I have written before about a transformation in my own identity as both Iranian and American. For the longest time, I thought of my immigrant self as two things added up. I wanted to be both, and in being both, I felt empowered in redefining each of these parts of me to be what made me feel the most at home in this country, in my work, in my own skin. This was not about being proud to be this or that. In fact, it was about existing in an identity of my own making that took all types of pride—national and patriotic primarily—out of the equation. It was, to use a yummy metaphor, an existence where comfort food was both tahdig and peanut butter.

The war has changed all of that on such a molecular level. Not just in the obvious ways (though is it obvious?) but in ways that I am truly surprised by. I’ve had so many conversations these past two months with Iranian friends and colleagues in the US about how heartbreaking the absence of an anti-war movement has felt. The sneaking suspicion that, at times, our friends were maybe okay—maybe more than okay—that the war was going on and that the Iranian government was returning the attacks on it. Or conversely, people who were not not unhappy that the Islamic Republic was finally getting what it had coming. Or at the very least, mostly curious to see how it would all work out. If people died, then well, “every war has casualties.” What’s a little loss of someone else’s life for a touch of revenge or a tickle of curiosity?

So many of us have noted, experienced, and even grieved the ways in which colleagues, people we have worked with for years, have not reached out to say “hey, you ok?” either out of discomfort or some other reason I can’t be bothered to fathom. (When a colleague I barely know emailed me because “when Russia attacked Ukraine…I felt alone in my grief,” and then said they were sure many other colleagues had reached out, I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if I should tell them, actually, they had not.) At first, I tried to understand. I thought it’s better this way. What am I going to say to their sympathy? What can they say to me? But then I told this to someone whose whole family is in Iran—parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, friends—and they simply said: It’s better to be asked if you’re okay than not, no?

I am genuinely surprised at how so many of my Iranian friends and colleagues in the US have felt alone in their grief. We have theories. We have explanations. We swap horror stories. We wonder how we move forward from here, beyond just forgetting and forgiving.

In Iran the word forgiveness is not used in talking about the segment of the population that in the days before and during the war, cheered, sometimes literally, the bombing of the country. Anything but this was their mantra. The question of how to think about and perhaps heal this immense gash is one of the most sophisticated debates that is currently going on in Iran today.

In the days of the war, people filmed bombs dropping on their city, balls of fire in the sky, plumes of smoke rising up, and you could hear them say “good, good. Hit them”—them being the Islamic Republic, the government that less than two months before the war started had killed an unprecedented number of protesters over two nights. Families tore apart over this. Friend groups broke up. As the war continued, it became clear that the assassination of Khamenei and other political leaders was not going to bring down the system (as anyone with a brain knew it wouldn’t). In fact, the war empowered the Islamic Republic’s most repressive elements, which continued to arrest and execute its citizens as the bombs fell. Simultaneously US/Israeli strikes targeted and destroyed cultural heritage sites, schools, universities, hospitals, clinics, residential buildings, bridges, factories, airports, and industrial sites. Over 1,700 civilian casualties have been confirmed, with 254 of them children.

What is left is this: According to Iran’s central bank, roughly 85% of household incomes now go towards the purchasing of essential food items; according to official numbers, roughly 4 million people lost their jobs directly from the war (which happens when you target factories in which people work), though the number is by multiples higher as the government maintains its internet shutdown and introduces stratified internet access. Donya-ye Eqtesad on April 17 predicted inflation will be between 47% if there is a deal, 71% if this no war no peace limbo continues, and a whopping 123% if war restarts. By one count, inflation is currently at 69%.

I give these numbers to say that the conversations in Iran about how to address, if not heal, the rift in society—when those you know, you love, you sit at a table with, you break bread with, invited and celebrated foreign powers decimating your city and country in the name of istisal—is as vital as reconstruction itself. There are those who say that there should be moral accountability for war’s cheerleaders. Meaning that a moral judgement should be made towards their stance, not, as Mohammad Maljoo argues, to persecute, but to “elevate [our] understanding and strengthen [our] collectivity” by naming “our common pain.”

There are others who advocate “co-existence” instead of “solidarity” as a way out of this great societal schism. The sociologist Mahsa Assadollahnejad, for example, advocates the former for a number of reasons, including the fact that she believes co-existence is post-political. Co-existence, she writes, “gives us three principles: 1) co-dependence 2) shared vulnerability and 3) universal grievability. These principles in turn can decrease socio-political violence and allow for the emergence of an ‘us.’”

There are also those who call for empathy as a political act, because, to simplify a deeply humanistic and complicated position, all the other options are to choose a cycle of never-ending violence. Empathy as understanding and the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes, without the need to agree.

I find that I try, and I fail, to learn from my friends and colleagues in Iran. In their case, this question is fundamental to their projects of charting a path forward from the violence of the past months, if not decades. Some of that violence continues to shape their lives. They cannot and will not give into the despair that anger, fury—violence from outside and inside—wrought upon their lives.

Me? I don’t know. I think I finally found my path forward: I can’t forgive but I can engage in anti-forgiveness and I think for now, that will do.

In Violence and Civility, Étienne Balibar proposes civility (or antiviolence) as a political practice that resists “extreme violence” (or cruelty) as a path towards emancipation and transformation.1 Balibar counterposes antiviolence to nonviolence (turning away from violence) and counterviolence (a second act of violence in reaction to the first) because “the prefix ‘anti-’, as in antithesis, antipathy, or antinomy, designates the most general modality of the fact of ‘facing up to’—from within the polity or community as well—or of measuring oneself against that which is, doubtless, enormous or incommensurable.”

As I said, I don’t even know what it is that I think I need to forgive, or who. The whole question feels so presumptuous to me. Who am I to even pose it? Maybe I think about it so much because I am looking for some kind of closure, though honestly that doesn’t quite seem right to me. Maybe I want to go back to a fantasy of a status quo ante. Maybe I keep returning to forgiveness because I don’t know what else to return to.

If forgiveness is a form of release, then anti-forgiveness is something harder to grasp. To be in a state of anti-forgiveness is to face up to forgiveness and to measure oneself against it without turning away from it as a possibility. It is to remain tilted on the axis, without resolution and but also without collapse.

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I’m sorry, but the late 90s called and want their headlines back. So did the early 2000s and the 2010s.

There seems to be a widespread understanding in and outside Iran that the US/Israeli war on Iran that began on February 28 was a turning point both in Iranian history and Iran’s regional and global relations. It’s a war that has set off a chain of events that continues. Yet it was a war whose consequences, and even its shape, could be and were to some extent foreseen. Post-revolutionary Iran was and is a multi-nodal, decentralized political system where, if you were interested in the facts and not wishful thinking, there was little doubt that it would not fall just because Ali Khamenei was taken out. The “Supreme Leader” fell, and the edifice did not come crashing down as pundits for decades had speculated it would, because it’s a political system built to protect the system itself and not just one person, even if that one person has the name “Supreme” attached to him. Ironically, of course, this was never part of his or his son’s title in the constitution or in Persian anyway. Rahbar and valiye faqih, the Persian monikers for this political office, translate into “leader” and “guardian jurist,” clearly far less useful terms for the English-language press than “Supreme Leader.”

If anyone is supreme in this scenario, it’s these pundits who constantly are wrong and yet somehow see no need to course-correct, let alone hold themselves or be held accountable. It reminds me of how, some years ago at a US think tank, I said the problem with policy analysis here is that something happens in Iran, the analyst says something, they’re wrong, then next time again, the same media, same think tanks, the same platforms ask them again for their analysis. Rinse, recycle, repeat. I was told I had hurt some feelings and an apology would be appreciated.

If this war, which is not over yet, was a turning point, should it not also be an opportunity for pundits, their editors, and the press to just take a breath and ask: maybe we need to tweak how we talk about Iran? It’s not a big tweak. Just change the frameworks and models used in the 1990s for several decades that have not produced correct insights. Just acknowledge history. Is it too much to ask?

Take, for example, the current stampede to read the negotiations’ tea leaves through Iranian infighting and disagreement. As one analysis put it: “Regime factionalism affects external behavior. The Iranian system is beset with factionalism. Decision-making requires consensus; therefore, the number and complexity of these factions, combined with the individual reluctance and inability to make decisions, make it very difficult for the system to change course or to make significant decisions.”

Wait, sorry, this was from 2009.

“The Domestic Politics of Iran’s Nuclear Debate: Leadership Divided?”

No, sorry, that’s from 2014.

I could go on with articles from the 1990s and onwards, but I won’t. You get the gist.

The issue is not, in any shape or form, whether there is disagreement in Iranian decision-making. To say otherwise is to deny reality. But the Iranian political system is not one that tries to hide its political differences. Disagreement is built into the political system itself, as are attempts at consensus decision-making.

The third headline in The Economist’s “A Jungle of Power” jumble is “Which Iran Is America Dealing With?” This notion that a “healthy” Iranian political system is one with a united front is a fiction created by outside pundits in order to keep their plug-and-play analyses going. It’s an ironic fiction, since disagreements over the direction of policy are valorized in other places, such as in the US and in Israel. You don’t send over 70 people to negotiate in Islamabad if you think people with various stakes and opinions are a sign of weakness. (Though I will admit, I was a bit taken aback when I learned the US negotiating team was 300 people. I got asked by journalists multiple times how I understand why 70 people were sent to Islamabad by Iran. Not even once was I asked about the 300-member US team, but I digress.)

The issue at hand is the meanings we assign to the sometimes intense disagreements in the Iranian decision-making bodies. In the current decade’s game of let’s talk about infighting and factionalism amongst Iran’s political elite, the intended or not result is to assign or predict blame for a possible failure to reach a deal and the restart of the war. If the negotiations come to naught, then it was the infighting that made it happen. It was because, to quote the US president, “the infighting is between the ‘Hardliners,’ who have been losing BADLY on the battlefield, and the ‘Moderates,’ who are not very moderate at all (but gaining respect!), is CRAZY [sic].”

In other words, this framework allows us to ignore the realpolitik of how this war was started, why this war was started, and the ways in which the nature of this war has limited the possibilities of negotiating a new deal, a deal that the US did away with in 2018, by focusing on a familiar punditry bogeyman: Iranian infighting and factionalism.

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My mother was 35 years old when she and my dad returned to Iran from America with their two kids—yours truly, age 9, and my brother, age 2. The return would not have been remarkable in any way except for the fact that the year was 1981. The revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty was two years old, the Islamic Republic had been established, and what eventually turned out to be an eight-year bloody war between Iran and Iraq had already begun.

My parents had moved to the US five years earlier to study. In Iran, they had left behind jobs that presumably would be waiting for them, a down payment on a house in the newly built Ekbatan complex, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, friends—all the things that make a life, a life.

I once asked my parents, “Who leaves America to go back to Iran after a revolution and six months into a war?” My mom shrugged and said, “It was home. We missed home.” I never truly understood what she meant. But I do now. I deeply do.

But I digress. And it’s really hard not to. I want to tell you so much about what it meant to build a life in times like that, to celebrate all that my mother and my father did. As my mom once told me, “We started from below zero when we went back. We would have had a different life if we had never returned.” A true thing if there ever was one.

Almost immediately after the war started, food became rationed in Iran. Food stamps were issued for staple goods: rice, oil, butter, cheese, meat, and other items. Every family was issued stamps giving them a certain amount of these staples based on their size. When state broadcasts announced your grouping, you could go to the store and purchase your ration. Other food items existed in stores, but due to war conditions and a set of reasons beyond this, they were limited or far beyond most family budgets, including ours.

So how do you rebuild a life from below zero when you have two basically American kids you’ve brought back to wartime Iran to live? Sedi, my mother, did so from the most unexpected place. She made, from scratch, the weirdest thing that I personally craved: Thousand Island dressing.

Thousand Island dressing most likely dates back to the late 19th century when, according to my quick Wiki search, it was invented in the upper Saint Lawrence River between New York and Canada. In its basic form, it consists of mayonnaise, ketchup, and chopped pickles—only the last of which was readily available in wartime Iran.

I won’t get into my ode to this weirdly colored, strangely tasting “salad” dressing, other than to say that to this day, if given a choice, I will pick it over all others. I feel as strongly about it now as I did back then, when I was a confused and scared child trying to find my way in a society that was probably as different from San Diego, where I had grown up, as anywhere ever was.

So my mother—never daunted, never afraid, and never one to let something as trivial as wartime food rationing and limited purchasing power stand in her way—set to work. She would make mayo by hand. She would take tomato paste, add sugar and water and whatever else was needed to make something close to ketchup. She would painstakingly chop pickles and make vats of Thousand Island dressing so her firstborn could always have a taste of what felt, at that point, like home.

She would also make vast quantities of potato chips at home, not using a mandoline slicer or any electric or manual device to slice the kilos of potatoes in front of her. No. She would peel the potatoes by hand and then slice them as thinly as she possibly could. Then she spent hours deep-frying them in our kitchen using a pan and immense amounts of precious vegetable oil. To give you a sense of her labor of love, she would make enough to fill a red plastic barrel we had in our pantry that was taller than my little brother. I mention him because nothing delighted him more than getting grounded in the pantry, where his access to these, let’s call them artisanal, potato chips was unfettered.

My mother worked full time. At this point, she had three kids, my little sister having joined our family in 1983. She cooked, she cleaned, she worked, and she made Thousand Island dressing and potato chips so home could feel like home.

And let’s just get this out in the open: no, I almost never helped. I was always busy sneaking a novel into my textbook and pretending I was doing homework. There was a brief period when, under the spell of a Japanese movie shown on state television, I decided I wanted to help in the kitchen—with an important caveat: I would only use my feet. The movie was about a girl born in the aftermath of Hiroshima with no arms who eventually was able to live her life doing everything with her feet. She would chop vegetables holding a knife with her toes, cook similarly, and go about her everyday life armless but with incredible toe skills. I was inspired.

When my exhausted mother would ask me to set the table, I would oblige, but since I did not possess superhuman foot skills, the whole thing would literally come crashing down. I eventually gave in to my mother’s pleas to stop using my feet to put plates on the table. So I went back to reading Alexandre Dumas underneath my bed, where I could ignore the knock on the door and the head poking in, calling out my name.

I don’t know why I keep thinking back to these things today. Perhaps I should have told you about who Sedi Sohrabi is as a person and not just as my mother. That would have been the more feminist way of doing it. Maybe I should have given you her biography—where she came from, who she became, who she is today, on the 80th year of her magnificent birth. Perhaps.

But truth be told, it’s these small memories—memories for which there is no photographic footprint, memories that contain the essence of the privilege of having been raised by Sedi Sohrabi—that are the ones that sustain me in moments of crisis and hardship.

I’ve written before about how I lost god when during the Iran-Iraq war I would pray and pray for the war to end and it just would not. What I did not say is that every time I need to pray (a regular thing when I’m on a plane, a regular thing after February 28), I pray to the joy my mother spreads in this world, to the care she brings to all who know her. I pray, in other words, to the life force that gave us Thousand Island dressing and potato chips.

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According to Reza Salehi Amiri, Iran’s minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, overall 140 cultural heritage sites were struck during the war across 20 provinces. 63 of them were in Tehran, 23 in Isfahan, and 12 in Kurdistan. Of the best known sites that received news coverage during the war, the damage to the 17th century Chehel Sotoon palace in Isfahan is ongoing in that the decorative features of the palace such as such as the “mirrorwork, wooden elements, and ornamental surfaces” continue to fall at a faster pace than before. This is the case for other sites as well.

The war damage to Iran’s economy and the cost of reconstruction is vast, complex, and a topic for another time. Just in terms of the heritage sites, the cost includes not just reconstruction but also the loss in tourism, an industry that employs around 1.6 million people in Iran.1

A recent statement signed by over 200 scholars, faculty, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of archaeology, history, art history, cultural heritage, and related social sciences and humanities has been released that calls for both accountability for the destruction of these sites and safeguarding against future wars. (To learn more, you can also click here for an interactive map produced by The Middle East Cultural Heritage at Risk in Armed Conflict project)

One of the signatories of that statement is Dr. Eskandar Mokhtari, an Iranian scholar and conservation expert who has led major heritage restoration efforts, including that of the Golestan Palace and the reconstruction of Arg-e Bam in 2003 after a 6.6 earthquake on the Richter scale completely demolished this ancient world heritage site. Dr. Mokhtari is also a former deputy of Tehran’s Cultural Heritage Organization and a founding member of the nongovernmental institute, Tehran Watch [دیده بان تهران] that focuses on conservation and documentation of Tehran’s cultural heritage sites.

The letter by Dr. Mokhtari translated and printed below was sent to my colleague, Azam Khatam on March 18, 2026 at the height of war and Iran’s ongoing internet and communications blackout. A colleague in Iran was able to call Dr. Khatam and read it to her on the phone as she typed it on her computer. After that with great difficulty, Dr. Khatam sent the text back to ensure she had taken down the information accurately. We then translated it and tried to get it published in major newspapers but were told the topic had already been covered.

