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A trembling ceasefire has brought a pause to what had become the familiar sounds of explosions over Tehran. I was born in 1988, a year before the Iran-Iraq war came to an end. For my generation, war was something that belonged to the past – an impossible event, until this summer.
For 12 days, we lived in the capital under incessant Israeli attacks, and what we saw has changed us for good: dead neighbours, buildings gutted and worry – endless, deep-etched worry – on the faces of people.
There is comfort in speaking of “the Iranian people” as though we are one unified bloc. But like most societies, Iranians hold divergent views. When fighting first broke out, there were people who were glad to see a foreign power targeting the widely disliked Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) top brass, at least in the beginning. But others – though dissidents themselves – deeply resented the idea of foreign invasion. Some hardliners saw this war as a messianic mission to be carried through to the bitter end; others were numb to what was happening.
But as the news filled with footage of civilian casualties, and the attacks grew harsher and less targeted, different social factions began to unite around the notion of watan, homeland. Patriotism gained new currency, and national pride was on most lips. Scenes of solidarity – whether lasting remains to be seen – abounded: landlords cancelling rent in light of the crisis; people outside Tehran hosting those fleeing the capital; no rush to grocery stores, no chaos, no panicked evacuations.
In my view, the way European countries responded to Israel’s onslaught played a key role in this shift. The E3, alongside other silent nations across the continent, supported the Israeli strikes, using all the usual justifications, from Iran’s nuclear programme to its support for terrorism, all while the US president painted a rosy image of Iran’s supposed greatness the “day after’” on his Truth Social. But those of us in the Middle East know better. Images of fresh devastation in Gaza appear daily, and we remember the chaos in Libya, civil war in Syria, two decades of occupation in Iraq and the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan. There was no promise in these conflicts – no seeds of democracy being planted.
Surely, the naked reality of Israel’s aggression would register with the same powers that rightly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – so that yet another war would not crush the region once again. And surely, these attacks – brutal, unprovoked, deliberate – should have been met with a flood of condemnation and fury at the disregard for the UN charter. But none came.
The silence was deafening. A reminder that Iranian lives, clearly, carry less worth than those of others. This, for many of us, was the main takeaway from the support western countries extended to Israel. The war was on Iran, but it was justified through the same old playbook: racism. The indifference and inaction of those with the power to intervene; the media’s passive tone when referring to non-white casualties; the habitual disregard for their suffering; and the blase attitude towards attacks on lands outside the western orbit – with the German chancellor even saying: “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”
Many Iranians are angry at this injustice – so much so that the idea of building a nuclear weapon, once confined to the radical fringes of politics, is now gaining traction among ordinary people. As one user put it on X: “No one seems concerned about the state of human rights in North Korea,” implying that nuclear warheads remain the only reliable deterrent against aggression.
It would be foolish to trust Israel with a ceasefire. The country has a track record of violating agreements with impunity. That means a Damoclean sword still hangs over Tehran, even as the sound of explosions fades. From afar, this city of over 10 million people may appear to have returned to its usual bustle. But uncertainty still hangs in the air, and what makes it worse is the absence of any credible broker capable of ending the war. For many here, the west’s tacit, explicit or even active participation in the conflict disqualifies it from any role as a good-faith negotiator.
From where I stand, once again, feelings of mistrust towards Europe are bedding in. Buildings will be rebuilt, infrastructure repaired. But what may be damaged beyond repair – perhaps irredeemably so – is the moral fabric on which Europe stands to preach to others. The double standards. The hypocrisy. The injustice of it all. The imperial mindset – still visibly alive and well – now casts a long shadow over how Europe is perceived. Not just for Iranians, I suspect, but for many people across the global south.
These are hard times to live through. Whether the Islamic republic survives this moment, strikes a deal, or continues down its current path of retaliation, I do not know. But what is sure is that whoever governs Iran in the future will not forget what happened here.
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Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher
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