small village in central Iran. And I didn’t experience the sort of things my mother talked about. And she grew up in Hamadan, which is where the tomb of Esther and Mordechai are. The ’60s and the ’70s were the golden time of religious egalitarianism in Iran. And then came the revolution, and things quickly changed. And, you know, it wasn’t so much the ordinary citizens who were being antisemitic, but the regime gave a leg up to Shiite Muslims. So it wasn’t that Jews were barred from anything; it was that it was far more advantageous for you to be a Shiite Muslim.
You have been in danger from Iranian operatives in the United States. I think of Salman Rushdie, who refused to let threats intimidate him, but he ended up severely injured. Is this something you worry about?
The answer is yes for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the FBI came to my house a couple of years ago, warning that they had spotted my name on a list because of the work I do and the books I published, especially my memoir and the second book, which was about a series of murders that Iran had orchestrated in Europe. But I think what’s important, and something that What I hope to bring to the attention of the broader public in America is that everyone is in danger, that if the Iranian regime has gathered enough influence to go after the dissidents that they don’t like in the United States, then we become only the primary targets and everybody else will follow. And I’m incredibly concerned about that.
You recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. What was your message? Also, what should the United States be doing to help the protesters in Iran?
My main message was that this movement that began in Iran in September is the most serious movement that Iran has seen in 40-plus years. Immediately a few senators afterward told me, “Oh, Iran has protests all the time, and the regime always suppresses them.” Well, this one has already proven to be different. It has certain qualities that none of the other protests in the past have had. This is a deeply secular movement; it’s a movement that demands the separation of government and religion. And none of the previous movements had these overtones.
For the past 20 years, we’ve only been interested in Iran from a nuclear perspective, and everything else has been in the shadows. Who are Iranians? What do they want? How are they different? What are their demands? The best thing we can do is to stop looking at Iran as just the nuclear program and begin to widen the perspective and recognize that if something changes in Iran, if these protests succeed, then so much else can follow.
Among your many identities are writer and poet. What is the role poetry can play in revolutions?
I became interested in the Iranian revolution in 1979 through poetry. Poetry was the language of that revolution, which in many ways, is why some of those poets who were so devoted to the uprising against the former Shah became far less popular in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution. Revolutions begin with certain social demands, but what fuels them, what keeps them going, is the power of the rhetoric poets and writers pour into them. That’s what literature has always been for me—a tool for grand ideas and grand expressions and, possibly, a tool for changing society for the better.
What do you plan on discussing at the Z3 conference?
I want to talk about my own journey back to defining myself as a Jewish person after leaving Iran and coming to the US. It wasn’t my issue, antisemitism wasn’t my issue, Jewish identity wasn’t my issue because I was a writer. I didn’t have to think about these things. Over the years, have rediscovered my own relationship with Judaism. That is basically what I want to talk about.
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What Happened, Megyn Kelly?
Megyn Kelly hosts a “prove me wrong” session during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
Megyn Kelly is one of the leading voices in the American right-wing media landscape.
The former Fox News host’s podcast draws millions of listeners, and is one of the highest-ranked news podcasts in the United States.
But with that influence has come a noticeable and troubling shift in her approach to Israel.
In less than a year, Kelly has gone from a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people to someone who downplays antisemitism and suggests Israel wields disproportionate influence in American politics.
A few examples illustrate the change:
- In November 2022, Kelly referred to far-right figure Nick Fuentes’ meeting with then-former President Donald Trump as “absolutely disgusting” and “deeply, deeply wrong.” Yet in November 2025, during a conversation with Ben Shapiro, she defended Tucker Carlson’s decision to platform Fuentes.
- In June 2025, Kelly lauded the American bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and emphasized longstanding US opposition to a nuclear Iran. Nine months later, she described the joint Israel-US operation as “Israel’s war.”
- In November 2022, Kelly called rising antisemitism “disturbing” and forcefully condemned anti-Jewish hate. By December 2025, she accused Jewish figures like Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss of “making antisemites,” while downplaying the role of figures like Tucker Carlson in amplifying such rhetoric.
- In June 2025, Kelly framed an attack on a gathering of Jews advocating for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, as a likely terror incident tied to broader antisemitic violence. But after a Lebanese man attacked a Michigan synagogue in March 2026, her only responses were reposting a claim about the attacker’s family — omitting their Hezbollah ties — and a brief reference to him as a “naturalized citizen from Lebanon.”
So, what changed?
Kelly’s shift appears to have begun in July 2025, when she claimed that Israel was making itself “the villain of the world” during an appearance on Piers Morgan’s show.
