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Israeli-Iranian TV Star Advocates for an End to Iran's Repressive Regime
(The Times-UK) Gabrielle Weiniger - Sogand Fakheri left Iran aged six and went on to star in the hit Apple TV drama "Tehran," which focuses on the shadow war between Mossad and the IRGC. Fakheri, 24, plays a young conservative woman loyal to the Iranian regime who falls in love with her commander in the IRGC's Basij paramilitary force and goes on to betray her family. "It was really hard for me," she says of watching the uprising quelled by the Basij militia. "I had to learn everything about the Basij for the role....I realized the Basij, they are everywhere. They are in your universities, in your schools, they try to have a great impact on youth. So you see how their brainwashing works." By day she works as head of the Persian media desk at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, and has become a vocal influencer and online advocate - in Persian and in Hebrew - of an Iran free from the repressive regime. "My hope is that we will make...the right conditions for the people in Iran to be able to go back to the streets, because this regime won't just fall because of our attacks. It will fall because the Iranian people want it to fall. So what I hear right now from Iranians is that 'it's OK, just keep the [Israeli and the U.S.] air force here so we can go out in the streets - just be with us, escort us from the sky.'" "This war is necessary....All I have is bad words to describe the IRGC. They are just so brutal, and the only way to bring them down is by outside forces, because the Iranian people are not armed. They have no weapons to fight back. And when they try to fight back, they get murdered in the streets."