Events in Iran are unfolding across my screen. The flash of air strikes followed by rising plumes of smoke—now the country’s bleak daily rhythm—streams remorselessly onto my feed. Mullahs howl. Politicians gesticulate. Washington and Jerusalem threaten and promise. Fragments of Persian, half learned and half forgotten, return to me. Gar sabr koni ze ghure halva sazi—“If you are patient, you can make halvah from sour grapes”: encouraging words once offered by my long-suffering Persian teacher as I butchered verb conjugations. Now I cautiously wonder if the phrase might be apt. Are we seeing the possible—if not immediate—end of a regime that has held one of the world’s oldest civilizations hostage for nearly half a century?
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But then my mind flicks to darker memories: the sadistic crackdowns and the long history of crushed uprisings. I watch Iran strike its Gulf neighbors. Another proverb surfaces: Mar-e zakhmi khatarnak-tar ast—“A wounded snake is more dangerous.”
Twenty years ago, I lived in the foreigners section of the student dormitories (Kuye Daneshgah) of Tehran University, a dense complex of concrete blocks just off Enghelab Street where arrivals from across Iran crowded into functional rooms for the duration of their studies. Like almost everywhere in the country, the regime’s violence had struck these buildings. Only a few years earlier, security forces and Basij militia had stormed them during the 1999 student protests, beating them in the corridors and throwing some off balconies. As an older student told me matter-of-factly one day: Inja bud. It was here.
The government as a functioning entity doesn’t really exist anymore. Things are falling apart.
Two decades on, the violence has never really stopped. In January, the regime murdered around 30,000 of its own people; weeks later, the United States and Israel began pounding its facilities, trying, finally, to end it for good. For now, Iranians can only wait. Many hope the war will not last, and that it might herald the birth of something better. In the meantime, explosions are constant. Tehran’s night skies flare with ordnance as cell phones light up with rumor. So far the strikes have largely hit regime facilities, although 153 people, including children, were killed when a reported U.S. strike hit a school in southern Iran.
As the war rolls on, I try to speak to the people who matter most in all this: Iranians. These days, checking in on those I care about is a valuable exercise in more ways than one. Only by understanding what is happening inside the country, and in the minds of its people, can we begin to judge whether this war—and the colossal gamble it represents—has any chance of succeeding.