A month later, she interviewed then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who argued that Israel exerts undue influence over the US government and that American politicians are “bought and paid for” by AIPAC. Kelly stopped short of endorsing Greene’s claims of “genocide” in Gaza, but still maintained her support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
In September 2025, Kelly cited Max Blumenthal, regarding the death of Charlie Kirk and Israel, lending credibility to a figure widely associated with misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Since then, the pattern has intensified. As noted above, Kelly has defended Tucker Carlson’s platforming of antisemites, declined to confront antisemitism on the right (claiming her focus is the “left”), and increasingly suggested that Israel exerts outsized control over US foreign policy.
This change appears driven by both political and personal factors.
Within the American right, an ongoing dispute between traditional foreign policy hawks and “America First” isolationists has intensified — especially since the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025.
Israel has become a central fault line in that divide.
On the isolationist side, this debate has increasingly overlapped with the normalization of extremist and antisemitic rhetoric seen in figures like Tucker Carlson and others who platform voices that demonize Israel and Jews.
This retreat from foreign engagement, combined with flirtations with antisemitism, is particularly pronounced among younger right-wing audiences drawn to figures like Carlson and Candace Owens.
Against this backdrop, Kelly appears to be recalibrating.
Rather than shaping her audience, she is following it, moving from tentative criticism to increasingly sweeping claims.
Yet she has not fully embraced the conspiratorial rhetoric of Carlson or Owens. Instead, she acts as a bridge shielding more extreme voices while refusing to challenge them.
That makes her less an extremist than an enabler.
There are also more personal incentives at play. As noted by Ben Shapiro, Kelly has a history of adjusting her positions to maximize engagement, reflecting trends within the right rather than shaping them.
Her podcast is managed by Red Seat Ventures, which also produces Tucker Carlson’s show and other right-leaning content. Breaking with those figures could carry professional costs.
Taken together, Kelly’s shift appears driven by audience capture, relevance, and incentives, not principle.
And when a major media figure operates that way, it raises serious questions about the integrity of American political discourse.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Yes, It Should Be Spelled ‘Anti-Semitism’ — and Yes, It Matters
Jewish Americans and supporters of Israel gather at the National Mall in Washington, DC on Nov. 14, 2023 for the “March for Israel” rally. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
With everything happening right now — bombs thrown in New York City; synagogues and Jewish schools shot up in Michigan, Toronto, and the Netherlands; Israelis beaten in nearly every European country — one would think that semantic arguments would be the last thing we’re engaging in.
But we’re Jews; we do like to argue. And even pro-Israel millennials were raised on the post-modern falsehood that words can be manipulated to suit personal agendas.
It all started with the forbidden hyphen, which refused to conform to social media norms. Hashtags are sacred on social media. And hashtags are anti-hyphen — sorry, #antihyphen — so anti-Semitism had to be smushed up and millennialized: “antisemitism.”
If you dare to spell it correctly, you will receive long tirades on how conformity will set you free.
Never mind that non-conformity is at the essence of who we are as a people — and all free societies. And that when French anti-Semites began throwing Holocaust survivors out of windows and poisoning Jewish kids’ food, the perpetrators didn’t shout: “No hyphen!”
In the old days, we would call these types of theoretical arguments “academic” — essentially, meaningless. It’s quite ironic, actually, given that so much of academia is now meaningless. But we’ve now moved past meaningless to actually harmful.
The newest post-modern fascism I mean fashion is to not just remove the hyphen from anti-Zionism but to smush it up into: antizionism.
It is so disrespectful to the word Zion, which of course means Jerusalem (Tziyon), and to Zionism, which means the return of Judeans to our homeland, that many of us find it hard to even look at these post-modern configurations.
But by unlinking the term to anti-Semitism, post-modernists have also allowed it to be redefined by anyone with an anti-Semitic agenda. At a minimum, this could lead to a course called something like “Zionism vs. anti-Zionism,” and we all know how factually accurate that will be.
The post-modernists argue that we need to say that anti-Zionism is a hate movement. Leaving aside the fact that anti-Semitism says precisely that, I would even be willing to indulge a little of this nuttiness if the primary source of today’s anti-Semitism was still coming from the Soviet Union.
The Soviets did a great deal of damage, and not just by promoting the warmth of collectivism. In addition to creating the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) with Egyptian Yasser Arafat in 1964, the Soviets first introduced the oppressor/oppressed narrative into our universities, failing to mention of course that Russia has been (and is) one of the greatest oppressors throughout history.
