A Former Prisoner of the Iranian Regime Watches Trump’s War
I immediately messaged him to see if he was okay. “Hi because I’m home. I’m fine,” he wrote. “Stressful, though. I pressed him for more questions, but I could tell from his vague answers that he was watching his words, aware of potential surveillance by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Even the VPNs that many people use to connect are controlled by the government.
My cousin said he would check in as soon as he could. Since then, I have not seen a digital trace of him. Such silences in wartime are common; My wife has two elderly parents who worried us particularly, but they remained silent and we feared the worst. Several days passed before the husband called us. “Don’t worry. We’re alive,” he told me.
The few calls we receive are always brief, revealing little information or emotion, but we learn things. For example, people now make sure to wear shoes at home in case an explosion breaks glass or there is a need to evacuate immediately. Most of the neighborhood’s bread kiosks still standing remain open, but there are strict limits on the quantity individuals can purchase. Many checkpoints formerly manned by Basij paramilitary forces have been destroyed or abandoned.
As far as we know, no member of our family was killed. We were lucky. Another former Tehran correspondent, now living in Washington, heard from a childhood friend still living in Iran. Her aunt had resisted leaving the capital for two weeks, but was finally convinced to evacuate. Realizing she had forgotten her medication, she went home to get them. Her building was bombed as soon as she got inside. Her niece watched this happen from the car.
Once communications return to normal, stories like this will be common. Yet there remains a flood of undeniably optimistic messages. There is a sense of hope that grows every time another high-ranking official is killed. The latest was Ali Larijani, a fixture in Iranian politics and repression, and one of the most steadfast followers of assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
It is impossible to say how much support there is for the ongoing military campaign in Iran, but it is not insignificant. Even though civilian infrastructure is leveled, the fact that I still hear this optimistic sentiment, almost four weeks after this operation began, is a strong indication of how reviled the Islamic Republic has become in Iran. That sentiment could change if Trump follows through on threats he made over the weekend to “destroy” Iranian power plants if the regime does not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz. (On Monday, Trump said his administration was engaged in “very extensive talks” with Iran and had asked the U.S. military to postpone strikes for five days.)
Some of those I hear from in Iran dream that the United States and Israel will somehow manage to end the Islamic Republic from the air. “I’m staying because I really hope this is the final battle and the regime goes away,” a young software engineer from southern Tehran told me. “People are still in good spirits, even though the bombings are much worse than during the Twelve Day War,” he said, referring to last June’s conflict.
This kind of remark is not surprising. I have heard calls for foreign intervention from Iran since 2003, the year of the US invasion of Iraq. “When will it be our turn?” The Iranians kept asking for it. “When will the American commandos come to liberate We?”
Iranian desire for American intervention cooled as sectarian violence spread across Iraq – much of it fomented by Tehran’s regional proxies. After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, the Iraqi Shiite holy sites of Karbala and Najaf reopened to international pilgrims. Iranians were among the first wave to visit the country, but they witnessed not liberation and prosperity, but the chaos, violence and ruin wrought by terrorist attacks.
In many ways, Iran would have been much better prepared for a transition to democracy at that time than Iraq or Afghanistan and, frankly, better prepared than it is now. It was a society aspiring to greater social freedoms and integration with the rest of the world. Time and again, in tightly controlled elections, Iranians have voted overwhelmingly for candidates seeking to take steps to liberalize the country.