We don’t believe it has. As Dr. Mokhtari warns at the end of his letter without proper attention and action “the damage unfolding in Iran will not be an exception. It will be a precedent.”

This post is part of a collaborative effort to engage with a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses from inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

The Destruction of Tehran’s Cultural Heritage By Dr. Eskandar Mokhtari

Since February 28, when coordinated air and missile strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran began, a significant number of the country’s historic buildings have been destroyed or damaged. Alongside the mounting human toll, more than 110 historic sites across the country and roughly 60 in Tehran alone have been damaged, according to preliminary reports.2 These are not incidental losses. They point to a pattern that raises urgent questions about the protection of cultural heritage in modern warfare.

For those who have studied and worked to Iran’s heritage sites, the damage is not abstract. Consider the fate of Golestan Palace in central Tehran, widely reported in the Western press. For centuries, it has stood as a layered record of Iranian history, with roots in the Safavid era and its defining form shaped under the Qajar dynasty. I have known the Golestan Palace complex in detail for three decades. In 1995, when the Ministry of Justice proposed construction within the surrounding grounds of the palace, the Cultural Heritage Organization commissioned a [site] evaluation. I led that effort with colleagues. We believed that even a careful clearing of the site would reveal the remains of Tekyeh Dowlat, Iran’s first purpose-built performance space. Though demolished during the Pahlavi period, its remains persisted underground. In less than two weeks, we uncovered part of its plan and the construction proposal was halted.

At the time, it seemed that the site had been secured for the future. In later years, as I began teaching at the university, I continued research on the Golestan Palace and worked toward its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list. That designation, achieved in 2013 through the efforts of many colleagues across academic, governmental, and civic institutions, was widely understood to strengthen protections for the site. It did not anticipate the kind of risk now facing it.

In the first wave of attacks [in the 2026 US/Israeli war], the palace complex was severely damaged. Doors and windows shattered. Delicate wooden structures collapsed. The mirrored ceilings of its famed Hall of Mirrors, immortalized in a celebrated painting by Kamal-ol-Molk, were broken apart.

The destruction has not been confined to a single site. The Sa’dabad complex in northern Tehran, once home to Qajar and Pahlavi rulers and now the country’s largest museum campus, has also suffered extensive damage. In the city center, historic buildings in Baharestan Square have been struck, along with key political landmarks including the former parliament and senate buildings. In one case, a missile brought down the roof of the Senate’s main hall, an architectural feature inspired by the dome of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan. Even public squares, the shared civic spaces where history is lived rather than displayed, have not been spared. Baharestan Square and Arg Square, both tied to Iran’s Constitutional Revolution and Iran’s struggle for freedom, have sustained damage. So too have the storied Ferdowsi Square and other urban landmarks that form part of Tehran’s collective identity.

Beyond the capital, the scale of destruction is equally alarming. In Isfahan, Chehel Sotoun Palace and the Naqsh-e Jahan Square complex, both UNESCO-listed sites, have been seriously damaged. These are places that have endured for centuries, surviving political upheaval and regional conflict. Their vulnerability today underscores a troubling reality: the norms meant to protect cultural heritage in times of war are increasingly fragile.

International law is not silent on this matter. The 1954 Hague Convention the Protection of Cultural Property, to which US, Israel, and Iran are all signatories, and related agreements explicitly require the safeguarding of cultural property during armed conflict. These rules exist because the destruction of heritage is not only a local loss. It is a global one. When such sites are damaged, humanity loses part of its historical record.

The stated aim of precision targeting in modern warfare is to limit harm to civilians and nonmilitary structures. Yet the evidence emerging from these attacks suggests a different outcome. Historic city centers, dense with cultural landmarks, have been struck repeatedly. Whether through intent, indifference, or failure, the result is the same.

What is at stake is more than architecture. Cultural heritage anchors identity. It tells societies who they have been and, by extension, who they are. Its destruction severs that continuity. It leaves behind not only physical ruins but a deeper rupture in the narrative of a nation.

There is still time to act. International organizations, cultural institutions, and civil society must press for adherence to the legal frameworks already in place. These are not symbolic gestures. They are necessary steps to ensure that the protections promised on paper are honored in practice. If they are not, the damage unfolding in Iran will not be an exception. It will be a precedent. And the next time war comes, as it inevitably will, the world may find that it has grown more willing to accept the loss of its shared past.

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The texts below are written by Mojtaba Kashani. After receiving his BA in Iran, Mojtaba received his masters in global affairs from University of Notre Dame and eventually began his doctoral studies in sociology Carleton University in Canada. When the 12 day war began in June 2025, he left his studies and returned to Iran where he currently resides.

On April 5th, Mojtaba sent me his war writings and a text by Zahra Sabbagh chronicling her war experiences 48 hours before the US president’s deadline and threat that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” I published Zahra’s here under the title “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, All Wrapped Up in One, in Iran.”

Then on April 12th, he sent me another text, which he called: “There was No Agreement.” There Mojtaba begins with the collapse of the talks but then chronicles how right before the ceasefire began, 6 of his beloved’s family members were killed in a US/Israeli strike on a house in Tehran, referencing relatives of Zahra whose haunting words were written and published right before this tragic event. I asked for their permission to explicitly link the two texts through their relationship as a way to further add layers to their writing and experiences. I recommend reading both Mojtaba and Zahra’s evocative writings here to get a singularly full picture of the ongoing toll of the war and ceasefire on people in the region. I am grateful to both of them for trusting me with their words and their life stories.

Below I have published Mojtaba’s texts in reverse chronological order. First, his latest piece and then I have also included excerpts of his earlier text written in the midst of bombings to give a sense of him but also to explain why he left Tehran for the relative peace of another town, which he references in the text below.

This post is part of a collaborative effort to engage with a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

There Was No Agreement by Mojtaba Kashani1

April 12, 2026

This morning I started my day by watching a speech by [US Vice President] J.D. Vance, the one they said was the last remaining peace-seeker in the American government. A bit of preamble and nonsense, followed by a brief conclusion: no agreement was reached.

It’s still too early for any kind of judgment, and some believe this story is far from over. I try to keep my anxiety manageable with tea, frozen bread, and cheese. It does the job of meditation and yoga for me. I don’t know how many kilograms I’ve gained since the first day of the war. But today certainly hasn’t been the hardest day of recent weeks for me. Each day of this war has had its own tale, full of hope and fear, dread and anxiety. But one of them [April 6] still hasn’t faded from my memory.

Perhaps it never will.

I wake up early in the morning. I shouldn’t be awake at this hour. Out of habit, I reach for my phone. It was plugged in overnight, and I feel reassured knowing that if we’re dragged back to the Stone Age, I’ll be able to carry it with me for two extra days. My new morning routine is checking the news and reading personal messages. I open the local app. She is online. I’m a bit surprised since she usually isn’t awake at this hour. I say hello. Immediately, my phone rings. She tries to tell me something though sobs and tears, but her words are unintelligible. The words get lost between her cries. Her sentences break apart. I’m on the verge of a heart attack from fear when I hear this: we’ve been ruined [بدبخت شدیم]… they struck… they’re all dead…

An American missile, guided by advanced precision fighter jets, targeted a house in the middle of the night. Several people, men and women, old and young, were killed instantly, and dozens were seriously injured. No one has even had a chance to announce how many homes were destroyed.

I’m in shock. I can’t even find a way to express my anger and rage. I barely find an empty seat on the first bus and head back to Tehran. The last time an explosion went off right next to me [see below], I was so terrified that I decided not to return to the city [Tehran] until the war was over. I had thought I could get away from the missiles and keep myself safe. But what about the lives of my loved ones? Or the loved ones of my loved ones? I had fled the war, but there is no escaping it.

I don’t have time to pack. My laptop, a toothbrush, and a black shirt. Even that is more than you need in wartime. I don’t have time to go home. I change my clothes in the bus terminal restroom and put on the black shirt. I go to a café and wait [for her]. We hold each other tight. My embrace won’t bring anyone back to life, but I don’t know what else to do. I try to listen and empathize. Everyone is dead except one person. The tea tastes bitter, and the sugar crystals turns to paste in my mouth. I swallow the lump in my throat. I smoke several cigarettes in a row, and only at the end do I remember that I don’t even smoke. I wish I could express my anger but not here with tearful eyes and trembling lips. I don’t know where to place this fury.

The next morning, I wake up in horror. Less than 24 hours remain until the deadline set by the president of the cradle of modern democracy to drag us into the Stone Age. What does the Stone Age even look like? Who will enslave us? The prime minister of the only democracy in the Middle East, not to be out done, has also announced that we should stay home until 9 p.m., as they are going to blow up many places: roads, railway lines, bridges, and…

I’m scared, but I don’t intend to leave Tehran. Mom and Dad are deeply worried. Yesterday I had rushed to take the bus so quickly that there had been no chance to say goodbye to them. No one’s said a word but I’m sure we’re all thinking: What if we never see each other again?

Each hour brings new news. With each explosion, we’re pushed months or years backward. Bus tickets are selling out. I eventually buy one. I have a few hours [before it departs]. I find a café in the middle of the city to be alone with myself. Unlike the streets, the café isn’t that empty. I find a cozy seat by the street. I scroll through the news on the domestic app. It all contradicts each other. Out of sheer idleness and loneliness, I just sit and watch people. A girl is sitting on a bench by the side of the street, smoking carelessly. She says she’s tired and prays: “Let it hit, let it [all] end and be over.” I think of the people who formed human chains on bridges and near power plants. I wasn’t there, but even seeing those images and hearing the melody of the kamancheh [a bowed string instrument] stirred a faint lump in my throat.2 What if they really do hit and end everything?

I get on the bus. Not a single empty seat. By sheer luck, I’ve managed to buy a limited-data VPN at a high price. I read some news and analysis. Not even two analysts say the same thing. Someone on Al-Jazeera has said that Israel might, for the first time, use a controlled nuclear bomb to consolidate its power. One says Trump is bluffing; another says he’s serious. I don’t know which to believe.

Social media is eerily silent. I glance at Telegram groups of Iranians living abroad. They are counting down the time until the deadline, just like people standing in Times Square waiting for the New Year ball to drop. But here, the fireworks kill people. Real people with real stories, dreams, fears, and hopes. I decide to save what little VPN data I have left and doze off until I reach my destination.

The rideshare driver drives in silence. She only asks me if we can stop at a gas station along the way. I agree since who knows whether there will be any gasoline tomorrow. It’s past midnight and the asphalt is wet from rain. The streets are deserted, and the singer sings:

“Kiss me, kiss me
For the last time
Goodbye to you
As I go toward my fate”3

What if that meeting in the café, in black clothes, was truly our last? It shouldn’t be like this. Just now, the news says Trump is considering a two-week ceasefire proposal put forward by Pakistan or as some domestic media call them, our Pakistani brothers. What illusions we had that the white men would bring us peace. My heart warms a little.

“Amid the storm, allied with the boatmen
We must pass beyond life itself, beyond the storms”

They say grief has stages. I’m not sure how accurate that is. But this favorite song of mine has pushed the peak of my anger to the surface.

I remember a poem by my favorite poet, Mahmoud Darwish:

“I am still alive…
A thousand thanks for this unexpected blessed event
Presidents in America are trying
To make America turn on the drinking water.
How shall we wash the dead?
And America, atop the fences,
Gives every child
A cluster bomb toy for death

America is the plague itself
And the plague is America…”4

An Excerpt from “Tonight I was Killed” by Mojtaba Kashani

March 29, 2026

Tonight I was killed. My soul was torn from my body and fell onto the ground. The earth trembled, it gave way beneath my feet, and it became certain to me that I would never see tomorrow morning.

I’m sprawled on my bed, my eyes heavy. Silence has taken over everything. With five heavy blows, I jolt awake and, terrified, rush toward a place I imagine is safe. Mom, unconcerned, bangs a spoon against the pot to scrape off the bit of stew stuck to it. I curse the spoon and go back to bed.

I’m angry that I couldn’t tell the difference between a metal spoon and a missile. I lie back down and pull the blanket over myself. I’m suffocated by the heat, but the weight of the blanket reassures me. As if I think it’s a shelter that will protect my life.

…

After days of continuous rain, the sky has cleared. Now I can see the whole street and easily distinguish the sounds of drones, air defense, fighter jets, and missiles. There’s no more sound of pouring rain or sudden thunder. I get lost in my thoughts and my eyes close. I see nothing but endless, dense darkness.

I wake up in terror. Screams come from outside. My brain isn’t working, but my body is doing everything it can to survive. Luckily, I have clothes on. Mom and I take refuge in the hallway, thinking we’ll be safe from the windows. Deep down I know this is a false sense of security, but I want to believe this is not the last moment of my life.

I start going through the wartime instructions one by one: during an explosion, stay away from windows, lie on the ground, place your hands over your head and ears, and keep your mouth slightly open to avoid the blast wave. But then what? I’ve forgotten. I can hear my own heartbeat. That means I’m still alive. I struggle to breathe. Fear must have stopped my breathing for a moment, and now my body is fighting to regain the lost oxygen.

…

Suddenly, a deafening sound rises from the sky—like a thousand warriors blowing into a single pipe, or spectators blasting their horns. The sky over Tehran seems to tear open. I feel like a phantom is hovering above us. I’m frozen in fear, following the sound with my ears. With several powerful strikes, the ground lifts from its place. The building sways. The windows tremble and bricks fall from the walls. I’m terrified, collapsed into myself. I’m stunned. There’s no prayer I can whisper to calm myself.

Again, the sound of the sky splitting. This time I’m certain it will land directly on my head. Each blow is heavier and closer. Now I’ve truly become a frightened animal, reduced to primal instincts. Like a dog, I pant to gulp down some oxygen. My heart feels like it’s being torn out. I think to myself: if my heart bursts out and blood gushes, who will take responsibility? I don’t even know the name of the precision pilot.

A few minutes pass, and the city falls into a deadly silence. I stretch slightly and slowly remove my hands from my ears. Carefully, I take a few deep breaths and convince my body that the danger has passed. I glance around the house. Everything seems to be in place. My hands are trembling. I feel like a wandering spirit. I don’t want to see myself in the mirror. I’m afraid the chariots of death will return. I’m certain that this time my skull will be split open. We leave everything behind and rush out of the house.

…

Twenty-eight days have passed since the war began, and I have never felt this helpless and desperate. The night has sunk into a dense darkness and stretched longer than ever. The street is empty, the house is dark, the pilots are resting—and I am glad that before my birthday arrived, I did not become an inevitable casualty of war.

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(From the instagram account of a journalist in Iran, which says: Connect that Internet! Connect it.)

On April 7, a ceasefire was announced in the US/Israel war on Iran, a ceasefire that did not include Lebanon but eventually led to a stoppage in the daily bombardment of Iran. Nonetheless, the internet and communications shutdown that began on February 28 continues. This continued shutdown diverges from the Islamic Republic’s own practices whereby after the ceasefire announcement of the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025, the internet was restored. It was also restored after 3 weeks in the aftermath of the January protests and the brutal crackdowns on January 8 and 9, 2026.

The ability of Iranians to access worldwide internet remains limited to whitelisted accounts and expensive black market proxy configurations. As the economist Mohammad Maljoo has written several times on his Telegram account during his own intermittent connection, this blockage has unequal consequences and extends Iran’s economic disparity to something as fundamental as internet access.

An important arena where the internet shutdown has had a devastating effect is on journalism, particularly print journalism. Iran’s media ecosystem is complex and precarious, ranging from official governmental channels to independent media, to “in-between” channels that are allowed to function but are not officially sanctioned, to numerous Telegram channels with thousands of followers that operate from inside the country, to those that operate outside but have domestic readers, to diaspora media. (I spoke to a bit about some of the domestic media in an interview here.)

Below are translations of two important pieces from Iran that focus on the effects of the war and the ongoing internet shutdown on the ability of journalists to continue their vital work. The first piece was published in Shargh newspaper on April 6th and details the layoffs, newspaper closures, and the shrinking of the press in the Persian calendar 1404. It’s important to know that the year 1404 encompasses two devastating wars and the December/January protests and their subsequent crackdowns. The second piece is a statement put out by the Tehran Journalists’ Guild, a labor union established during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, on April 9, 2026, warning against both the continued internet shutdown and the labor force reductions.

If there is one thing I want the readers of this Substack to always remember, it’s how crucial it is to understand Iran as it is, not as we imagine it to be. In translating these two pieces side-by-side, I hope what you take away is not just the difficulties of the work journalists and media do in Iran but the ways in which they continue to fight for and succeed in creating space for knowledge and debate despite these difficulties and at great cost to themselves.