But the truth is, the bulk of today’s anti-Semitism on the left — both in and out of academia; both here and in Europe — is not coming from Marxists. It’s coming from Islamists. Many people who immigrated here came from countries where anti-Semitism was part of the formal education system, and also the informal one. It’s taboo to say that these days — even though a look at the “anti-Israel” marches on the streets of the West shows this dynamic — but ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.
Arab Muslims who were living in Eretz Yisrael before 1948 — before the fulfillment of Zionism — opposed Jews living on any piece of the land. That’s why there is no “Palestinian state” today. Because while the UN granted one in 1947, the Palestinian Arab population and five Arab armies rejected that. Instead, they tried to kill every Jew in Israel, and take all of the territory for their own. You never hear the fact that they turned down a Palestinian state in any discussion about the Middle East these days.
The anti-hyphen warriors claim to be merely calling out a hate movement. But by giving it a new name they’re legitimizing it. We still need to “name the movement,” they vehemently demand.
Okay. It’s called anti-Semitism. It’s the world’s oldest hatred. Spelling it incorrectly doesn’t lessen the hate or mitigate the violence that always follows. It just takes our eyes off of the escalating situation. No doubt Islamists can’t believe their good fortune.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A different version of this article appeared in The Jewish Journal.
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After Ukraine and Iran, NATO Must Change
A Turkish army personnel walks as they search a field after a piece of ammunition fell following the interception of a missile launched from Iran by a NATO air defense system, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 9, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Sertac Kayar
The war with Iran — along with the Ukraine war — have exposed wide cracks in NATO. The political and economic realities have changed dramatically since the birth of NATO, and more so after the end of the Cold War.
Institutions, especially these multinational ones, are never quick to react to the changes around them. And they are also, like every bureaucracy, resistant to change. Eventually, they serve no purpose but the glory of the past and the employment of the bureaucracy itself. And that is exactly where NATO could find itself if reform doesn’t happen.
At the end of the Cold War, Russia, slowly emerging from the ruins of the Soviet Union, presented itself as a great economic opportunity. European NATO members bought into the new economic-security architecture of the continent that consisted of two pillars: energy from Russia and security from the United States.
Europe was to be in the middle, reaping the benefits from the cheap oil and gas from Russia and spending far less on defense than the US.
A military alliance like NATO assumes each member is, regardless of its size, economy, and military capabilities, willing to put its citizens in harm’s way when war is the only option left.
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has shown that this is not the case. Most NATO members admit that Russia is the biggest threat to Europe and NATO. They publicly declare that Ukraine is just the first step in Russia’s strategy to reclaim its previous glory (and territory), and the status of a superpower.
Yet, they repeat the assertion that under no circumstances will NATO, or any European troops, participate directly in the hostilities. True, Ukraine is not a NATO member, but NATO has shown Europe’s desire to avoid war at all costs. If a country like Poland or Estonia, both NATO members, was attacked by Russia, does anyone believe NATO would actually engage Russia in direct combat?
The blame for this abdication of duties lies, at least partially, with the United States. When NATO was created, Europe, devastated by the war, was in no position to match even remotely what the US could offer to the alliance. The United States assumed the burden in money and fighting force.
Europe has recovered and prospered since that arrangement. The reality changed, but the division of labor in NATO between the US and its European members did not. The United States never, until President Donald Trump came into office, pressed the point forcefully or publicly. NATO did contribute to the War in Afghanistan, but its small participation is not enough to confront the very real threats of Russia and this new century.
The story repeats itself in the war with Iran. The oil and gas from the Middle East is important for energy-hungry Europe. Although the amount of European oil that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is low, the percentage of imported jet fuel is high — and the war affects the market overall.
Yet the United States finds itself begging NATO members to participate in opening the Strait. Iran, with its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, with its fanatic anti-Western ideology, and control of the energy routes, is a strategic threat to NATO European members. But the United States finds itself, along with Israel, dealing with the issue.
Some NATO members may still join the fight. It will be great to see some help coming, but the cracks in NATO are irreparable. The conflicts of the 21st century are showing that NATO is hopelessly divided. It is no longer a military alliance, but a bureaucratic machinery pretending to be a military force. NATO must be a coalition of the willing, not just of the participating.
A superpower, no matter how powerful, needs dependable alliances. The United States cannot continue leading the world alone. NATO in its current form does not provide security to either side of the Atlantic. The respective goals are different. Yet the United States and Europe need each other. Perhaps, another alliance should be created in place of NATO, consisting of the countries willing to engage the enemy.
It does not matter if the alliance is smaller. What matters is that the new group of countries shares the same vision and resolve. NATO was never the goal. It was the means. And so should whatever comes next.
The author lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.