My wife had a vivid dream on Monday night that she was in an apartment block with the rest of humanity (as can happen only in a dream) and an announcement came over a loudspeaker, the voice of Iran’s Supreme Leader, claiming lordship over all.

Meanwhile, in Iran, this is the long-lived experience of a people that may once have welcomed the arrival of the clerics but have long since grown tired of their leadership.

The latest flashpoint was the death in custody last week of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for “improper” hijab.

In response, Iranians across the country have been pouring onto the streets to convey their grief and outrage over this latest injustice.

But, as in the many protests gone by, the regime’s response has been swift, and typically merciless.

Protesters have been beaten, arrested, even killed.

A video of a wounded 10-year-old girl has been particularly shocking, as has a photograph of one of the protesters now silenced, Kian Derakhshan. 

Such brutality is the tried and tested response of Iran’s clerics in the face of opposition to their 43-year rule.

When protests begin — as they have done periodically ever since the Green Movement of 2009 in the wake of a rigged election — the response is to arrest or kill.

And, unsurprisingly, it tends to work.

After a period of protest and yet more bloodshed on the streets, dissenting voices are quieted, the outrage dims, the people tire, and, tragically, the injustice endures.

I first visited Iran a year before the Green Movement, and it was clear even then that the will of masses was for regime change, but that, in spite of this, there were few who really believed it possible.

The belligerent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — he of “I want to wipe Israel off the face of the map” fame — was in his first term of office then, and I naively believed him to be the main problem.

Power lies with the clerics

Truthfully, though, as my Iranian friends explained to me, the power lies with the clerics at the top, and, above all, the Supreme Leader, whose ultimate responsibility it is to vet presidential candidates — whether raging types like Ahmadinejad, or the current incumbent, “Butcher of Tehran” Ebrahim Raisi, or the more smiley-faced Hassan Rouhani who preceded him.

Ultimately, these presidents are just the puppets of the overlord, whose firm hold on power is perhaps best displayed in the brutal response to protests.

In the regular protests since 2009, there has on several occasions been optimism in the Iranian diaspora that something was about to shift, that the will of the people could no longer be stopped.

And then again, the shooting begins, the Internet is cut off, power is held on to, and time and the public sentiments move on, and nothing changes.

And amid the general fatigue of the population, there is a deep-seated pain at the lack of accountability.

Perpetrators are rarely brought to justice, nor even sufficiently condemned by the international community.

This week, for example, while protests continue in Iran — with women publicly burning their headscarves or cutting their hair — President Raisi is in New York, where this week he was pictured shaking hands with his counterpart in France, Emmanuel Macron.

It is in moments like these when the international community just doesn’t seem to get it, doesn’t seem to hear the cries of the Iranian people, desperate for support from those abroad who have power to wield. 

Too often, instead, the response is a televised handshake, with a smile, and, at best, perhaps a private query regarding the latest alleged atrocity — a query that can easily be dismissed as much ado about nothing.

At home, meanwhile, the Iranian regime will be pointing the finger at any viewed as seeking to undermine its authority — whether protesters, journalists, rights defenders, or members of minority groups.

And, as with the protesters, these voices are silenced through the tried and tested methods of arrest, imprisonment, and suffocating pressure to leave the country — a pressure that also often succeeds.

Iran’s Christian community — a minority believed to account for around 1.5% of the population — are just one example of this.

Referred to as “enemy groups” by the regime, they are routinely arrested, imprisoned, and told to leave the country, while in years gone by several were even murdered.

Over the past month, four Iranian Christians with an average age of 53, including a 63-year-old with advanced Parkinson’s disease, were imprisoned for a combined 26 years.

Two more — a 60-year-old man and 59-year-old women — await their own summons for imprisonment. 

All were convicted of involvement in “illegal” groups (house-churches), with the alleged intention of “disrupting national security.

Such charges are as common in Iran as the violent suppression of protests, and when any dissenting voice can so easily be swept aside — whether to prison, exile, or the afterlife — what hope is there for change?

All the while, a weary population continues to suffer under an oppressive regime, which will go to any lengths to protect its rule, and has no regard whatsoever for the will of the people.

Remarkably, however, while the story of the Iranian people today is certainly one of long-suffering; it is also one of undimmed courage, as can be seen so clearly in the regular will to protest, in spite of the cost, whenever an injustice boils to the surface.

Whenever I try to explain to my friends why I love Iran, and its people, it is this quality, perhaps, more than any other, that stands out: their untiring fight and unbroken hope for justice.

The rich culture of the once-glorious Persian empire still burns brightly in the hearts of all Iranians.

It seems to me that there is a unique quality, too, about an oppressed people: a jewel only enhanced by the fires it has been forced to endure.  

For many in the West, to think of Iran will be to think of ranting autocrats like Ahmadinejad, or the state-sponsored broadcasts showing chants of “death to America” in the mosques. 

But what is less known is the other face of Iran, the true face of Iran: its enduring culture, with its poetry, art, handicrafts and glorious history, embodied in ruins such as Persepolis, the great former palace of King Darius. 

Before I first visited Iran, and indeed Persepolis, I watched a wonderful animation named after those ancient ruins, based on the drawings of one of many Iranians now living in exile, Marjane Satrapi.

Persepolis shows the tragedy of modern-day Iran, as Iranians, filled with hope at the overthrowing of the Shah in 1979, are soon confronted with the harsh realities of life under the Islamic Republic — just a different kind of oppression.

Even the music in the film seems to mourn, as the dark shrouds of enforced hijab swoop over the people like a cloak, concealing the beauty within.

And yet this beauty, though hidden, endures, and unfailingly rises up whenever there is a cause worth fighting for.

Oh Iran, much-beloved Iran, how I long to see you unshackled from the chains that have held you captive for 43 long years.

Can it happen? Will it happen? I take hope in the fall of the Soviet Union, which once also seemed unshakeable, only to eventually shatter.

There is still hope, my dear Iranians. Hold on to it.