Shargh newspaper’s report on the layoffs and unemployment of journalists and the closing of some media in the new [Iranian] year by Niloufar Hamidi published on April 6, 2026

The year 1404 (2025 mostly) tragically ended for Iranian journalism; widespread layoffs, the closure of several newspapers, and the failure to pay the salaries of many journalists made the New Year’s holiday bleak for media professionals. Over a hundred staff members, including journalists and administrative personnel, were laid off from one of the largest private media outlets in the country, Payam-e Ma. On the other hand, Ham Mihan, which had previously built a strong reputation over the years, ended its operations until further notice, leaving dozens of journalists effectively unemployed. Meanwhile, Ham Mihan, which had already been shut down earlier due to judicial intervention, informed its reporters in the last days of Esfand (the last month of the Iranian calendar year) that it would no longer publish, and the Shabakeh magazine also announced that it would cease publication. Alongside all of this, several journalists from Aftab, Shargh, and other media outlets have reported not receiving their salaries and Nowruz bonuses for Esfand. Although the Press Department of the country claims to offer support, it seems that the blow dealt to the country’s press is irreparable, and the simple promises of support are not enough to address the extent of the damage.

The Shock of Layoffs in Two Media at the Same Time

Fatemeh Babakhani has been writing in various media outlets across the country for many years. Her area of expertise is the environment, and throughout these years, she has consistently focused on issues related to the natural environment of this country in her reporting. Now, she is one of the journalists who has lost her job. The first blow came when she learned that the newspaper Payam-e Ma1 would not be published until further notice:

“According to what the media managers told us, the newspaper, in the form it used to be published, will not exist until further notice. Of course, they explained that we could continue working as freelancers, and content would be published on the newspaper’s website. But it’s clear that with a freelance journalist’s salary, you can’t sustain a living. Especially in the current economic conditions of the society.”

Until this year, Babakhani worked simultaneously for two media outlets, and unfortunately, both of these outlets laid off staff. The second outlet she worked for, Donya-ye Eqtesad, where her job insurance was also covered, also made cuts:

“At the end of the year, the section editor gave us the news about staff reductions. Then, they called from Human Resources and told us that such a decision had been made, and the list of names was sent. Fortunately, I have the chance to keep my insurance through another media outlet, so I don’t have to resort to unemployment insurance.”

She explains that neither she nor the other staff members expected to face such a situation just a few days before the Nowruz (Persian New Year) holiday:

“We really didn’t think that instead of receiving our Nowruz bonus, we would be laid off. When the newspaper was closed, I had told myself that at least I worked for two outlets, so I would have at least one job. But suddenly, the news of the Donya-ye Eqtesad layoffs came, and it was very shocking.”

This journalist says that, apart from financial issues, the way the workforce was cut has long-term effects on the psyche and well-being of workers: “One aspect of this issue relates to financial and economic matters, which, of course, are not trivial. In the current situation, where everything has become significantly more expensive due to inflation, the economic aspect is not considered a normal issue in people’s lives. However, in the case of layoffs, it’s not just the economic dimension that pressures individuals. The feeling that suddenly you, as a skilled human resource, are being sidelined, jeopardizes the well-being and mental health of individuals, and disrupts their entire lives. There was a time when layoffs in media had significant reverberations. But now, these behaviors and approaches seem completely normalized.”

Unemployment on the Eve of the New Year

Mojgan Mirzaei, a veteran economic journalist, stopped working with Donya-ye Eqtesad last winter. She now talks about the situation at the outlet:

“We knew there were plans for layoffs. There had been rumors circulating for months within the organization. But no one imagined that the management would make such a decision just before Nowruz. Everyone thought that if such a decision was to be made, it would be after the 13th of Farvardin (the end of Nowruz holidays). So, it was accompanied by a wave of surprise and, of course, disappointment.”

She also acknowledges that the situation is difficult for the media managers as well:

“Of course, we journalists also know that the economic conditions for media managers are not favorable. There has been a reduction in liquidity. The income from advertisements had also decreased in recent months. This has affected the overall income of the newspaper. As a result, it seems that the easiest way forward was to lay off staff.”

Referring to the number of employees who lost their jobs at Donya-ye Eqtesad, she explains:

“We don’t have an exact number, but based on what we saw and heard, around 70% of the staff has been laid off. About 50 journalists from the newspaper itself were let go. Dozens of administrative staff were also affected. There were also a few layoffs from the Echo section. Additionally, the newspaper, which used to be published with 32 pages, was reduced to 16 pages, which is also an unfortunate event for the country’s press.”

According to Mirzaei, this decision could set a precedent for other media outlets:

“Donya-ye Eqtesad is arguably the largest private media in the country. It’s a large outlet that employed a lot of people, and many journalists have worked there over the years. This decision, with such a large-scale impact, could lead other media outlets to follow this approach to cut their costs. It’s clear that in these economic conditions, media managers may think, ‘If I can produce a newspaper page with just one person, why should I be responsible for the salaries and insurance of several people?’”

This journalist concludes by highlighting the lack of support from relevant institutions:

“Journalists have been struggling with difficult living conditions for years. Newspapers have been shutting down one by one. Salaries have decreased and decreased. Gradually, media managers started refusing to insure them, and if it weren’t for organizations like the Sandoq-e Honar [Art Credit Fund was established in 2004 and is under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture. Among its responsibilities is to provide insurance and support to unemployed journalists, artists, and writers] providing insurance for journalists, many would have to work without insurance. Even now, most of them are insured at a basic level and don’t receive quality insurance. Professional associations have also significantly weakened in recent years, and the current guild really doesn’t do much to improve the living conditions of journalists. The Ministry of Culture and Guidance mainly interacts with media managers, not journalists. That’s why journalists in this country are practically working without any supporting organizations, doing one of the most difficult jobs in the world.”

However, the damage to the media does not end with layoffs. Some media outlets have also refused to pay the salaries of their staff for the month of Esfand (the last month of the Iranian calendar year). Reports indicate that several news agencies and newspapers have not paid the salaries of their employees for Esfand, nor have they given their staff Nowruz bonuses. One of the journalists who wished to remain anonymous said that they were simply told: “We don’t have money!”

Unremitting Pain

Hooman Azimi, the Director-General of Domestic Media and Press, talks about the economic challenges that media outlets have faced, which have intensified since last year. He tells Shargh:

“We have been dealing with this problem since last year and have tried to monitor all developments around this issue. The current economic problems in the country, combined with sanctions and the war, have created additional pressure on media professionals. Now, the increase in the minimum wage by 60% has caused serious concern for media outlets that lost their income last year.”

Azimi, listing the supportive measures for media outlets, continues:

“There have always been various supportive measures on our agenda. For example, the head of the Press Department has emphasized supporting media outlets that employ more staff and provide them with insurance. We wanted to support the employment of journalists. Government advertising is also part of our work, which helps media managers and their revenues, and can cover a significant portion of expenses. Amid this crisis, the Minister of Culture and Guidance visited the Press Department and decided to update the rates of these government ads from the beginning of the year and increase their amount. It was important that the income from these ads remain the newspapers’ revenue streams.”

The Director-General of Domestic Media also mentions special support related to the war: “There was also the decision to provide special subsidies to media outlets that have been covering the news despite all difficulties and risks during the war… Just like we did during the 12-day war. Utilizing the Sandoq-e Honar’s insurance provisions, as well as unemployment insurance for those who lost their jobs, is also part of these support measures during the war.”

Azimi concludes by explaining that the Press Department’s guidelines emphasize ongoing support for human resources:

“In the guidelines we send to media outlets, we stress that reducing staff or eliminating positions should not be their first option. Reducing the number of newspaper pages, focusing more on digital versions rather than print versions, and cutting or eliminating other indicators are better solutions for managing costs and saving resources because layoffs and dismissals also harm the creative and intellectual process.”

Tehran Journalists’ Guild in a statement issued a warning about the situation of media and the livelihood of journalists on April 9, 2026

In a situation wherein the country needs professional, responsible, and reliable media more than ever to strengthen national unity and enhance public awareness, the ongoing economic pressures and infrastructural limitations have posed serious challenges to the survival of both print and online media, as well as the livelihoods of journalists. If this trend continues without attention, it could lead to the weakening of the country’s social and media capital.

The Tehran Journalists’ Guild, understanding the sensitive conditions of the country and the necessity of the media’s cooperation in fulfilling their national role, believes that the sustainability of the media is an inseparable part of social and economic stability and security. However, evidence on the ground indicates that, in recent months, the exacerbation of financial problems of media institutions, alongside a significant increase in production costs, especially in the areas of paper and printing, reduced revenue sources, particularly in advertising, and disruption in access to internet communication infrastructures, have created additional difficulties for the operations of many media outlets.

In this context, communication restrictions and the cutting off of international internet access have had even deeper effects on the performance of online media. The disruption of access, the limitation of some communication platforms, difficulties in publishing and distributing content, and disruptions in two-way communication with audiences have effectively disrupted some of the core functions of digital media. This situation has not only reduced timely information dissemination and professional competition, but also led to a noticeable decline in viewership, reduced traffic and advertising revenues, and weakened the position of domestic media in the information space.

As a result of these conditions, some newspapers have been forced to reduce their volume and the number of pages, while several other media outlets have limited or ceased their operations. Simultaneously, internet-based media have also faced decreased efficiency and income due to reduced audience access.

The concerning consequence of this trend has been the emergence of a wave of workforce reductions in the months of Esfand and Farvardin [March and April roughly], leading to the unemployment of some journalists and media professionals. This not only adds to the economic pressures on this group but also results in the loss of some of the country’s professional capacity and valuable media experience.

It is evident that under such conditions, the continued operation of professional and independent media requires at least the minimum necessary economic and infrastructural support. Ignoring this necessity limits the media’s ability to perform accurate and timely information dissemination, and it can also create a foundation for a decrease in public trust and the weakening of responsible information flow.

Since the Tehran Journalists’ Guild became aware of the difficulties faced by media colleagues (last March), the guild’s board president has contacted some relevant media managers and explained the difficult situation in the country and urged them to stop or at least delay the workforce reductions until the new year. Unfortunately, these requests and consultations have yielded limited results.

Therefore, the Tehran Journalists’ Guild, while emphasizing the need for media support, draws the attention of relevant authorities to the following issues:

• Immediate measures to manage and reduce the costs of paper and printing supplies for newspapers.

• Facilitating sustainable access of online media to communication infrastructures to maintain effective contact with their audiences.

• Designing and implementing support mechanisms to prevent layoffs and assist unemployed journalists.

• Strengthening constructive dialogue with media trade organizations to utilize expert capacities in managing the current situation.

The Tehran Journalists’ Guild, while emphasizing the responsible and professional approach of the media, declares its readiness for any cooperation that may improve the situation for its colleagues and hopes that effective and timely decisions will be made to preserve and strengthen this vital pillar of society in light of the current conditions.

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“I think there will be a deal,” she wrote. “Because if I don’t, the anxiety will kill me.”

I’m supposed to leave in 15 minutes to go see the ocean. Seeing the horizon might do me good, I’m told. But I’ve been watching the clock tick towards my departure time, and I haven’t been able to move.

I can’t make myself get up and do the things you need to do to make time travel forward: Pack a bag, lock up the house, get in the car, go to the ocean, see it. My paralysis is not so much from anxiety. Anxiety has been my companion for these past weeks. The paralysis is born from an anger I do not know where to place, what to do with, how to let go.

Because the fact of the matter is: We did not have to be here. This did not have to happen. And when the debris settles, everything that made it possible in this country, will remain the same. The apathy, the disinterest, the lack of information, the refusal to hear, let alone accept, the humanity of people on far shores, the humanity of those on this shore.

I keep thinking this is an inflection point in my life. I don’t know if I can ever go back to thinking of this place I live in, and have lived in for the past 35 years, as my home. Someone in Iran wrote: “home is a place where we feel comfort and safety, a place where our bodies are not tense and constantly braced for danger.” This is not my home anymore. I don’t know what to do with this feeling either.

My interlocutors, friends, and colleagues in Iran in the midst of all these bombs falling and in the middle of a society that has ripped itself apart, with some saying come and bomb us and others horrified at the thought, keep articulating how empathy is itself a brave political act. As one put it: You do not need to agree with the person to have empathy. But you need to have empathy to rebuild this place.

The Persian word for empathy is hamdeli, to share a heart. I think to myself, if those people who are being threatened with civilizational destruction can try to share a heart, then I should too. But then, I watch the clock tick, I sit here, and I hold my fury in my heart. I will not share my heart, only this feeling that I do not know where to place.

I told Rahaa today I feel the minute I can go back, I want to go back to Iran. I told her, I want to spend the rest of my life over there. She laughed and said don’t quit your job. It’s too expensive here.

When my mother a week ago has said she wants to go to Iran, I’d just rolled my eyes (sorry mom!) so I’m surprised by how I feel. I spent 35 years making sure I’m not that person. The one with feet on one shore and heart on another. And here I am exactly who I hoped I wouldn’t be, pining for an Iran I have in my mind and heart, brimming with real, flesh and blood people who I love so much, my heart wants to burst.

There it goes again: a heart of fury, a heart of love. I just can’t make it be a heart that I can make hamdel with those who made this moment possible. I feel I never can, even if the threat to erase an entire country does not come to pass. I was wrong about Israel attacking Iran in June 2025 and the ongoing US/Israeli war on Iran. Maybe I’m wrong about my ability to forgive too.

Everything I just wrote was an excuse for what is below:

I recently found a note I had written in my senior year in high school in Los Angeles. I wrote it 10 months after we had immigrated in late 1988. It’s a literature log. It ends in this way:

“My first day at school clearly showed me the change that had occurred in my life. I came from I [sic] school with strict regulations, where everyone knew me, to a place where students would apply make up in class. I also didn’t have any friends. Today, although I have become a bit accustomed to this life, I cannot still accept this change that has occurred in my life.”

Last night was a really bad night of bombing in Iran. In Tehran, it felt like bombs were falling all over the city. The country’s premiere science and engineering university, Sharif, was bombed. I kept thinking of the time a relative found out I got into MIT and told me: So what? I went to Sharif university.” I don’t remember that as a dig or an insult. I just keep thinking of the pride in his voice.

Today on my telegram account, I received a note from someone in Iran whom I don’t know personally but who had contacted me through mutual friends. He sent me two pieces, one written by himself and one by a friend of his. He told me he had been lucky to be able to connect to just send me these texts if I wanted to translate them and publish them on my substack. “If the texts need editing…I’d be very happy [for you to edit them.] You don’t need to check with me because I really don’t know when I can connect again.”

In reading and re-reading them, in translating their words, I was struck by the unvarnished ways in which they lay bare the fear and the horror of living under both uncertainty and bombs. The ways in which these beautifully expressed experiences reverberate past Iran and exist throughout the region. I have also not been able to stop thinking about my own memories of the Iran-Iraq war, memories that some would say I have repressed but I would say are conveniently tucked away.

For today, I have translated Zahra’s piece as she begins her text with the anxiety of the the US president’s 48 hour threat. It needs no framing and no explanation.1

This post is part of a collaborative effort to engage with perspectives and analyses from inside Iran. I invite you to read them and incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics. And as ceasefires are proposed and rejected, and threats to bomb Iran into the stone age hang heavily in the Iran, I hope you distribute Zahra’s words as widely as possible.

Tehran, Sunday April 4, 2026 by Zahra

I am writing this text while President Trump has said that within the next 48 hours our country will no longer exist, will be destroyed, and I am suspended between this sentence and these 48 hours; neither fully in the present nor in a future that has been threatened. It is as if time has left its linear form and turned into something sticky and stretched that neither moves forward nor stops. To be honest, writing in this situation is impossible; it is as if words have broken down, as if they no longer have the capacity to carry meaning. Words that were always a refuge for me have now themselves become defenceless; they cannot hold anything, cannot frame the world or even make it slightly bearable. When we do not know what will happen to us in the next 48 hours, what exactly are words supposed to describe? What are they supposed to narrate? Where can they begin when every beginning might be an end?

My first encounter with war was long before I understood what war was. I was a four- or five-year-old girl, about 22 years ago, sitting next to my father while the television was showing images of children in Gaza, images that I later realized have never stopped, we just sometimes look away from them so we can live. I asked my dad, “Will they ever attack us?” And he, with a certainty that I now understand was not of certitude but care, said, “No dear, they can’t; Iran is strong.” And with that single sentence I calmed down, so much so that I took a deep breath, put my head next to my dad’s pillow, and fell asleep. That night, security for me was not a defense system or a political equation; it was just one sentence, a short sentence that could keep the world in place and preserve the boundary between sleep and nightmare.

My second encounter with war was at the age of seven, on a trip that was supposed to simply be a trip, not a rehearsal for loss: Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, the Mediterranean Sea. Syria was beautiful to me, not like a postcard but in the sense of clinging to life so strongly that I did not want to return. After that we were supposed to go to Beirut; everything was ready—the visa, the plan, the excitement—but suddenly news came that Israel had attacked Lebanon, and the trip in a moment shifted from the horizon of possibility to the horizon of danger; the world changed from something to see into something to avoid. I asked my dad the same question again, and he gave the same answer again, and for the second time the world became bearable with a single sentence. Now that I think about it, my childhood was built on an unwritten contract: the world is dangerous, but father says no it’s not.

In this text I am not going to write anything except my own relationship with war. I’m not going to give complex analyses, nor present theoretical positions, just one big “NO:” no to war, no to imperial powers, no to everything that empties life of livability. But this “NO” when it comes out of experience, no longer resembles a sentence; it is more like a tremor, something that passes through language and stays in the body, like a shockwave that, even after the explosion has ended, still continues in the ear.

