‘It’s Just a Matter of Time’

Tehran-born actress and activist Shohreh Aghdashloo believes the protests now rocking Iran will lead to the end of the Islamic Republic

- CARLA SOSENKO

IRANIAN-AMERICAN actress Shohreh Aghdashloo may be most recognizable by her deep, easily identifiable voice as heard in projects such as The Flight Attendant, The Punisher, House of Sand and Fog (an Oscar-nominated performance) and HBO’s House of Saddam (for which she won an Emmy). The actress, who was born in Tehran, fled to England before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when she was 25.

Aghdashloo recently talked to Newsweek about the tumult in her home country after the September 13 killing of 22-year old Mahsa Amini by the morality police for failing to properly wear a hijab. Iranian authorities said that the young woman suffered sudden heart failure, but her family and those protesting say she died, after spending three days in a coma, because the police beat her. Her death has sparked a national movement—videos of women cutting their hair and burning their hijabs flooded social media before the country enforced a media blackout—and a global outcry against the country’s strict morality code.

The White House issued a statement on September 28 from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stating that the U.S. would be pursuing sanctions against Iran. The two countries had been in talks to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear pact, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for nuclear restriction.

Aghdashloo, a long-time activist, is not in favor of continuing negotiations with the Iranian government.

“We’re no longer talking about the importance of the nuclear war and how close the Iranian government is to uranium and making a nuclear bomb,” Aghdashloo tells