In February 2006 then-Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, declared that the United States would financially support regime change activities in Iran in hopes of helping to bring about a ‘velvet revolution.’ Since that time, Iranian activists for any kind of reform have fallen under new kinds of governmental scrutiny and surveillance. Their activities, some begun even before the U.S. announcement, are now viewed by some Iranian government officials as threats to national security, falling conveniently within a broadly-interpreted umbrella of regime change. Iranian activists meanwhile continue advocating for change under these new conditions and sometimes at great personal risk. Many take the position that their advocacy is based on Iranian laws and call simply for enforcing the existing legal codes. Even so, such activists risk falling under suspicion of having a political allegiance with the U.S. and its policy of regime change. While such governmental prohibitions have dampened the broad hopes for reform, the activities have continued and have indeed multiplied in form and scope. This paper considers how the governmental response to the regime change policy has produced new avenues for seeking legal change. This paper focuses on the activities of legal reformers, with an emphasis on the new politics of ‘rights talk,’ including women’s rights and human rights, and sheds light on the increasingly sensitive nature of any kind of rights-based advocacy. By exploring changes in domestic reform activities by non-state actors, however, this paper suggests that activism continues in new forms as part of a dialogical response to the new constraints on activism. This paper considers some specific forms of advocacy and governmental responses to them, including the mobilization of ‘social movements,’ other, more individualized activities using the civil courts, as well as less organized and informal networking activities, to gauge some of the pitfalls and possibilities for legal reform in Iran.