As I grew older, I understood that we, the inhabitants of West Asia, are not immune from the great evil of the region—the great evil and its allies, or the allies of its allies—a network of power that decides from afar and collapses things up close. But despite this understanding, war had not yet fallen onto my life. Its shadow was there but not itself, and like many of us I had learned to live with this distance, distance that is not so far that you remain unaware, and not so close that it knocks you down. Occasionally, to ease my conscience, I would tweet about the children of Gaza, the people of Syria and Lebanon, the women of Afghanistan, and I thought this level of action was enough. Four ineffective words in a world where a Palestinian child is shot in a food line or an Afghan woman is banned from school. In between strolling among Tehran’s cafes, having my skincare routine, working, and reading intellectual books, I would post a tweet, as if some unwritten balance sheet existed between their suffering and my everyday life. But I now understand that was not balance but suspension, a suspension that collapses with the first strike.

The summer of 1404 (2025) was no longer about the shadow of war; it was war itself: direct, immediate, without any time to prepare, frightening and shocking, like encountering something you always knew existed but never believed would reach you. I had studied sociology and thought I should be able to understand such a situation, but understanding did not help at all; knowledge lay useless beside me, and I could not even move my hands.

It lasted 12 days, and in those 12 days I understood that time in war is no longer calendar time. A day of war is not 24 hours; a day of war can equal a month of ordinary life, perhaps even more, because in war every moment stretches, fills up, becomes heavy, and then settles onto the body. I had always wondered what kind of a war was Lebanon’s 33 day war. Only 33 days? And those 12 days showed me that even one day is too much, far too much, in a way that can permanently change your definition of “a day.”

During that war, when our neighborhood was targeted, I heard a sound that before I only knew of in low-resolution versions in films. But the reality of that sound cannot be seen; it is something that passes through the ear and settles in the body, a sound that is not only heard but felt, like a rupture, like pressure, like a sudden collapse of balance. I developed a stutter for a few hours, as if language too, like the city, stopped functioning under attack. A large piece of shrapnel fell into our yard, where it could have landed on any of us. That war counted as my first war, and it was there that I thought of my mother and father, of the eight-year war with Iraq [from 1980-1988], of how they endured. My mother said at first we thought it would be one week, then it became one month, then one year, and then we saw it had become eight years. This sentence for me was not just a narrative of the past; it was an image of the future, a future where war can stretch itself, make room, remain, and even become normal. And this normalization is perhaps the most frightening part.

After those 12 days, I lived every day with the fear of another war. I clung tightly to life—very tightly—as if it might be lost at any moment and if I loosened my grip it would collapse. I thought I should be grateful for moments when bombs did not fall, a kind of forced gratitude for the absence of catastrophe. Others said I had become more resilient and kinder, and I jokingly said the doctor had increased my medication dosage, and they laughed, thinking this too was part of the post-war package. But those laughs were more like a way of not seeing what they did not want to see: that sometimes, to endure, a person steps back a little from themselves.

On Friday, the day before this war started, I was sitting in a café with my dear companion. He had bought me miniature peach-colored roses. I looked at the flowers and told him I was afraid of war; everyone said there would be war next week. He took my hand, his warm hands taking away some of the cold in my body, and the very next day the war began. It is as if fear sometimes arrives before reality, but this time there was no distance between them; fear and reality overlapped.

I was sitting at my desk at work when I heard the first explosion, and in that moment I understood that “before” and “after” are separated precisely at a single sound. I cried the entire way home. In the metro, people were each in their own world. I argued with a woman who was happy about “Trump’s liberating bombs.” I could not understand how someone could think of something called liberation in the midst of these sounds, in the midst of this fear. Liberation for whom and from what? When I got home, I could not stop crying. The war had truly begun, and nothing was like before anymore, not even me.

My mother said, “During the eight-year war I had to search for my brother’s body. Pull yourself together.” But I couldn’t because what needed to be pulled together no longer had its previous form. They had struck a hospital, a school with 180 students. How can one pull themselves together in such a world? On the seventh day of the war, they struck the same place again, as if war too remembers and returns to wounded places. I woke up screaming, thinking they had hit our house. I did not dare open my door, because opening it could mean seeing something I could not unsee. I just screamed. My father said, “Don’t be afraid, it’s nothing,” my mother brought sugar water [to increase blood pressure and prevent fainting], and at that very moment the second explosion occurred. I saw with my own eyes how the balcony moved back and forth, like it was something alive and reaction to the strike. The blast wave hit my left ear; I could not hear for a few hours, and then the sounds returned, but they were no longer like before, as if something inside them had broken. From that night on, sleep did not come. My ear would not allow it, the same ear that had now learned to distinguish the sounds of drones, missiles, air defense systems, and fighter jets from each other. These are not words that should be part of a person’s everyday vocabulary but have become so. I even searched on Google for the difference between cruise and ballistic missiles, as if knowledge, even if useless, could create an illusion of control when no control exists.

My ear still hurts. The doctor said there is no specific treatment for blast waves. Sometimes it produces the sound of the sea, and, this is the strangest part: that war plants a sound in the body that resembles nature, like the sea, as if the body tries to translate violence into something more bearable. But the most devastating event was none of these. It was the night of Nowruz [March 18]. After three weeks, I had finally managed to pull myself together a little, get out of bed, and not cry for a few days. I set the Haft-Seen table, thinking one must defend life in any way possible, even by arranging a few symbolic signs. But the world had no intention of honoring this. In the middle of the night, I woke up to a sound unlike previous explosions unlike anything familiar, a sound as if it came from within the walls, as if the house itself was collapsing. For a few seconds, I didn’t know where I was. My heart was pounding, and my body froze. Even the clonazepam did nothing; fear knew its own way.

We moved toward the window (or perhaps were pulled toward it) and nothing was like what it had been. The windows had not shattered; they had turned to powder, into dust, like a mist of sharp fragments suspended in the air. The house across from us was no longer a “house”; it was a collapsed mass, a black cavity in the alley, as if a piece of the world had been torn out and taken away. The walls had opened, the rooms had lost their modesty, people’s lives stood exposed like a revealed secret: a bed left half-intact, a curtain still moving, a closet left open, as if someone was still going to return and take their clothes.

The smell of burning and dust had mixed together, a smell that cannot be described and cannot be forgotten, a smell that clings to the throat, the skin, the memory. The sounds were fragmented: screams that did not complete, names called halfway, and silences louder than the sounds themselves. I can only say it was terrifying, but even that word falls short—very short.

Debris, debris, debris. Not as a word, but as reality. Layer upon layer, heavy, merciless. Twelve people were killed, sixteen units completely destroyed, but numbers show nothing. I saw a woman running with a hyacinth flower in her hand [Iranians put hyacinths on their new year spread], holding it tightly, as if were she to let it go, she too would collapse, as if that flower was the last witness of something called life just hours before.

They could not find Radin, a seven-year-old child whose bed had been by the window. The neighbors said he had bought blue sneakers for Nowruz. This sentence is like a nail in my head: “blue sneakers.” They searched for him for nine hours. These nine hours have no relation to ordinary time; nine stretched, exhausting, merciless hours. The rescue dogs were tired, the emergency workers lay down on the asphalt, as if their bodies could no longer continue. And in the end, only part of his body was found. No longer a child, no longer life, just “a part.”

Our alley was no longer an alley. It was a scene of what is left from the end of the world. It was not that its beauty had been destroyed; it was as if it had never existed. The walls were black, the air heavy, and the shattered glass underfoot made a sound like walking on something that should never have been broken.

And from that day, I became another person. This is not an exaggeration; I truly was no longer the one who arranged sabzeh and senjed on the table [two common items for Nowrouz spread]. My tongue would fail, tears would not let me go. I thought of the well-known proverb: “A good year is evident from its spring,” and I changed its continuation: “A good year is not ours, my friend.” It is as if even proverbs must adapt themselves to war. At the same time, involuntarily, I remembered the sentence that a bad life cannot be lived well, and we, the inhabitants of this geography, are caught in the heart of this contradiction: we must live in conditions where living itself has become a problem. And they do not let us live.

The veins under my eyes bulged, my ear throbbed. I thought to myself how did people during the world wars endure without these sedative pills? What does it mean that the doctor says there is no higher dose? Has no special medication been invented for wartime conditions? My body does not understand what war means. The body wants to sleep, to eat, to be calm, but war disrupts this rhythm; it destroys it from within. Thirty-seven days have passed. I have experienced severe bleeding twice. My body is protesting in its own language. My friend said this body is not made for war; it should relax on the beaches of Switzerland. I do not know if Switzerland has beaches or not, but my ear still produces the sound of the sea, as if my body creates another geography for itself, somewhere far from here. One month and one week has passed—37 days—but these 37 days are not just a number; they are an accumulation of something immeasurable, layered on top of each other like debris.

So many people have been killed, so many homes destroyed that I no longer know what to say. Building is so hard. Once I made a clay bowl, and when it broke I was sad for days. Now I think about all these bridges, hospitals, universities, petrochemical plants. Are they going to be rebuilt? And if they are rebuilt, will what has been lost return? Oh my precious homeland.

I want an ordinary life: metro, crowds, complaining about work, seeing my dear companion, evening fatigue, that ordinary fatigue that is a sign of being alive, not of exhaustion. But the city I live in is full of signs of war, like Khuzestan [southern oil-rich province and a major battle site during the Iran-Iraq war] where traces of the eight-year war still remain. When will these traces be erased, or will they ever be erased?

I have been laid off from work. When I started The Thibaults [a multi-volume French novel for which Roger Martin du Gard won a Nobel prize in 1937], I prayed the war would end. Now I am reading its second volume and hope I do not reach the third and fourth ones, because every volume I move on to means the war has also continued. I asked my mother why didn’t we have the sound of wind before? She said there was wind, but there were no fighter jets. And this simple sentence containes the entire difference between two worlds: a world where sounds are natural and a world where sounds are signs of threat. And now, among all these sounds, among all this accumulated experience, in a body that still trembles and a mind that is always anticipating, only one question remains, a question that has no answer and not even a fixed form:

What will the next 48 hours be like?

The extent and nature of the US/Israeli attacks have made the divisions between the pro and anti war segments of Iranian society feel like a chasm that cannot be bridged.1 BBC Persian recently released a video of testimonials highlighting how attitudes towards the war had wrought tensions inside families. One man noted that this division had led him to stay away from his family around the time of Nowrouz, the single most important holiday in Iran.

As more scholars, thinkers, and writers inside Iran connect to the internet using incredibly expensive proxy configurations, we’ve seen more engagement with these questions. For them, the domestic support for war is not just an intellectual puzzle but at the heart of Iran’s future once the bombs stop falling. The puzzle starts at one word: istisal.

As I’ve written elsewhere, istisal translates into desperation or helplessness though in its current usage in Iran, the meaning is far more layered and comprehensive. It was the predominant way that people described their dire conditions leading up to the December/January protests, and then their sense of grief and despair after the government killed thousands of protestors after Jan. 8. It has now become the focal point for understanding pro-war sentiments in Iran in the lead up, and into, the war.

For today’s weekend read, I have connected two texts. In the first, posted by the sociologist and researcher, Dr. Hesam Salamat on his instagram and Telegram channels, istisal is framed as a political issue that has “penetrated to the very marrow of each of us.” His use and conceptualization of it is based within discussions of the ongoing war, but is pulling from its pre-war connotations.2

That pre-war connotation is reflected in the second piece, a newspaper article from Payam-e Ma, published on February 22, 2026, titled “Society in the Vortex of Istisal.” The issues laid out in this piece from 6 days before the war have only been exacerbated. In thinking about the long term effects of this war, we should also consider how it has destroyed, I hope temporarily, non-violent solutions to Iran’s deep and systemic problems.

Because istisal is now a concept that carries a specific historical, social, economic, and political connotation, I have left it untranslated but feel free to think: desperation or helplessness every time you read it below.

This post is part of a collaborative effort to engage with perspectives and analyses from inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

“War Meditation 3” by Hesam Salamat, April 1, 2026

The justification of this war in the minds of those who considered it a political option for freedom, and likely still do, became possible through a kind of “proxy agency:” “There is nothing we can do. But ‘they’ can. The people no longer have agency. But ‘they’ can have agency. What ‘we the people’ cannot do, ‘they’ will do for us.” In short: “We cannot, but ‘they’ can.”

This mental justification emerged from the experience of istisal, from the experience of powerlessness, incapacity, and ineffectiveness. The issue of istisal today is a political issue. Overcoming istisal and reclaiming the capacities and agency of the people is equally a political matter. But the problem cannot be solved with a simple “we can.” The experience of istisal has penetrated to the very marrow of each of us in different ways for each person. All of us have lived the reality of istisal. All the “it didn’t work,” “we failed,” “we were left behind,” “we reached a dead end,” and “we couldn’t” have been lived through again and again to their fullest extent, and have become part of our collective memory as “memories of istisal.”

We need an immensely widespread movement, the birth of a passionate collective spirit, precisely in this moment of decay and death, one that, through mobilizing all these wounded bodies, troubled souls, and denied lives, calls for reclaiming the people’s capacities and power. The rising of Iran from the depths of its present exhaustion and breathlessness depends on the will for freedom. It is the uprising of a “nation” to rediscover its “self.”

“Society in the Vortex of Istisal,” by Yasir Mokhtari in Payam-e Ma newspaper, 4 Esfand 1404 (February 22, 2026).

These days, Iranian society has entered a kind of “social istisal.” This condition, which had existed in various forms for a long time, has intensified with the events of Dey 1404. This situation brings a kind of inaction, despair, and social isolation that can lead to citizens’ indifference toward the condition of the country and society.

Social istisal is a state in which a large segment of society feels it has lost the ability to influence its own destiny, and that individual or collective efforts do not lead to improvement. The roots of the concept of social istisal lie in the theory of “learned istisal,” first introduced by the American psychologist Martin Seligman in the 1960s. He showed that when individuals repeatedly face uncontrollable situations, they gradually come to believe they have no control over outcomes and give up trying. Later, sociologists extended this idea to the collective level and used it to explain feelings of powerlessness and istisal on a social scale.

Istisal is closely related to the idea of “social anomie” from Émile Durkheim, in which weakened norms and institutional distrust intensify feelings of powerlessness. Robert Merton also shows that the gap between social goals and the means to achieve them can lead to collective istisal. The consequences of this condition include reduced civic participation, increased social indifference, and erosion of social capital.

In recent years, numerous studies have addressed issues related to social istisal. Some research conducted since 2017 has reported findings such as alienation, despair, distrust, and feelings of istisal among social groups. For example, the study “Hope and Hopelessness in Iranian Society: A Case Study of Students at Tehran Universities,” published in 2023 in the journal Iranian Cultural Research, reported a lack of collective hope and a tendency toward migration. Another study titled “Structural Challenges and Social Anomie in Iran,” published on the ninth of Dey this year in ASA Degisi, using the concept of anomie, shows that the weakening of shared norms, structural inequalities, and the gap between social expectations and economic realities have led to increased public distrust and a sense of collective powerlessness in Iran; a situation that can reduce social participation and erode social cohesion.

The simultaneity of structural crises

Hossein Imani Jajarmi, a sociologist, in an interview with Payam-e Ma about the causes of the emergence and intensification of this current social istisal, considers the starting point of his analysis to be simultaneous attention to major economic, social, and political variables. He says: “Iranian society in recent years has faced the simultaneous occurrence of several structural crises: economic stagnation or very low growth, widespread unemployment—especially among the young and educated—chronic inflation, continuous decline in purchasing power, and the effects of sanctions. The combination of these conditions has made daily life difficult for a large portion of the population and has taken away the possibility of long-term planning from individuals, households, and institutions.”

He emphasizes: “When people cannot predict their economic future and do not see a clear prospect for improvement, the feeling of uncertainty gradually turns into a collective experience.”

According to this sociologist, the absence of a clear economic outlook is largely tied to ongoing international restrictions and the shadow of sanctions: “In such an environment, even domestic policies are less able to create hope for rapid improvement, and this contributes to the formation of a kind of general perception of ‘deadlock.’ This perception is not merely subjective, but rooted in people’s everyday lived experience.”

He goes on to point to the political dimension of this istisal and says: “Low participation in the presidential election two years ago and increasing dissatisfaction with the performance of executive institutions are signs of weakened social capital and public trust. When citizens feel that promises are not fulfilled and that there is no effective mechanism to influence major decisions, the gap between society and the power structure widens. This gap manifests itself in distrust, withdrawal from political participation, and a sense of individual ineffectiveness.”

Imani considers the generational gap to be one of the key factors intensifying this situation and explains: “The new generation has grown up with a different lived experience: broad access to social media and the free flow of information, smaller families, apartment living, and weakened traditional extended family ties have all created different expectations and values. This generation wants to be heard and to participate more in determining its own fate. Formal mechanisms have not yet fully adapted to these changes. The result of this mismatch is a sense of exclusion and deadlock among part of the youth.”

