One month ago, I could never have imagined that some of the freest conversations of my life would take place in a room filled with people from across the Middle East.
Just weeks before that experience, I had made the difficult decision to leave Germany, the country where I was born and had spent my entire life, permanently. As an Iranian Zoroastrian, academic, and political activist focused on the Middle East, I had come to believe I could no longer speak as openly as my work required.
Germany’s expanding legal restrictions on certain forms of speech, combined with an increasingly rigid political culture around controversial subjects, had made frank discussions about radical Islam feel constrained in ways I had never expected.
Against that backdrop, I received an invitation to attend the Tel Aviv Institute’s New Middle East Laboratory in London.
Rather than asking participants to relitigate decades of war, grievances, and political failures, the gathering brought together scholars, activists, reformers, and emerging leaders from across the region to ask a different question: What could a genuinely new Middle East look like?
The organizers promised an environment where people shaped by profoundly different histories could speak candidly with one another. Given what I had recently experienced, I was not convinced that such a space could truly exist.
To my surprise, it did.
For two days, I sat alongside Jewish activists, Muslim reformers, Coptic Christians, Druze leaders, fellow Iranians, Arabs, Israelis, and others whose political perspectives often differed sharply from my own. Many of us came from communities divided by conflict, revolution, and mutual suspicion.
Yet we sat around the same tables and debated religion, terrorism, regional security, identity, minority rights, and the future of the Middle East. There were difficult questions, spirited exchanges, and moments when our conclusions could not have been further apart. Yet no one tried to silence an opposing voice or declare a subject off limits.
Every participant was challenged to defend their views, and all were expected to listen.
What surprised me most was how unfamiliar that atmosphere felt. In London, my instinct to filter my words slowly faded. I found myself speaking more freely than I had in years – not because everyone shared my views, but because I no longer felt pressure to soften them simply to remain part of the conversation.
For me, the presence of Israeli and Jewish participants carried particular significance. The Islamic Republic has spent decades portraying Israel not merely as a political adversary, but as an enemy around which Iranians are expected to organize their worldview. In London, however, Israelis and Iranians met without governments, slogans, or propaganda standing between us.
We disagreed on some issues, found common ground on others, and discovered how much becomes possible when people confront one another as individuals rather than caricatures.
That realization resonated deeply because my family’s story begins in a country where freedom of expression is not merely contested; it is systematically crushed. Under that system, dissidents are imprisoned, religious minorities are persecuted, women are suppressed, and political opposition is silenced.
Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Baha’is, and other minorities understand the cost of living under a regime that demands conformity. We also understand that authoritarianism rarely begins with prison walls. It begins when fear narrows the boundaries of what people are willing to say.
HEADING
Too often, the Middle East is portrayed as a collection of permanently hostile camps, incapable of moving beyond inherited enmities. But what I witnessed in London suggested something different.
Across religious, national, and political divides, I encountered people more interested in solving problems than preserving old narratives. They refused to let extremists dictate who they were or whom they could work alongside.
The Abraham Accords demonstrated that what once seemed impossible can become reality. But lasting regional transformation cannot be built by governments alone. It also depends on the trust formed between academics, activists, entrepreneurs, religious leaders, and young professionals willing to imagine a different path forward.
When I returned to Rome, my new home, I carried far more than new professional relationships. I carried a renewed conviction that this emerging network is real and growing.
It will not resolve every conflict or erase generations of pain overnight, but it reminded me that meaningful change rarely begins with treaties alone. It begins when people choose to speak honestly, listen carefully, and keep showing up even after the conference room empties.
As I left London, I had the unmistakable sense that I had witnessed the beginnings of the New Middle East we had all gathered to imagine.
From the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, may the Middle East always be free.
The writer is currently based in Rome, Italy, where he works as a lecturer.