The Umbrella of War
A 4am alert buzzed me awake last Thursday morning, with a notification that Iran had downed a U.S. military drone after it supposedly entered Iranian territory. I knew the day would be a flurry of press releases, pleas from elected officials to exercise restraint, and endless Twitter monitoring.
As my family in Iran anxiously awaits the response from the U.S.’, John Bolton has gathered national security officials to discuss potential retaliatory measures. Given Bolton’s thirst for war, the Iranians knew a proposal advocating military escalation could very well clear the table of any reasoned suggestions that could effectively halt this Trump manufactured crisis.
We saw last week that a military strike is very much an option. And up until late Thursday night, Washington DC was buzzing with reports that the U.S. was preparing for an attack on Iran — an attack that Trump called off ten minutes before the scheduled strike.
Underneath the news, reports, and allegations, however, I continue to hear one resounding echo from my family both in Iran and here: we can’t do this again.
War is trauma — and neither the country I call home, nor my country of birth can withstand another war. To this day, the men of my family who were forced to fight in the Iran-Iraq war viscerally react to any noise resembling the sound of a U.S. provided Iraqi missile looking for its target. They can’t do it again.
Not long after my phone was hit with news of the downed drone, my Iranian friends and family flooded my cell with a storm of texts, phone calls, and even Instagram DMs eager to share their thoughts. I took time to return their calls and messages, curious as how they were feeling.
The conversations were as varied as the individuals I spoke to, but a theme emerged: the U.S. had already worn down the psyche of ordinary Iranians by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and imposing unfathomable sanctions that has nearly decimated the country’s middle class. And the threat of war was destroying civil society, unifying regime opponents out of necessity under the hardliner flag, and risked traumatizing an entirely new generation of Iranians. They made clear their aversion to war (and quite poetically as Iranians are wont to do).
This is what they had to say.*
On the long shadow of war
Majid, 27, and a PhD student in computer science said: “The memory of the Iran-Iraq war already left my parents’ generation traumatized. And when the U.S. attacked Iraq in 2003, the fear re-emerged for my parents, and I found that this fear became planted in my generation as well. That night, many of us — particularly those of us who live on border towns decimated by the Iran-Iraq war, couldn’t sleep. A U.S. war with Iran would ensure that this fear is forever ingrained in Iranian society. It’s the type of fear that stays in your bones.”
Farnaz, a 60 year old homemaker living on the Iran-Iraq border shared: “Iranians have already suffered through war. We lost our livelihoods, our homes. We had to pick up and move, and start all over. All we knew for eight years was chaos — and even then we blamed the U.S. for its start. The Iranian government came out of that war stronger, while we lost everything. We’re scared that a U.S. war on Iran will turn our country into Iraq or Afghanistan.”
On the impacts of Trump’s max pressure campaign on the everyday Iranian
Kayvan, a 32 year-old who lives with his parents in northern Iran said: “Already sanctions have made it so that we’re all anxious all the time. We’re jobless, we can’t have families, and we’re living with our parents. At least sometimes we can forget our anxiety and fear about our economic situation by going out with our friends. We have music, we have dancing — but a war would mean we couldn’t even have that. If they take that from us we won’t have anything left. We would lose the last of our quality of life.”
Farnak, a 58 year old accountant, said: “These sanctions don’t affect the government. But it affects us. We’re exhausted, battered, and every day feels like a battle of survival. We don’t have the energy for war. We can’t even begin to process the idea of it. Nobody wants to lose our sons, or fathers, or husbands. None of this generation wants to go to war. If war erupts, I know a lot of people will go into hiding or flee the country. They don’t want to be conscripted, and they don’t want to die needlessly. And the human rights situation can only get worse if we go to war. It’s no secret that Khomeini wanted the Iran-Iraq war. Why? Because it allowed them to tamp down political opposition, harness Iranian nationalism, and convince even those most opposed to the regime to fight a war.”
On placing blame for increased tensions
Majid also shared: “While we blame both this regime and the Trump administration for getting us to this point, the reality is that these tensions started over a year ago when Trump left the nuclear deal. He really thought that sanctions would make the Iranian government capitulate, but it’s not nearly that easy to move this regime. If anything, this type of pressure only weakens ordinary Iranians. The U.S. leadership doesn’t seem to understand that sanctions impact the Iranian government and Iranian citizens differently. They take advantage of the black market and this only worsens economic corruption in the country.
Some of the diaspora that wants this to happen [Trump’s pressure on Iran] don’t feel the impact of sanctions, they don’t know how we continue to live in the shadow of war. They don’t understand that when faced with neighboring countries doing the bidding of the U.S., all we know is fear. And this fear is dangerous, because it will force us to unite behind the hardliners in power, and only weaken the true internal Iranian opposition forces. When we fear external threats, we can’t unite to focus on reforming our own internal politics.”
It only took a few short conversations to cement the notion that the Iranian people have no appetite for war. Under sanctions, their futures and careers have been bleak. Under war, their livelihoods and hopes for an opening up of society — by and for the Iranian people — would be rendered moot.
The Iranian people are communicating loud and clear their aversion to any military conflict, repeating again and again that war would only benefit the country’s hardliners and destroy civil society. The administration needs to listen to the voices of actual Iranians, who are pleading of the U.S.: do not goad this regime into holding the umbrella of war over us.
“If we have to choose between dogs and lions when it comes to war,” closed one of my friends, referring to the regime and the U.S. respectively, “we will pick the dogs.”
*Names have been changed to respect the anonymity of the Iranians who shared their views.