Consequences of living in a state of istisal

A faculty member at the University of Tehran, referring to the psychological and social consequences of living in a state of istisal and suspension, says: “A society cannot live for long with chronic anxiety and a sense of insecurity without this condition affecting individual and collective behavior. The increase in certain risky behaviors, the decline of social hope, and the erosion of trust-based relationships are among the likely consequences of such conditions. When this experience becomes shared among millions, it can no longer be explained merely through individual solutions or psychological counseling; it must be elevated to the level of the ‘collective spirit’ and social conscience.”

Referring to protest events in recent years, he describes the overall trend of developments as concerning and says: “Since the late 2000s, each wave of protest has been accompanied by higher levels of tension and violence. One of the main reasons for this trend is the weakness of formal channels for expressing demands and for effective dialogue between society and the government. Additionally, the limited circulation of political elites and the restricted participation of various social groups in decision-making processes have led parts of society to feel excluded from the sphere of politics.”

According to this sociologist, many current issues are tied to political decisions, while these decisions are often made without broad participation and public dialogue: “The way out of this cycle is a serious reconsideration of the concepts of participation, citizenship, and the distribution of power. The more people are involved in managing public affairs, the more rational, transparent, and aligned with public interests decisions will be, and consequently, social commitment to those decisions will increase.”

Regarding how to repair the gap between people and the state, he explains: “Criticism of current policies does not necessarily mean indifference toward the country’s fate. Many citizens may disagree with certain policies yet still feel a sense of belonging and responsibility toward their country. Even if political agreements or economic improvements occur in the future, repairing the trust gap requires a conscious and long-term plan.”

Strengthening civil institutions and expanding social dialogue

Imani recalls the experience of other countries in overcoming similar situations and says: “Societies that have faced deep political divides have usually managed to rebuild trust through strengthening civil institutions, expanding social dialogue, and using governance knowledge.”

In his view, governance is a specialized field that requires the use of scientific and expert capacities along with broad citizen participation, in such a way that no group feels excluded and everyone considers themselves part of the collective destiny.

Referring to studies on quality of life, he notes: “Iranian society, in periods when it has benefited from stronger expert management and more constructive interaction with the world, has shown progress in human development indicators. This experience shows that improving quality of life and increasing social satisfaction is possible, provided that policies are oriented toward public welfare, reducing inequalities, and making effective use of domestic and international capacities.”

This sociologist emphasizes: “There is no simple or immediate solution to the current situation. However, initiating a broad social dialogue can be an important step. Yet the polarization of society and the weakness of civil platforms have made this dialogue difficult and have pushed many into silence. Nevertheless, overcoming the sense of collective istisal will not be possible without strengthening civil institutions, expanding real citizen participation, and gradually rebuilding social trust. This is a time-consuming process, but only through it can the shadow of uncertainty be reduced and a more stable outlook for the future be created.”

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The text for today was sent to me by Dr. Roya Khoshnevis, a Tehran-based cultural analyst and researcher, specializing in Petroculture Studies with a focus on the Persian Gulf. In it she provides a rarely seen glimpse into the everyday experience of living within the Islamic Republic of Iran’s war propaganda machine.

Over the past decades, Iran has built a sophisticated propaganda system aimed both at its own citizens and the outside world. In the past month, even as people in Iran have struggled to find ways to move past the internet shutdown (mainly through costly and unstable proxy configurations), the Islamic Republic has been steadily putting out videos highlighting its war efforts. Most notably, a number of sleek AI generated videos that cast the US, Israel, and Iran as Lego figures have gone viral (see below for links.)

As Dr. Khoshnevis shows, the propaganda directed at the Iranian public is unfolding across domestic social media platforms (limited to users with an Iranian cell phone number), as well as on streets, billboards, and television screens. All of this is happening in the context of fractured public opinion about the war and deep social divisions. Her piece captures what it feels like to live in the middle of an information war, where truth is uncertain and the consequences are likely to extend far beyond the war itself.

This post is part of a collaborative effort to engage with perspectives and analyses from inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely. My deepest gratitude to Dr. Khoshnevis for sending me her insightful analysis and agreeing to its publication here.

“Sweet Lies and Bitter Truths”: Iran’s Propaganda War

by Roya Khoshnevis1

My friends and I often joke in our group chat on Iranian social media that some people seem to work for Iran International, others for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting [IRIB]; some for Mossad, and others for Iran’s intelligence agencies. Depending on which outlets people follow and share, they are quickly categorized and divided into opposing camps. Yet this division goes beyond difference of opinion. It has reached a point where people are dying for holding even slightly different views.

One month into the war, both sides present themselves as the victors of this brutal conflict. Each highlights its own offensive attacks, while emphasizing its defensive strength. As a result, we find ourselves trapped between “sweet lies and bitter truths” in an ongoing propaganda war.

The Iranian government calls this war the “Ramadan War.” In doing so, it has rapidly linked the conflict to Shiite belief systems particularly concepts that portray believers as soldiers of the Imamate [leadership of the community of believers after the death of the Prophet Mohammad]. This framing helps explain a notable shift in public presence over just two months: streets that were once filled with broadly pro-war participants are now increasingly occupied by explicitly pro-regime supporters.

The physical absence of Mojtaba [Khamenei], referred to as the third leader of the Islamic Republic, and his reliance on written statements without images or voice recordings,2 echo deeply rooted Shiite beliefs about the “Hidden Imam” [Imam zaman in Persian, the promised Messiah in Shi’a Islam]: an absent figure who will return at the appointed moment. Mojtaba’s anticipated reappearance, zuhur mikonad (“he will appear”), is frequently framed in messianic terms.

This cultivated absence has only deepened public confusion. His image appears across cities on billboards, portraying him as a composed, pious, and restrained leader who will emerge at the “right time.” In religious narratives, this moment coincides with a world overwhelmed by injustice, after which the [hidden] leader returns to restore order. Such a conception of time offers spiritual meaning to those who believe that resisting evil creates the conditions for the manifestation of a just leader and will bring about a form of justice long deferred in Shiism, primarily since the martyrdom of the third imam, Husayn ibn Ali in the battle of Karbala.3

With commercial advertising largely suspended during wartime, and amid attempts to shift symbolic leadership from Reza Pahlavi, who is called the “leader of television” to Mojtaba as the “leader of the people,” cities, roads, and alleyways are now filled with minimalist images of the younger leader. These images are accompanied by a single poetic line:

دست خدا عیان شد / خامنه‌ای جوان شد

The hand of God became visible / Khamenei became young

By emphasizing his age, a sense of renewed energy is injected into what we can call the new Iranian mode of resistance. The elimination of senior figures within the Islamic Republic has also coincided with the rise of a younger, more active, and technologically attuned cadre. At the same time, rumors about the death of this “young leader” and members of his family have circulated widely. Whether true or not, such narratives have significantly shaped public perception in recent weeks. As during the Iran–Iraq War, the current conflict is framed symbolically as resistance against illegitimate [literally “false”] global powers.

This propaganda war is also unfolding through new communication platforms. On domestic social media applications such as Bale4, numerous posts depict Iran as the clear victor while portraying the U.S. military as the loser. These platforms function similarly to Instagram, with channels and pages distributing curated narratives. In one such channel, “Akhbar-e Enfejari” (“Explosive News”), I encountered a short animated video titled Come Closer.5

In the animation, characters appear as Lego figures. Donald Trump is depicted as exhausted with a bandaged hand, uncertain of his next move in the Persian Gulf. Kharg Island is reimagined as a futuristic hub resembling a new UAE, complete with advanced infrastructure, modern oil facilities, and urban development. The animation portrays Iranian forces launching attacks from Kharg toward U.S.-aligned positions in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Missiles carry symbolic coffins labeled “For Loser.” The video concludes with a distant view of Kharg Island beneath the Iranian flag, accompanied by the phrase: “Come Closer.” [You can watch the video here.]

Beyond Iran’s domestic platforms, alternative media activity is heavily restricted, and its use often deemed illegal.

In recent news, Dr. [Javad] Ramazan-nejad, head of SATRA [Iranian Mass Media Regulatory Authority Organization responsible for issuing permits], addressed controversies surrounding domestic streaming productions, stating: “No consideration outweighs my professional judgment. Under wartime conditions, I will not allow content unrelated to the war to be released in the country under the guise of entertaining people or even in the name of unity or some such things.”6

In line with this emphasis on wartime production, Iran’s state broadcasting has begun developing a scripted television series titled Ahl-e Iran (“The Iranians”), focusing on ordinary citizens who are portrayed as devout Muslims and patriotic figures in the midst of the “Ramadan War.”7 Its symbolism recalls cultural productions of the 1980s, the first decade after the revolution and during the war with Iraq. The series prominently features the Iranian national flag, even suggesting that there’s now a scarcity due to high public demand, particularly for use in state-encouraged evening street gatherings aimed at reinforcing unity among pro-regime supporters.

Although the series has not yet aired, its trailer evokes aspects of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. As Negar Mottahedeh argues in the book Displaced Allegories, such works exist in a space between reality and fiction. For those living in Iran today—experiencing bombardment while witnessing nightly displays of what might be called “the other side” of Iran’s reality—this blurred boundary cannot be denied.

Long lines of cars move through city streets, many carrying the national flag and expressing support for Iran’s military actions against the United States and Israel. Yet, like many narratives produced both inside and outside the country, these representations often erase other segments of Iranian society. This is why many believe that even if the war comes to an end, the internal divisions among Iranians will persist for years to come.

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Ali Abdi is an Iranian anthropologist and political activist known for his involvement in student movements and his writings on social and political issues, including gender and minority rights. He gained prominence as a student activist during the 2009 Green Movement.

After leaving Iran, Abdi pursued doctoral studies in anthropology at Yale University in the United States, where his academic work focused on gender dynamics and marginalized communities. He returned to Iran in 2023, where he was later arrested and sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison “for articles he wrote a decade ago about gender and sexual minorities, 5 years for protesting the announced results of the 2009 election and 1 year for ‘propaganda against the regime’ during those years.”

The text is translated by Alireza Doostdar, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion at University of Chicago. It is produced as part of a collaborative effort to engage with perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

Beyond the Binary

by Ali Abdi, March 26, 2026

(1)

We are in the first days of Farvardin [third week of March and the start of the Iranian new year.] I have come to Tehran to buy a book. It feels apocalyptic: the streets are dark and lifeless; the sky is cloudy and smoke-filled; the pedestrians are in sorrow and disarray.

A few bookstores are open around Meydan-e Enqelab [in English commonly known as Enqelab Square though it’s a roundabout.] But even here, there is a sharp smell of sulfur. Someone gestures with his hand, pointing at a location he says they have bombarded in the south. A black plume of smoke rises to the sky seemingly from Shahr-e Rey.

On Keshavarz Boulevard, I see several men dressed in black and armed with Kalashnikovs. They have handcuffed a few people to the railings in front of a building. They shine flashlights into the detainees’ eyes and interrogate them.

The atmosphere is heavy and fearful. One of the men in black comes up behind me and tells me that I will be detained if I don’t walk faster.1

There is no sign of the usual bustle in Laleh Park. The food vendors along the boulevard are gone; the park market and kiosks are closed; and there are no signs of Tehran’s famous cats in the darkness.

In Meydan-e Vali Asr [in English commonly known as Vali Asr Square], about a thousand people have gathered with Iranian flags. A large television screen stands on one side of the roundabout, playing Mohsen Chavoshi’s “Hasbi Allah.”2 A eulogist chants praise for the courage of the first and third Imams of Shia Muslims and the resistance of Iranian fighters. The people chant along with him.

A man steps onto the platform and speaks of one of his friends who had been behind a missile launcher and lost both hands in the hospital. He speaks of another friend: “He was martyred last night. The martyr’s son was born just a few hours ago.”

Most of those present in Vali Asr are women. I see at least two women who are not wearing hijab.

For twenty-seven days now, Iran has been under bombardment by the wicked forces of the world. For more than forty years, Netanyahu had wanted to bomb Iran. The director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center [Joe Kent] wrote in his resignation letter last week that the Israeli lobby dragged Trump into this war.3

One hundred thousand residential and commercial units across Iran have been damaged to this day. Three hundred medical and emergency units have been destroyed or rendered inoperative. Five thousand compatriots have lost their lives. Millions in Iran (and Gaza and Lebanon) have been displaced from their homes. And the environmental, psychological, and economic damages of the war will only emerge later.

Netanyahu and Trump are embodiments of human wickedness in the contemporary world: racist, deceitful, greedy, child-killing, child-abusing. Their ultimate goal is to weaken Iran under the banner of “fighting the Islamic Republic.”

Israel opposed a strong Iran even before the 1979 Revolution. America’s inhuman sanctions have been imposed on the Iranian people for fifty years, regardless of which government has been in power. It was the U.S. government, not Iran, that tore up the nuclear deal in front of the cameras.

(2)

We are in the days before the war. In Isfahan, I speak with a friend I met through cycling in the city. He had been arrested on the 18th of Dey [January 8, 2026 referencing the bloody Iranian crackdown on protestors] and spent a month in Dastgerd Prison [i.e the Isfahan Central Prison].

He says two of his cellmates were brothers in their twenties. The younger brother had asthma. Their mother went to the judge several times, saying her son needed medication. The judge did not agree to the mother’s request for the medicine to be delivered. The younger brother grew weaker each day in prison, but the authorities paid no attention. Eventually, in the final week of his detention, he lost consciousness in the crowded and stressful environment of the prison. The authorities took him to the hospital. The next night, news came that he had died in the hospital. My friend spoke of the dust of mourning scattered through Dastgerd Prison after the news.

I go to a hospital in Isfahan for my father’s surgery. There, I meet another acquaintance who has come for his wife’s treatment. He tells me about his sister and brother-in-law who were crossing the street on the 19th of Dey [January 9, 2026] when the brother-in-law was shot and killed in front of his wife’s eyes.

The acquaintance says that for nine days, the authorities did not release the body to the family. They gave the family two options: either pay a significant sum to retrieve the body or sign a document stating that the deceased had been a supporter of the government and a martyr. In the end, the boy’s mother agreed to sign the document under psychological pressure. The acquaintance says that his sister still has difficulty speaking.

(3)

The media — from Iran International to state broadcasting — generally construct binary narratives; that is, they portray two groups of Iranians in opposition to one another so that a story of truth versus falsity takes shape and each side comes to see the other as an enemy: pro-/anti-government, pro-/anti-war, religious/non-religious, and so on.

These binaries, however, are simplifications of a complex social reality. Most of Iran’s population probably does not belong to either end of the spectrum.

A free-minded Iranian opposes oppression. It makes no difference whether the oppressor is foreign or domestic, whether oppression is carried out in the name of religion or in the name of human rights. A free-minded Iranian opposes discrimination. It makes no difference whether that discrimination comes from a racist European or from a prison guard, whether it is the result of colonialism or authoritarianism.

A mother whose son, a soldier, was killed behind a missile launcher and a mother whose son was killed on the 19th of Dey both experience similar suffering as human beings. A soldier who lost both hands behind an air defense system and a protesting farmer from Isfahan who lost his eyes to pellet shots are both deserving of empathy and care.

The families who spent [the Iranian] New Year’s [day] at martyrs’ cemeteries share common experiences with the families of those killed in the Ukrainian airplane tragedy.4 Kian Pirfalak5 and the girls of Minab6 are equally deserving of attention and mourning.

Our collective well-being depends on bringing these ordinary people closer together. The Iranian phoenix takes flight through their coming together.

This closeness is only possible if we become familiar with the lived experiences of others. Familiarity requires listening to the other. Listening is an act of selflessness. Selflessness does not arise from anger and resentment.

For Iranian society to pass through this crisis without falling victim to the violence of people against people, there is no path except connecting with those ordinary others—stepping out of our epistemic caves, leaving behind our self-made tribes, and walking toward those who possess a different worldview but share in our humanity, Iranianness (and Muslimness).

The truth is that the beginning of this path lies within us before it connects to anything outside of us.

(4)

These days, when Red Crescent rescue workers pull someone from beneath the rubble, they do not ask about their political or religious beliefs. Their service is inclusive, selfless, without discrimination, effective, directed toward preserving the lives of all Iranians.

These are some of the best practical examples we have for breaking down conventional binaries.

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Something in me broke and for the last 4 weeks, I’ve been trying to both understand it and put it back together. Here are some of its pieces.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how years ago, at an informal meeting of some students and scholars of the Middle East, a woman turned to me with real fear in her eyes and said: What do you have to say about the culture of death in Iran? I was taken aback: No one had asked me that question before and so I didn’t think I had much to say. “Which culture of death exactly do you mean?” I asked trying not to sound flippant. “You know,” she retorted, “the one they teach Iranian children in schools.”

