The most important story is not always the one dominating the headlines. Sometimes, it is a question—a question so disturbing that few are willing to ask it out loud, and fewer still are willing to contemplate the answer. One such question begins with something that may seem ordinary: women’s hair.

I will return to this issue in a moment. For now, I will note that, as the world debates the newly released Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, another story is quietly being whispered in the background. It is a story about the Iranian people, 48 years of tyranny and the fate of the dissidents who never returned home.

As analysts, politicians and commentators dissect the MoU’s elements, judgments are being rendered by everyone: the left, the center, the right, Christians, Jews and countless others. Meanwhile, much of the Iranian diaspora feels confused, speechless, utterly betrayed and deeply uncertain about what the future holds.

Let us examine the principal actors in this drama: On one side stands U.S. President Donald Trump, who spent decades warning the world about the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran until only a few weeks ago. He repeatedly spoke of the need to dismantle the Islamic regime’s power: not only its nuclear program, but its missile capabilities and regional influence.

On the other side stands the leadership of the Islamic Republic, which, despite its internal fractures, has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to buy time, regroup and pursue its revolutionary agenda across the region and beyond.

Then, there is the State of Israel. Why has Israel been left largely outside the framework of the MoU? I will not speculate. There is already more than enough speculation to fill the void.

However, there is a fourth actor in this play that not many are thinking about, let alone mentioning: the innocent Iranian people.

The MoU does not look good to those of us who have endured hardship in Iranian prisons. Those of us who were forced to flee the country, as I was. Those of us who know what it is like to live under sharia law. And let us not forget the thousands of Americans who have been murdered or maimed because of Iran’s bloody strategic plan to destroy America and the rest of the West.

The implications of the MoU for Iranians and their basic human rights appear horrifically destructive. But we live in a world of sensational news, an impatient society with a short attention span, and we have forgotten how to remain patient and allow strategic plans to take their course.

Compounding this problem is a relentless sense of fear that is fed to us daily by the media. The level of anxiety is staggering and reaching unhealthy proportions among Iranians both inside and outside the country, within the Jewish community, throughout the Arab world and across the West, especially among Americans who fully understand the threat that the Islamic regime poses to the rest of us.

What Trump has said recently about Israel has been hurtful to many of us, and I’m certain that some within the so-called “woke right” are gleefully celebrating what they perceive to be a dramatic 180-degree turn.

When Trump stated, “You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all Hezbollah, that I can tell you,” I could not help but ask: Mr. President, whose fault is it that the IDF has been forced to take such measures? I do not need to remind you of the atrocities committed by Hezbollah against Israeli civilians, nor the many ways in which Hezbollah has held the beautiful country of Lebanon hostage for decades. I will add one more simple point: Israel exists because God exists.

Terrorist organizations such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, have paraded their representatives around the world and used every available tool to win hearts and minds. It is deeply troubling to see how successful they have been, particularly among young people, in convincing people that their so-called “jihad” is merely a struggle against the imperialist West and the so-called “evil white man.”

Meanwhile, Iran has been remarkably successful in concealing its own imperial ambitions. While portraying itself as an opponent of imperialism, the regime has spent decades extending its influence and control over Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, the Arabs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and, until recently, Syria.

So, will Iran behave itself for the next 50 or so days? It will probably do its best to appear cooperative, but I have a feeling that something will eventually go wrong.

Has Trump been critical of Israel lately? Yes. But let us not forget the many good things he has done for the Jewish state, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018; closing the office of the PLO in Washington, D.C., that same year; brokering the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states; and demonstrating unwavering solidarity after the savage Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

So let us take a moment and breathe. Rather than focusing solely on what Trump says, we should pay close attention to what he ultimately does.

What is missing from much of the news coverage, however, is the story of the Iranian people who took to the streets late last year and throughout January. They faced an extraordinarily brutal crackdown involving snipers, machine guns, axes and other weapons, leaving what some sources estimate to be as many as 46,000 dead, 10,000 blinded, more than 80,000 injured, and countless others missing and feared dead. Many of those reported killed were never returned to their families for proper burial.

Let me return to the issue with which I began this piece: human hair. According to a report published in The Jerusalem Post on June 11, Armenian customs officials seized 143 bundles of human hair from an Iranian truck at the Agarak checkpoint. The report stated that the hair had been hidden inside pillows. It further noted that this was not an isolated incident, but one of at least 11 attempts to smuggle human hair into Armenia since January of this year.

The sale of hair has unfortunately become increasingly common in Iran due to economic hardship, but a growing number of people have begun asking a disturbing question: Does some of the hair belong to women murdered in the crackdown, whose bodies were never returned to their families? At present, this remains speculation rather than fact, but the question becomes more pressing with each passing day.

So, as we pore over the text of the MoU—and its implications for Washington and Jerusalem—we must not forget the people inside Iran who courageously took to the streets and paid the ultimate price for the future of their country.

Let us not forget Melina Assadi, the 3-year-old little girl mercilessly killed in her father’s arms while he was on his way to buy medicine. Let us not forget all those who were maimed, imprisoned or executed in the struggle for the most basic of human rights. Let me also remind human-rights advocates that, as I write these words, many Iranians remain on death row, awaiting the chilling knock on their cell door that could signal their imminent execution.

I also speak to my fellow Iranians who stood in the bitter cold in Berlin, Toronto, Chicago and countless other cities protesting in solidarity with their countrymen inside Iran. Let us hold on to hope that, at the end of this difficult journey, Iran will be free and genuine healing will come to every Iranian man, woman and child.

To the Israeli child, I say this: Your ancestors were mercilessly murdered in Baghdad during the Farhud in 1941, turned to ash in Auschwitz, beaten on the streets of Berlin and brutally killed in the Warsaw Ghetto. Yet today, Israel stands strong and serves as both a shield and a refuge for you.

Let us all remember the words of the renowned Jewish writer Cynthia Ozick, who said: “In the madness of despair lies the sanity of hope.”