That scene from long ago keeps turning in my head. For us to get here, to get to a war with no objectives, no purpose, no reason, and seemingly no end, a lot of things in both short and long term needed to happen. For years in meetings, briefings, in classrooms and conversations with various policy people and journalists, I thought I had done everything right: I had listened to them present a distorted view of Iran, I met them where they were, and I had engaged with their certitudes, as ridiculous as they were, all in an attempt to be heard, to get them to at least acknowledge that perhaps reality was a bit different than what they thought, and in doing so create a tiny tear in their own desire to rain death on Iran in the name of…whatever was de jour that day.

I had failed, now I see, so abjectly.

I had done this “engagement” with people who could barely acknowledge the humanity of so many Iranians at a cost to myself. The cost I now realize was to my own feelings, my own sense of belonging. I had macheted my own self in two: the clear-headed analyst and the person who yearned, yearned and desired to go back to…what? Home? Maybe not back but go to a place where belonging felt organic, felt rooted in the soil.

When you miss someone or something in Persian you say دلم برات پر پر می زنه, my heart flutters for you. I wish my heart would just beat. This fluttering is killing me.

In these past 4 weeks, journalists call and want you to provide local flavor: Tell me about how it felt to walk in Isfahan. Tell me about the last time you walked along the joobs of Tehran. I haven’t been back in 20 years, I tell them, trying hard not to roll my eyes. I’m not the right address for this.

The last time I walked in the city I was born in was 2006. The next year, I went to India for the summer. The year after Egypt. The year after Syria. I was a citizen of the world and Iran…well it was going to be there as it had been all my life. Then 2009 happened and as I followed it by going to internet cafes all over Damascus, glued to Twitter, I never once thought that this was it. That the door was forever shut in my face.

Why I never went back to Iran after that is a story for another time. But as the years rolled by, the realization set in that slowly but surely, I had slipped from being an immigrant to being in exile and I hated that. Growing up in Los Angeles where those who had fled the revolution in 1979 and after beat their chests for their “vatan” and froze emotionally and mentally in the moment that they had left Iran made me hypersensitive to that. After we immigrated to the US in late 1988, I kept going back to Iran. Every time I arrived, conversations and relationships would pick up seamlessly from where we had left them off 9 months ago. Immigration didn’t feel like a rupture. It felt like just an addition to who I was. Friendships kept going, even flirtations and love and lust would play themselves out while I was there, and then pick up where they had been left off the next time I went back.

I was living inside a changing country and I was changing with it. The Iranians in LA and elsewhere in the US whose image of Iran had frozen with their departure felt strange and wrong to me. I would never want to be that.

To not be that, to not let unrequited desire for return turn me into a caricature, I took a machete and cut myself in half. I could not, I would not feel. I would only think. I would only analyze. I would try to understand Iran as an object of my expertise as an historian. I would not feel.

To do that, I stopped looking at images of Tehran. I did not want to see the snow-capped mountain in the background of buildings and highways and overpasses. I did not want to see the sycamores of Vali Asr, the water running in the joobs, or young and old sitting in cafes. I read the newspapers, the magazines, the books, and I tried to understand the country’s political, social, economic, and cultural evolution as it was, not as I wanted it to be, and through it all, I tried not to see it. I didn’t want my heart to flutter.

Then on February 28, the bombs started falling and haven’t stopped since. And I just realize now that the thing that broke in me was, to mix all of my metaphors cause honestly, I’m too tired to not mix them, the slowly constructed wall between who I am and who I want to be. That wall came tumbling down.

I’m very surprised by all of this. I know, without a single doubt in my heart, that I’m not an Iranian nationalist. I do not believe in Iranian exceptionalism. When at times a sense of pride or just amazement creeps into me about the fact that so many Iranians over the past decades have kept coming into the streets demanding political, social, and economic freedom, I brush it off. I remind myself that so have others and I just might not know about it. When I feel crushed by the sight of bombs falling on city after city after city after city, when I am overwhelmed by anxiety when I hear the sound of explosions and then, as a child of war in the 1980s, feel the tremors of concrete falling in my body, I remind myself that even at that moment, people in other parts of the region are experiencing something akin to that. I’m not special. Nor are Iranians.

Yet. Yet why does this hurt so intimately? And why can’t I bottle up my heartbreak and throw it in the sea?

In the past 4 weeks strange things have happened. I find that all I want to do is speak Persian. Because of the fact that my family went back and forth between the US and Iran in the 70s, I have been bilingual since I was 4. I dream in fact only in English. But these days, I find myself searching for normal everyday words in English. My brain is flooded with the only language I knew for the first 4 years of my life. Sometimes when I’m sitting in class or at a dinner party, I become conscious of the strange music of English coming out of my mouth and into my ears. It’s not that it feels alien. It’s that it makes me miss Iran; it makes me want to cry. I have no other way of explaining it.

In finding and translating writers, thinkers, and journalists inside Iran, I have entered into strangely intimate relationships with people I have never met, and quite possibly never will meet. I contact them, formally introducing myself in Persian. They inevitably write back with “Naghmeh joon,” dear Naghmeh, as if we’ve been friends for decades, as if we have shared memories. They use their expensive and rare moments of connection to the internet to send short messages that end with “تصدقت” or “قربانت” or “دمت گرم” untranslatable expressions that literally mean “may I sacrifice myself to you” or “may your breath continue to be warm.” These translations feel so wrong. They’re feelings and emotions of sincerity, gratitude, and an intimacy born of intense crises. They’re commonly used public expressions that feel so private to me.

These past 4 weeks have been strange. They feel futile. They feel incomprehensible. They feel like they shouldn’t be. They feel endless. Every day, I tell myself, today no more tears. But every day I also tell myself you cannot let this feel normal. You cannot let it be ordinary. I’m so worried I will forget as the war drags on. I’m so worried I’ll go back to being two halves instead of this one heartbroken self.

***

p.s. Some days ago posted this poem. If you ever wondered what the point of poetry is, here you are: It says in few words fully what took me 1500 words to say incompletely.

Meditations in an Emergency
by Cameron Awkward-Rich

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

According to the independent news agency HRANA, by March 25, 2026, the Iranian civilian toll of this war has reached 1,464 people (including at least 217 children), military fatalities at 1,167 people with 669 fatalities unclassified (i.e. unclear if civilian or military.) They also report that “the Israeli Minister of Defense, regarding the country’s operations against Iran, stated that so far, more than 15,000 bombs have been dropped on Iran. This number is four times the amount used in the 12-day war.”

Meanwhile Iran is still in an internet shutdown, with those who want to connect having to jump through many hoops, and/or paying a high cost to break through the Islamic Republic of Iran’s communications shutdown using black market methods.

Yesterday, the economist Dr. Mohammad Maljoo was able to post multiple pieces on his telegram account, one of which used talk of ceasefire to “call for rethinking the concept of ‘resilience’,” a term often used by the Islamic Republic to celebrate Iran’s ability to withstand US and Israeli bombings and attacks. Maljoo’s rethinking expands the horizon past the short term and looks at the medium and longer term ways in which the war is undoubtedly going to reshape the structure of Iran’s fragile economy.

What follows is Dr Leila Faghfouri Azar’s translation of the text. Dr Faghfouri Azar is a Lecturer and Research Fellow in Legal Theory at the University of Amsterdam. The translation is produced as part of a collaborative effort to engage with perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

Today’s war, tomorrow’s inflation

If the ceasefire decision is left to the military alone, it will inevitably be based on a narrow, short-term view of reality. From a military perspective, only two main factors stand out: military resilience against attack and social resilience to war damages. What remains overshadowed are deeper economic and institutional dynamics, which not only shape the capacity to sustain war today but also the quality of peace in the postwar future.

The problem is not merely that war damages the economy. War reshapes the structure of the economy as well. Iran’s economy, which is already confronted by structural constraints, war intensifies a vicious cycle: reduced production, rising public spending, and a weakening capacity for social reproduction1. This cycle stems not just from physical destruction but also reflects disrupted expectations, chronic uncertainty, and accelerated capital flight.

In such a situation, the government’s budget becomes the main site of the emergence of crisis. On the one hand, war and support spending surge sharply. On the other hand, the pillars of government revenue, including taxes and exports, shrink and become more volatile. This gap pushes the government towards ever more costly forms of finance: borrowing from the central bank, squeezing the banking system, or using future resources in advance. The result is a far sharper rise in liquidity than before and, as a consequence, inflation at levels not seen in Iran’s modern history.

Yet inflation does not remain only an outcome of this process; it becomes a mechanism that reproduces this very crisis. High inflation in the years ahead will push the economy deeper into a self-reinforcing cycle of instability.

This setting calls for rethinking the concept of “resilience.” Resilience is not just the ability to endure pressure now. It also refers to a society’s capacity to absorb shocks and rebuild itself over the medium and long term horizons. A society that endures war in the short run but then faces destabilising inflation, collapsing purchasing power, and rising uncertainty cannot claim sustained resilience. It has only delayed the crisis.

This picture reveals a key analytical gap in military decision-making: a mismatch in time horizons. Battlefield success or failure is usually judged in the short term, whereas economic consequences, particularly inflation, emerge later and over the medium term. This may invite a strategic mistake: prolonging war on the basis of immediate signals while overlooking the main costs that still lie ahead.

Deciding on a ceasefire should therefore be seen as a question of “intertemporal optimisation:”2 a decision that requires balancing the costs of continuing the war against the economic and social costs that follow. This means that ending the war should not hinge solely on current military attrition. It must also weigh the risk that the economy may cross critical and irreversible thresholds after the war.

From this vantage point, a ceasefire does not remain a mere military move. It is a political and economic choice with profound distributional effects. It determines how, when, and on whose shoulders the costs of war will fall.

Therefore, involving economists, social policymakers, and representatives of diverse social groups in this process is not merely ornamental, but a necessary condition for making a decision that determines the timing of a ceasefire not only on the basis of military and social resilience, but also on society’s capabilities for viable postwar futures.

Her ability to push past her own particular predicament to feel grief for security forces that one could easily argue do not deserve her empathy is part of a small but very important strand of thought inside Iran. Many of the thinkers platformed on this substack in various ways have been pushing for spaces in which polar opposite ideas can face each other and be in dialogue. But Rahaa’s feelings of both hatred and care towards the enemy expands on simple dialogue towards something different. I’m still puzzling over it.

Below I’ve pasted a small part of it to give you a sense. To read the entire piece go to The Catastrophe That Has Befallen All of Us on .

Monday, 25 Esfand 1404 [March 16, 2026]

BBC Persian is broadcasting Trump speaking. He is talking about war with Iran. I really dislike him. I disliked him since his first presidency. He reminds me of [former Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. Vulgar and pretentious. I took a mild painkiller and muted the TV to write.

On Saturday I went to Ekbatan to pick up mom to take her to the doctor. An endocrinologist. The doctor’s office turned out to be in front of a Basij checkpoint. I wasn’t expecting that. I pulled over right behind the Basij vehicle at the checkpoint to let my mom out. As I pressed the brakes to stop, one of the boys, very young, with a pleasant face and stylish glasses, whose face looked more like that of an anti-Basij youth, and yet he wore Basij-military clothes and had a weapon, came forward and said hello, please don’t stop here. I said hello, I’m dropping my mom off and leaving, I’m not parking. With a smile and good manners he said it’s no problem for you to park here, but if they hit us your car might get damaged. . . .

Suddenly I was confused. I couldn’t believe what I heard. It was as if in a brief moment our relationship changed. I said God forbid. I don’t know if he understood that I meant, God forbid they hit you. He said let me help get your mother out. I said no, I’ll get her out. But he was already on the other side of the car, helping mom get out with great care and kindness. And I just kept thanking him. There was neither anger nor fear between us; there was empathy and respect and very polite social interaction, and of course my heart was breaking from sorrow.

To read more click here.

Nowrouz is a big deal. Growing up, there were a number of non-negotiables for it. You had to clean the house. You had to lay out the Haft Sin spread: 7 items that start with S (apples, vinegar, coins, garlic, sumac, hyacinths, sprouted lentils or mung beans) plus a mirror to reflect light. You had to wear new clothes head to toe, inside out. You had to be sitting with the family next to the Hast Sin spread. The idea being that whatever you were doing when the sun crossed the equator is what you’ll be doing the whole year: Clean underwear and family rank high here.

Then once the new year came (its arrival on the radio/television anticipated with the ticktock of a clock), you hugged, you kissed, and the elders gave the younger money. Often crisp new bills that you pulled out of a book of poetry or the Quran depending on your family’s inclinations. Then the fun would start: visiting family members who would give you more money, being visited by them; no school for two weeks, travel to other cities to visit more family (more money?), idle time.

The last time I spent Nowrouz in Iran with my family was in 1988. I just realized Tehran then was also under constant bombardment.

This year, between the bombs, drones, repression, the internet blackout, and the economic freefall, by all accounts this holiest of holy holidays is becoming harder and harder to celebrate. Pockets are empty, people are scared that any moment a missile will land on them. Their hearts are both in it and not. As the journalist Niloufar Hamedi wrote about Tehran in the days before this Nowrouz:

“[It] is still cold this year, and these days there has hardly been any sunlight over the city. At times it’s impossible to distinguish between the gray clouds and the smoke from explosions in Tehran’s sky. Despite all this, the people of this city have set their eyes on Nowruz and the coming year—a year they hope will bring them a new life, filled with blessing, joy, and peace. This is the embodiment of hope; one cannot fault those who take refuge in hope, even in the midst of war, chaos, explosions, and ashes.”

I’ll admit I’m one of the hopefuls. I’m a little thrown off by that, by the fact that I have taken refuge in hope and not my usual cynicism. The Iranian calendar of 1404 has given us so much for which to fall into despair: Two wars by US and Israel, protests and then a brutal massacre of the protestors, people’s purchasing powers for just basic goods falling and falling, drought, pollution, and now the toxic waste of war unleashed on an entire region. The fact that roughly a third of 1404 was spent under an internet blackout. And the regime’s survival and its repressive arm are not just intact but the war seems to have given it a new lease on life.

But I’m hopeful because I know without a shadow of doubt that Iran and the region as a whole is full of people who despite all of this have not stopped trying to find a way out of this quagmire, who have not fallen into this polarization—let’s call it “all who think like me are good and all who don’t are bad”—that is trying to pull us all down like quicksand, who continue to find ways to free themselves from the binary of bombs and labels. I keep reminding myself of the fact that hope can arrive when “people see the truth of power in blood spilled yet do not allow anger to turn them into a mirror of the very logic of repression.” I keep seeing these people all around.

This morning I woke up at 1:45 am and saw my phone had blown up with messages from friends and loved ones in Iran. It seemed like for a brief moment the lines had opened up and suddenly everyone was talking at the same time. Some of these messages were from people I have platformed on this substack. Some of them I’ve met once or twice, some I’ve seen in 2D only on video calls, some I’ve only known through their words and short text exchanges. Some I’ve known all my life. All of them spent a little of their precious internet freedom to send me a message letting me know they’re still there, still thinking, writing, hoping for a better future. Not feeling hopeful feels like ingratitude.

One of them wrote: “Dear Naghmeh…when you are sitting at the Haft Sin spread, which I hope you have laid out, wish for life and freedom for Iran, please. Happy new year.” That “please” keeps flipping in my head.

So here’s to life and freedom for Iran, and for all the region and its people who are being bombed, killed, shot at, occupied, imprisoned; to all who find a way to live in the midst of all of this; and specially to those who keep thinking and dreaming of how to make the lives of others and not just their own, a little bit brighter.

Happy new year to everyone. May the earth keep tilting as it orbits the sun and days become longer and longer than the night.

For today, I’ve translated an article published in Payam-e Ma newspaper about a week ago that focuses on the emotional toll of working in Iran’s oil fields, particularly during wars. Payam-e Ma describes itself as a national newspaper that focuses on environmental issues, cultural heritage, urban issues, and “subjects ignored by mainstream media.”

The article is part of a broader journalistic development in Iran, where politically sensitive issues are approached from a societal perspective. The focus here, and in many other such pieces, is the emotional toll of both oil work and war on the people engaged in it. The descriptive tone of the piece leaves it open for the reader to draw their own conclusions. But the journalistic choices here stand out, particularly the ways in which the article layers the three major wars Iran has fought in the past 47 years: the Iran-Iraq War, the June 12 war, and the current one.

I highly recommend reading this article in conjunction with Peyman Jafaari’s article, “Iran’s Petrochemical Industry: A Disaster Zone of Precarity and Pollution” (2019)1, which not only gives a historical sense of the development of this industry—particularly Assaluyeh—but also delves into the conditions in which many of the workers in Iran’s oil and gas industry live, including substandard pay and poor housing conditions. Reading his piece alongside the article below fills in many of the things left unsaid but hinted at in the Payam-e Ma article.

This translation is produced as part of a collaborative effort to engage with a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

Mission on the Narrow Line of Life by Shabnam Shakourian

March 13, 2026

In southern Iran, war is always accompanied by greater stress; here, attacks reach cities and facilities in which the heart of the country’s oil industry beats. A place where rigs, pipelines, and oil tanks are part of the everyday landscape of people’s lives, and this proximity makes the danger more tangible. Employees of the oil industry have for years experienced this narrow line between work and danger; from the days when bombs in the eight-year war shook heaven and earth, to today when with rising tensions, energy infrastructure is once again among the possible targets of war. In the meantime, the attack on Tehran’s oil depots has sounded the alarm once again. Nevertheless, there are those who, in these same conditions, work far from their families and in the heart of oil fields; with the awareness that one mistake, one moment of negligence, or one attack can be the last day of their lives.

Esfand 1404 [February/March 2026]; Kupal oil field

If you go 60 kilometers from [the city of] Ahvaz toward the northeast, the plains of Khuzestan gradually change color. The desert horizon gives way to an industrial landscape; rigs rising from the ground, pipelines stretching into the distance, and the constant sound of pumps and compressors breaking the silence of the plain. The Kupal oil field stands in the midst of this, spread like an industrial city in the heart of the plain; a city that knows no night or day and whose lights are never turned off. On days when once again the issue of attacks on energy infrastructure is raised in war analyses, the importance of such fields is more obvious than ever. Stopping production here is not only an industrial phenomenon; it is an event that can affect the energy market, the country’s economy, and the lives of millions of people. But within this complex network of equipment and machinery, another life also flows; the life of employees who remain far from their families for months and work in danger daily.

“Pouria Babadi,” a manager of one of the projects in the Kupal oil field, who works for a private company, says about the reality of work in the oil and gas industry: “Anyone who enters the oil industry very quickly understands what kind of world they are facing. Many of those who enter this industry after graduating from university do not get an accurate picture of the real dangers of this work during their studies. When new personnel come to the field, they realize that the environment in which they work is accompanied by danger every day. In the oil and gas industry, one mistake can be the last mistake; a mistake that may both destroy equipment and endanger human lives.”

This reality has made saying goodbye to one’s family take on a different meaning for many oil workers. Babadi says: “Almost all of us, when we leave home, have this feeling that it might be the last time we see our family.”

This feeling is, of course, not limited to industrial hazards. When war and crisis are also involved, the anxiety multiplies. According to Babadi, employees of oil projects usually live far from cities and their families, and gradually experience a kind of isolation. Their daily connection is more with their coworkers than with their family. In such conditions, people usually show two kinds of reactions; some become indifferent to the news and try not to follow it at all, but others constantly follow the news and share their stress with others. But even when the work shift ends and employees return to their abode, their minds do not separate from the field.

He says: “At night our minds are also occupied. When we sleep, we sleep with wondering what will happen tomorrow; whether we will be here or not. Then we think about our families who are kilometers away from us.”

In Babadi’s view, the hardest part of this life is not the danger of the work, but the distance from family. He recalls a memory: “In 2010 I was in Jask when they informed me that my father had died. It had been nearly two months since I had seen my father and the rest of my family. I felt horrible. For a long time, I blamed myself for not seeing my family. This was not just my experience; this has happened many times for my friends and colleagues as well.”2

Naturally, when news of war or attacks on cities arrives and employees are kilometers away from their families, this psychological pressure multiplies. He has a strange account of the beginning of the twelve-day war [the Israeli/US war with Iran in June 2025]: “At the time of the twelve-day war I was in the Cheshmeh Khosh oil field. At first I spoke with my wife and son and everything was fine, but three days later when the war intensified, the stress became much greater. Even though both my wife and I are from the south and have only vague memories of the eight-year war [with Iraq from 1980-1988] when even some of our relatives were killed or injured, we still were very worried. I told my wife to come with my son from Tehran toward the south. At that time, I was living in a camp and my idea was that if we were together, it would be better. I [met my family] at one in the morning in Arak. They had arrived earlier and were standing next to a shop. When I arrived and got out of the car and hugged my wife and son, I could not stop my tears from flowing. It was as if God had given my family back to me once again. It was a strange scene that will never be erased from my mind.”

Babadi says that these days, with the beginning of tensions again, his stress has increased: “This time too I had spoken with my wife that if war happened and conditions were difficult, she should come toward the south. For now they are in Tehran. The internet has been cut and conditions are very difficult; we cannot even see each other from afar. We only speak on the phone a few times a day. I miss them very much and I have severe stress. At night I look at their pictures, hoping for the day when we will see each other again. This is the nature of our work. My wife is from the south and many members of her family worked in the oil company, so she understands the conditions and knows what to do in such situations. So my mind is somewhat more at ease.”

However, when he speaks about his family, there is sadness in his voice. He says that a few days ago his son said a sentence in a phone call that is etched in his mind: “He said it has been 22 days since I have seen you. For me, hearing this sentence was very hard; I felt my son is counting the days. When I got married and had a child, many times I thought of leaving the job and returning to my family. But to tell the truth, the fact is that we have grown up in these oil fields and we do not know any other work.”

According to Babadi, many operational employees, after years of working in the field, can no longer tolerate desk life. The sound of compressors, the smell of gas, the movement of machinery, and the constant excitement of operations have become part of their lives; a life that flows far from cities, but in which the pulse of the country’s energy beats.

Despite this, in moments of crisis, it is these same employees who, alongside firefighters, maintenance crews, and operations teams, try to ensure that the work does not stop. Babadi says that throughout his years of work he has seen many friends who have died in various incidents or suffered serious injury; nevertheless many oil industry employees still believe that the work must continue.

According to him, in times of crisis, the work structure also changes. In such conditions, administrative staff are evacuated or work remotely, but operational employees must remain on site. Sometimes even those who are on leave are called back to join operational teams. He explains that even reducing production in an oil field is a complex process. For example, if it is decided that a field’s production much decrease from 100,000 barrels to half, a series of precise operations must be carried out at a specific time: “Sometimes it is necessary for a valve to be closed exactly at a specific hour. If it is done a few minutes late, the entire operation may face problems. Despite all these difficulties, oil industry employees have a kind of unwritten commitment to their work. There is a particular sense of pride among oil industry workers that when an incident occurs, everyone only thinks that the work must continue.”

Summer 1985; Izeh [a town in southern Iran between Ahvaz and Isfahan]3

Summers in Izeh are hot and heavy. A city located in the Zagros mountains and known by many for its ancient reliefs and old history. But for oil industry employees, Izeh recalls other days; days when the sound of bombs and mortars echoed in the south of the country and oil projects continued in the heart of the mountains.

“Majid Shakourian,” who during the war worked for a private company and was among the managers of oil projects in this region, recalls those days this way: “Recalling these memories is bittersweet. Bitter because during the war, and especially during the missile attacks on Tehran, I was not with my family to protect them. But on the other hand, it is sweet, because like the soldiers of the homeland who were fighting the enemy in that period, I and people like me were also striving on another front to preserve the interests of our dear country Iran.”

He says many projects at that time were carried out in mountainous and remote areas; places that did not even have access to roads: “We worked in areas in the southern mountains of the country where, due to the lack of proper roads, reaching them was very difficult. I will never forget that period. I still remember the amazement and anxiety in the eyes of children who for the first time were even seeing a car.”

But the bitterest part of those years for him was distance from family: “Something that always troubles me from that period is not being beside my family and not seeing the growth of my eldest daughter. That I deprived myself of that joy. After so many years I still have not been able to forgive myself.”

He recounts a memory of one of his work trips when he could not endure the distance and returned home: “I remember one year after the Nowruz holidays I had set out by car toward my mission location. After two hours of driving, I decided to return to Tehran. I returned just to be with my family for a few more hours. Those few hours were worth the return.”

According to Shakourian, in those years each mission could last three or four months and communication with family was very limited: “The only means of communication was the direct telephone lines of oil facilities to Tehran. With the permission of the unit manager, we could make one call a day. Hearing the voice of family, if they were available, reduced some of the psychological pressure of distance. But due to the continuous bombing of oil facilities, even this possibility did not always exist.”

He says lack of news from family on days when reports of missile attacks on Tehran were received created great psychological pressure: “In conditions where Tehran was under missile attack and we had no news of our families, the pressure and stress had multiplied.”

Nevertheless, he says many oil industry employees in those years, despite all concerns, remained at their mission locations: “The important point is that not everyone has the possibility of having a job where they can join their family at the end of the day. Of course, in times when the country’s conditions are not normal, distance from family becomes much more difficult. But what, in that period and even now, makes the pain of distance somewhat easier for those who by choice or necessity accept such working conditions is the feeling of creating better living conditions for their family and for all the people of the country, which can be a consolation for being away from family.”

Shakourian believes this situation still continues for many oil industry employees: “Even now, despite the sensitive conditions, many of our colleagues and fellow countrymen are still present at their mission locations far from their families, and with concern about the country’s conditions and the situation of their families, they are engaged in performing their duties. We must accept that the course of life does not always proceed according to our wishes.”

I’ve been thinking about it not just because if you pay attention, you realize it’s everywhere but because I’ve been trying to think and feel my way through what those who are alive will be confronted with during and after this war ends.

The post for today is long enough and impactful enough that it doesn’t need much framing from me. The first piece, “Homes without Windows,” was published in Shargh newspaper and is a field report from a neighborhood in Tehran in the aftermath of bombings last Monday.

The second piece, “I Want a Life as Vast as Iran,” is a translation of one of Nazanin Matinnia’s war time diary entries that she writes for Etemad newspaper (with her permission.) In my communications with her, Ms. Matinnia who is the editor of Etemad’s back page, explained that for now, the newspaper has been reduced from 8 pages to 4, and these notes find their place somewhere in the abbreviated newspaper. When she can connect, she posts them on her instagram and telegram channels.

These translations are produced as part of a collaborative effort to engage with a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

“Homes without Windows” by Nastaran Farokhe published in Shargh Newspaper on March 14, 2026

The blast wave has destroyed the walls of homes, scattering people’s belongings across the ground: from the red carpet of one house, whose burnt fragments now hang from a tree, to the green kitchen curtain lying abandoned in the middle of the alley. This is the scene after the Monday evening bombing in the Majidiyeh neighborhood. Signs of war can be seen throughout the capital’s neighborhood; ruins whose fate, how long they will remain this way, is unknown. Houses that were once people’s refuge have been destroyed by explosions, like the blast on Monday evening in Akbari Alley in Majidiyeh [neighborhood.]

An elderly Armenian man walks from one end of the alley to the other. His hands are tucked into the wide pockets of a wool coat, and he murmurs something to himself. Pointing to the balcony of one house whose wall has collapsed, he says:
“My longtime friend and his wife lived in that house. They were sitting at the table eating when they heard a terrible sound, and then pieces of the wall were thrown into the house. It was a difficult night. They had to leave their home. Just look at what has happened to their only possession.”

Each Window, a Story

The attack struck four floors of a seven-story building, which caused damage to houses in this alley and even those in the back alleys. Most houses no longer have windows. In the middle of the alley, several men can be seen gathering debris from the destroyed wall of a room. From another shattered window, a young woman hurriedly stuffs clothes into a large bag. Curtains from several windows hang outside in disarray, showing that the residents left their homes after the explosion. Other windows have been covered with blankets or thick cloth.

The walls of homes behind the attacked building have also been completely destroyed. A dining table, pink kitchen tiles, and an apron hanging on the wall are now covered in ash. The blast wave hurled belongings from several homes into the street: a set of blinds, kitchen dishes, and a deep red carpet whose burnt fragments can be seen hanging from a tall tree on the sidewalk.

The iron doors of most houses stand half open, revealing some of the damage inside. One building—of which little remains except a few columns and a concrete wall—was the Armenian Scientific-Cultural Institute. What remains is a dusty lot with a small room whose side walls have collapsed. Only a blue wall remains, with a painting still visible on it. Elderly Armenian men stand at the entrance, looking sadly at the ruined walls. One of them, with whiter hair, says:
“We had a place of our own here, and now this too has been destroyed. What is left of this institute for our community? The roof has completely collapsed, and no walls remain. They say the items inside are gone too. It was a valuable place that has been lost.”

Among the crowd gathered outside the houses, a woman enters the alley. Her home, like the others, has been damaged. Laughing, she says:
“My right ear still can’t hear.”

The blast wave took her hearing. Holding a worn out bag, she walks quickly:
“I came to grab some essential things and leave. I just entered the alley with fear. I’m afraid it might be attacked again. I was alone at home when the explosion happened. I don’t remember what happened afterward. The neighbors say I was screaming so much that they gave me a handful of sedatives. I probably had a nervous breakdown.”

Several Armenian men who live in the same alley explain:
“Most people close to the blast suffered panic attacks. Everyone was in bad shape. At first, we didn’t know how much damage had been done. After a while, we saw that the courtyards of all the homes facing south had been destroyed.”

They open the doors of several houses. Inside, the yards are filled with stones, dirt, broken stairs, and shattered walls. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl passing through the alley stop for a few seconds:
“Our house is two alleys up. Thank God I had just stepped inside from the balcony. The blast wave shattered the stone façade and threw pieces both inside and outside the house.”

Most residents of this alley have been forced to abandon their homes; dust-covered houses with broken doors and windows where no sign of life remains. People return to the alley to see the destruction: the black and gray skeletons of buildings and residents in dusty clothes gathering what remains of their homes.

This story mirrors what has happened in other neighborhoods of Tehran where a single explosion has destroyed people’s entire lives. Because this is the story of war: destruction after destruction.

I Want a Life as Vast as Iran by Nazanin Matinnia

I was saying, “I wish I were in a swimming pool right now,” when the child suddenly said, “I wish I lived in the past.” Surprised, I asked, “Which past?” He said, “A very long time ago when we didn’t exist.” Then he started talking about distant times he had seen in photos, and because he doesn’t like the “now,” he wishes for that instead.

I’ll be honest: things aren’t good. The pressure of anxiety and stress these days has torn apart the psychological resilience of adults, and what reaches children after the frightening sounds and the shaking of the walls is the sight of fear, anxiety, and insecurity in people’s words and eyes. No one can really do anything. In this “now,” the best and most logical decision is simply to stay alive and pass the time. Beyond that, we have control over nothing. No one hears the voice of us scared people, and it’s not even clear what exactly is happening.

On state television and domestic news agencies, everything is safe and secure. On Iran International, the war is called “Operation Liberation.” It’s not clear who is paying the price for all of this. The voice of ordinary people is cut off.

The governor of Tehran says everything is available and there’s no need to have irregular transactions. But he doesn’t say what the sections of society who were already crushed by inflation before the war should do when bread exists but they cannot afford to buy it. Businesses are closed or suspended. Nothing is coming in for it to go out.

Unlike the 12-day war when Tehran was almost emptied out, today the cost of leaving is so high that many people have chosen to stay and continue living under the sound of explosions in the hopes that perhaps some opening will appear, a small window toward life.

I miss those windows toward life.

I miss the peace of mind of drinking a cup of coffee in the cafés of this city, sleeping without the stress of the news, even taking a simple shower without fearing that an explosion might happen and I wouldn’t hear it or know what has happened because of the sound of running water.

The struggle for survival is killing people. Even when the sounds stop, the invasion of thoughts and worries begins. There’s no peace, not even in sleep. Even embraces feel anxious, and conversations are full of things you would never imagine. For example, did you know glass is impossible to find? A friend whose windows were shattered in one of the strikes has been living for three days in a house without windows. But they have to stay there because the house is now exposed and must be guarded.

Or take those with serious illnesses who need specialized medicines. They fearfully move through the city in search of them because most specialized pharmacies are located in neighborhoods that were the hardest hit by attacks. And even if they are lucky enough to find a chemotherapy drug, they don’t know what fate awaits them before the day of injection.

I’m not making this up. I know someone who is sick, the sister of my friend is undergoing chemotherapy. Just yesterday they couldn’t find her medicine, and by the time they did, a blast wave had already destroyed one wall of their house and shattered the windows.

That’s just how it is.

When you talk to people, you can’t understand what it is that war gives to those that beat its drum. What we are experiencing shouldn’t be even a curse on an enemy, let alone a wish for fellow citizens with whom you share a sorrow. Yet it seems that except for us frightened people inside the country, i.e. those of us who hear these stories and are living in this exact “now,” there’s not much understanding or empathy. Even talking about freedom and peace now sounds sentimental and unrealistic. If you do, people from one side or another attack you, calling you an agent of this enemy or that enemy. The middle ground has disappeared. Life under a calm sky and on solid ground has become a distant dream. Silence and withdrawing into oneself require immense patience and endurance, yet they seem to be the only option.

Days keep passing like this. Everyday life has become long anxious hours with no ability to predict the next moment. No one knows where they’ll be tomorrow or what will happen. Spring, the dream that used to connect winter to the future, has become the most distant season of life. When you reach out to grasp it, you get nothing except smoke, ashes, and the ruins of war.

The thread of our hope is worn thin. All that remains is staying alive in the present moment. But if even that is cut, even if after the hard days of this difficult year, that mysterious desire to live disappears, what then? If we reach a point where we no longer even want to stay alive, will anyone see us, take our hands, wipe our tears, and gently push this heart, torn as it is by grief and fear, back toward life, toward the desire to survive, to remain, to be?

I was forcing myself to slow down, when the phone rang. It was her. I hadn’t heard from her since the start of the war when the Islamic Republic shut down the internet and our ability to call people inside Iran. I got so excited that I had a hard time answering the phone. Butter fingers and all.

“Hi,” she said. I burst into tears. I had thought she would cry too, considering she, not I, was under the barrage of Israeli and American bombs while also dealing with government checkpoints and an internet blackout. But she laughed instead. “Stop crying!” she said.

I took a breath and started bawling again.

“Stop it!” she said, laughing. “Don’t cry!”

“Why the hell are you telling me to stop crying? It’s none of your business,” I said, this time cry-laughing.

“It’s an expensive call, you little donkey and you’re wasting my minutes,” she said jokingly.

True, I was. Wasting minutes and time. I stopped. We talked for a while.

“How did we get here so quickly that everything is just so dark and sad?” another friend in the US messaged me this morning. His question, rhetorical to some extent, became our occasion to talk about how the internet blackout and the difficulty of knowing if our loved ones in Iran are okay after each round of bombing has knocked the humor out of us.

He made me think about how, perhaps ironically, the lived experience of war is both sadder and scarier, but also more humorous and more alive than what we imagine it to be. You have to be in it to experience it fully.

It made me think of jokes I know, and I realized almost all the jokes I can remember are from the time we lived in Iran during the war in the 1980s. Somehow, I have not retained a single joke from after that.

It also made me remember the time my family went to the Caspian shore in the 1980s during the war of cities, when Iran and Iraq were throwing bombs and missiles at each other’s cities. Back then, apparently, the UN Security Council thought that was unacceptable. Times have changed. But I digress. What I remember most from that trip is not war trauma or tears, nor dramatically falling to my knees to thank the Lord for safety (I had dabbled in religiosity a few years before, then abandoned god when it was clear the war would not end.) What I remember is how the cute boy whose family also had taken shelter at our mutual friend’s house, was flirting with me. I remember how fun it was to leave the parents behind and how fun it was for all of us kids, cute boy included, to run to shore in the dark and play as the sea danced back and forth.

***
Below is a translation of 20 posts from the Sharif University Twitter Telegram channel. The best way to describe this space is that it’s like an anonymous message board where people send short, pithy thoughts, jokes, grievances, and commentaries. In other times, the channel is brimming with humor. It’s a communal space for wit. This all changed after Bloody Dey in January, when, after three weeks of silence, the short messages became mostly expressions of grief and despair. After a while, though, some humor slowly returned, as people began to take stock of life after the state’s brutality. With the start of the war, messages came in drips. On days when it’s impossible to connect, there’s silence. On others, those who get through leave little bits of themselves for us to see.

I went through the posts between February 27, the day before the war started, and today, and picked some that spoke to me, either because they were funny or poignant. While it’s impossible to know the sender’s exact location, I focused on posts that strongly suggested the user was living in Iran (except in one case where they reported something about their mother.) The posters use pseudonyms.

I have to take a break from here for 3–4 days to catch up with other parts of life. So I wanted to leave you with something more than just sadness or darkness.I hope that, in reading them you laugh or chuckle at times, smile at others, tear up, think, and simply appreciate humans in their incredible grit and diversity under unimaginable pressure.

February 27

https://t.me/sut_tw/131548

I’m like a comma: wanting an ending, but condemned to continue.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131562:

I told my sister not to let those two people come to my grave. She said we can’t hire a 24-hour guard for your grave. The effect of crisis conditions on the morals of family members:

February 28

https://t.me/sut_tw/131589

The only preparation I have for war is that I take a shower every night, so if war starts I’ll get dirty later.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131594

If something happens and I don’t make it out of the war alive, I was just a victim—not a martyr of the war against global arrogance and Zionism, not someone who sacrificed their life for the homeland. I didn’t become a gift to the homeland or anything else. I was just a victim—a victim.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131601

Those of you who live alone, I suggest you don’t sleep naked this week.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131606

I have to keep telling ChatGPT that I live in Iran, otherwise it suggests European-style solutions.

No posts until March 7

https://t.me/sut_tw/131614

“Our upstairs neighbor is replacing his kitchen cabinets in the middle of a war. Every time he turns on the saw, we jump out of our skin and take cover. :))”

https://t.me/sut_tw/131618

We can’t even take a proper shower anymore. I’m always worried there’ll be an attack and I’ll end up dying with my ass naked.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131619

My sister called and said Mom took her expensive crystal dishes out of the display cabinet, wrapped them up carefully, and packed them in a box so they don’t get damaged. But she still goes out onto the balcony to watch the bombing.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131625

Whatever I do, I keep thinking that maybe this is the last time I’m doing it…
Whoever I talk to, I think maybe this is the last thing they’ll hear from me…
I taped up the plastic bag of baking soda and thought maybe I’ll never open it again — so why am I even taping it?

https://t.me/sut_tw/131626

Before I lose connection, I want to say that I kiss the hands of all the motorcycle couriers in this city who, in these conditions, are delivering people’s purchases, taking care of their needs, and moving around despite all these bombs and missiles. I hope not even a drop of blood comes from their noses.

March 8

https://t.me/sut_tw/131633

“The fighter jets are flying so low that my mom told me to tidy up my room cause the pilot will see it and it’ll be rude.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131635

I made an interesting discovery yesterday. Kids born in the current war were actually conceived during the previous war.

March 10

https://t.me/sut_tw/131660

“Living in Tehran really sharpens your hearing. You can accurately distinguish between different frequencies of sounds from missile explosions, bombs, the upstairs neighbor, delivery motorbikes, regular motorbikes, and air defense systems.”

https://t.me/sut_tw/131663

Day 9 or 10 of the war.
Every year during this month [Esfand], this corner of my room has light that is faint and cool. A blossom has opened by the window. I haven’t bought any fresh flowers yet. The sounds of nightingales and fighter jets mingle together. [The photo was included in the post.]

https://t.me/sut_tw/131665

Today, on the tenth day of the war, my mom pulled me aside and said: if this war continues for another week and your dad has to stay home like this, start thinking about a place for me, because our divorce is certain.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131685

The sound of a fighter jet flying low,
occasional explosions,
and the distant sound of mourning.

This is our situation in the first minutes of March 9, 2026, in central Tehran.

March 11

https://t.me/sut_tw/131705

A large percentage of people in Iran haven’t had any income for three months. Businesses are closed. Cultural and educational activities have been completely suspended for three months. People are mourning for Dey [the victims of the protests], and today they are under nonstop bombing. The internet is practically cut off.

https://t.me/sut_tw/131722

All of Tehran is filled with the sound of electric shavers.

March 12

https://t.me/sut_tw/131723

Write a good tweet. You know it’s expensive to connect to the internet .

This demand for ordinary life has become an important part of Iranian discourse, particularly since the Women Life Freedom movement in 2022. The ordinary here means many things and is used in many ways. On the most surface level, it’s been interpreted as a demand for personal freedoms. But beyond the surface, the idea has become almost synonymous with a political demand to not always be political actors. Depending on your perspective, this can be interpreted as either a reactionary/conservative position or a revolutionary/progressive one.

Unsurprisingly, what “ordinary life” means takes on a different urgency in war conditions. Since February 28 when US and Israeli strikes on Iran began, one of the most notable set of images coming out of Tehran has been of people photographing street sweepers who have continued carrying out their job, the sound of their brooms mixing in with that of fighter jets and bombs.

On March 10, 2026, Maryam Nasr Esfahani posted the essay below on her telegram and Instagram pages. She is a feminist philosopher and ethicist and a member of the faculty at the Research Center for Human Sciences and Cultural Studies. She posted this rumination on “ordinary life” a day after Israeli strikes on the city of Esfahan led to extensive damage to several iconic 17th century buildings, causing “the turquoise tiles of the iconic Jameh Mosque” to come crashing to the ground1 and in the aftermath of strikes on oil depositories in Tehran that led to rivers of fire, unbreathable air, and warnings of acid rain over Tehran.

Below is a translation of Maryam Nasr Esfahani’s essay, with her permission, by Alireza Doostdar, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion at University of Chicago. It is produced as part of a collaborative effort to engage with a wide spectrum of perspectives and analyses published inside Iran. I invite you to read them, incorporate them into your understanding of Iranian politics, and help distribute them widely.

“The more we care about something, the more conscientious we must be.”

Linda Zagzebski, On Epistemology2

I don’t remember when or where I read this, but someone had written that the expression “ordinary life”—which since 2022 [in the wake of the Woman, Life, Freedom protests] has become common among our young people—is itself one of those “neo-colonial” concepts that the social media of capitalist cyberspace have manufactured to create painful yearning among the nations on the other side of the world and thereby plunder them.

At first glance, to say that “ordinary life” is merely a neo-colonial capitalist media construct seems appealing, because it conveniently reduces yearning to an ideological and economic instrument. But for people like us, who are familiar with the “silencing” function of such labeling, this kind of analysis is in fact a way of denying basic and legitimate human needs.

“Ordinary life” means having security and refuge and shelter; giving and receiving dignity, love, and care; having freedom and the possibility of pursuing one’s dreams; being paid for one’s labor and reaching something after all that running. These are the fundamental elements of human dignity, valid in any geography. They are neither luxuries nor imports. What is truly neo-colonial is withholding these things from people.

Tonight is the tenth night of the second war of this year [according to the Iranian calendar]. Enemy fighter jets are plowing over the city, and I still think there is no virtue in war and death. But is it even possible to think about life and death, and the virtues of each, independently of geographic determinism? How could a life that is threatened at every moment and from every direction be called “ordinary”?

Ordinary for whom? Ordinary where? If we look around us, which people in our neighboring countries actually have an “ordinary life?” What things, which people, have taken this ordinary life hostage? How much must we pay for this “ordinary life”? What must we give? What must we receive? Is the desire for life unconditional?

Yesterday I was watching birds from the window as they drank from the black water that had collected from acidic rain produced by the smoke of burning oil depots. There were crows and pigeons and collared doves, and also a little gray wagtail. I wondered how its delicate, slender body had endured amid these sounds, this suffocating air, that black water.

As these days pass, it seems to me more than ever that life—at least in this geography—means remaining alive in the neighborhood of death, building while knowing that destruction awaits, striving not for success but with the knowledge of defeat. We are here to build and to watch as those who come to plunder us kill, strike, and wreak havoc.

They split open the tiles and designs entrusted to us from our ancestors, and still some people say childishly, “Don’t worry, we’ll build something better.” What do you know of building? How much have you built? Will you build something better than Naqsh-e Jahan? Up to today, how much of what they destroyed have they rebuilt? How many thousands of times have they taken life, and how many “ordinary lives” have they left behind?

Here, ordinary life is a Sisyphean struggle. Ordinary life is not simple; it is complex. It breathes in the air of death. “Ordinary” is a multivariable equation that asks you to remain and go on actively while knowing all of this. Striving for life in the proximity of death is an ethical and epistemic struggle—one that, precisely because it is important, must be thought about conscientiously, and the beliefs around it shaped in such a way that it does not forego the right to a dignified life for the people of this land, nor soothe despair with the balm of “heroic fervor” or “credulity.”

The sounds have subsided… The city’s convulsions have quieted.

While this substack is not about breaking news, I had noticed something different when in my personal groups the few people who had managed to connect said that the attacks that started about midnight felt unrelenting and different. One person speculated that it felt like it had on what turned out to be the last day of the 12 day war in June 2025 when Tehran was subject massive bombings right before the ceasefire went into effect.

Vahid Online1, a widely followed social-media account that receives, collects, and rapidly shares eyewitness videos, reports, and news, particularly about protests, security incidents, and politics in Iran, had posted a collected of eyewitness reports sent to them a little before midnight as people in the northwest town of Soltaniyeh began to see fighter jets moving towards Tehran. While each eyewitness report is not verifiable, they seem to match the videos and the messages I received.

Below is a quick translation of the Vahid Online post. Starting with 00:10 line, the reports are about Tehran and nearby Karaj.

As you will read below, eyewitnesses reported some of the explosions were blue/green, something they say they not seen before. Using ChatGPT, I created a map of the parts of Tehran mentioned in these eyewitness reports to give a sense of how widespread and intense they are.2 At the end, I’ve included one of the videos showing the blue explosions.

From Vahid Online, posted 4:47 pm

23:53 — A lot of fighter jets passed over the city of Soltaniyeh (Zanjan) heading toward Tehran, I think.

Right now many fighter jets are flying over the sky of Isfahan.
11:55 PM, Monday, 18 Esfand.
An explosion is expected…

00:05 AM — Qazvin
A terrifying sound of missiles in the sky, a lot of them.
They are heading toward Tehran.

00:10 — Attacks on Tehran have started.

00:12 — In Shahrak-e Vali-Asr, the sound of four bombs just now.

Right now from where we are in Mirdamad we heard a very loud sound.
It might have been toward Mosalla.
The sound of fighter jets is still ongoing.

Vahid is hitting the west repeatedly.
I’m in Kashani Street.
The house is shaking.

00:15 AM
Tuesday, 19 Esfand
They are hitting Tehran simultaneously.
Shahriar, Pakdasht, and northwest Tehran are being struck at the same time.
Fighter jets are flying at low altitude.

Vahid hit the east again five or six times near Narmak and Majidiyeh.

They struck the Imam Hossein University area in northeast Tehran five times between 00:10 and 00:16.
Everything shook and the sky lit up.

South Janat Abad — all the windows are shaking.

What are they even hitting? Fighter jet sounds have been going on for about 15 minutes.
Tehran, Mirdamad, Tuesday 00:10.

We are near Sattarkhan.
We heard several strong explosions.
00:15.

Right now again the sound of low-flying aircraft and consecutive explosions in Tehran and Karaj.
00:15.

Karaj — an impact just now.
Area: Golshahr – Sepah – Jomhouri.
It was very strange: fighter jets filling the sky, then a lightning-like flash and a green light appeared in the sky, and a few seconds later an explosion.
I had never seen something like that before.

Strong explosions in Karaj near Mohammadshahr.
19 Esfand at 00:05 and 00:11.
Our power went out.

From midnight on 19 Esfand, fighter jets were heard over Ekbatan Town and several consecutive explosions were heard at Mehrabad Airport.

Karaj, Gohardasht —
Usually the sounds come from far away, but tonight it’s really bad.

South Tehran — more than 20 explosion sounds.
For 5–6 seconds the sky turned red.
I don’t know what they hit.

We heard three very strong explosions 5 minutes ago.
We are in Baqershahr — it was very intense.

A few minutes ago near our house in Qeytarieh the ground shook twice.
Around 00:15 AM Tuesday, 19 Esfand.
You could hear aircraft too.

Karaj — four bomb sounds.
Fighter jets were flying very low and you could clearly hear them.

In Mirdamad the windows shook — two very strong explosions.

Near Jordan Street many terrifying sounds along with fighter jets.

00:10 — strong explosion in Banafsha Town, Karaj.
Our power is out and the sound of fighter jets continues.

From 00:07 today, 19 Esfand, the sound of fighter jets has been constant and several places have been bombed.
I’m below Takht-e Tavous Street and every time they hit there was a huge flash from east and west.
Very unusual compared to previous days.

Around Seyed Khandan we heard four explosions and fighter jets flying.

It feels like the last night of the war — they’re firing in bursts.
Sepah Square.

Hello — from South Qeytarieh and Dowlat Street we heard a nearby explosion but I don’t know the exact location.

Around 00:10
Low-altitude fighter jet over Baghestan, Karaj.
Several explosions with bright light toward the southeast — possibly near the oil depot or that direction.
Red and green lights!
First time I had seen green light.
Several explosions 20–30 seconds apart.
About 10 minutes of continuous fighter jet noise.

Vahid — it seems they hit Nazarabad in Alborz again.
Not sure exactly where.

Mehrshahr, Eram Boulevard and municipality area —
10 minutes ago the house shook completely.

00:15 — I think they hit Ajodanieh.
The sound was terrifying and woke us up.
The sound of passing fighter jets was clearly audible.

Mehrshahr, Karaj —
On the four-lane road number 10 they hit very hard.
I heard the sound of a missile.
It was very close.
I don’t know what they hit.

30-Meter-Ji Street near the airport — several terrifying sounds.

People saying they saw green light — we also saw it in Niavaran but less intense.
First the sky lit up slightly and then the explosion sound came.

Very heavy attack… many fighter jets in the west.
I saw three points, all around Mehrabad and Azadi.
The fighter jet noise was the most intense since the first day.
It seemed like they were flying very low.

Vahid — it seems they hit the airport again because it had the same strange light as the last time.

At least 4–5 strong explosions around Ekbatan.

Mehrshahr, Municipality Boulevard — 00:10
Very strong and very close explosion.
The house shook heavily.
The first explosion was extremely strong; the next two were farther but still shook the windows.

I’m near Shahid Araghi Street.
They keep hitting continuously.
The whole house is shaking.

00:30 — again the sound of aircraft.
A strong explosion near Seyed Khandan.

Mehrshahr, Municipality Boulevard — 00:10
Very strong and very close explosion.
The house shook heavily.
The first explosion was extremely strong; the next two were farther away but still shook the windows.