{"id":37496,"date":"2025-06-27T09:15:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T07:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=37496"},"modified":"2025-06-27T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T07:57:08","slug":"missiles-and-rhetoric-a-tehrani-reflects-on-the-12-day-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/missiles-and-rhetoric-a-tehrani-reflects-on-the-12-day-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Missiles and Rhetoric \u2014 a Tehrani Reflects on the “12-Day War”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Iranians pause to reflect and reassess after the intense bombing of the 12-day war, when basic goods like oil and rice disappeared from store shelves and bank accounts were hacked, leaving many without money. An older generation still believes in \u201cpatience and faith,\u201d while a more pragmatic generation of Iranians, like Amir’s, is caught between loving the culture and wanting real change in their country, pulled between polar opposites of wishing to stay and wanting to leave. Meanwhile the Islamic Republic takes out its failures and frustrations on the Iranian people, with arrests and executions.<\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
Amir<\/h4>\n
It\u2019s the morning after Iran and Israel announced a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
As always, the anti-aircraft sirens sound tired and worn out, cutting through the night unexpectedly and pulling me, without thinking, out onto the balcony. My eyes follow the glowing trails across the sky. I spot a small bright dot far away. I wonder \u2014 maybe it\u2019s a drone, or something trying to escape. I look more closely: no, it\u2019s a star. Still, quiet, unmoved.<\/p>\n
Maybe we\u2019re the ones who have changed \u2014 not the star. Maybe that soldier firing at the sky also mistook a star for a drone. Or maybe none of us can tell the difference anymore.<\/p>\n
These past 12 days have changed everything. We\u2019re not the same people we were before. It\u2019s like someone whose house has collapsed in an earthquake, now searching through the rubble for an old diary.<\/p>\n
It was a war we still don\u2019t know when exactly began or ended. And now we\u2019ll carry it with us for the rest of our lives, always asking: Who are we? Why did we lose? Why does the government claim victory, after so many failures?<\/p>\n
How can someone look into a mirror, maimed and bloody and still ask, \u201cDid you see how well I hit them?\u201d<\/p>\n
On the first morning of the ceasefire, the newspaper headlines had changed. Just yesterday, one paper had boldly printed a photo of a missile with the words: \u201cA decisive response is on the way.\u201d Now it showed the image of an unveiled woman with the headline: \u201cAfter the storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
And a peace no one really knows the shape of.<\/p>\n
BBC Persian reported that Evin Prison was hit by an Israeli strike. The main entrance, the women\u2019s ward, the visitation hall, the library \u2014 everything was damaged. One thousand two hundred male prisoners were transferred to the Greater Tehran Prison. They didn\u2019t even have time to grab their clothes or bring their medication along. Seven hundred female prisoners were sent without basic supplies to the vastly inferior and more dangerous Qarchak prison in the unbearable heat. So much for the Israelis\u2019 \u201csymbolic\u201d bombing that was supposed to free Iran\u2019s political prisoners.<\/p>\n
\nIsraeli missile damages Tehran neighborhood in June Tasnim News<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
On social media, people wrote: \u201cNow that the enemy is gone, it\u2019s the people\u2019s turn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sources close to the Revolutionary Guard said at least 700 people were arrested during these 12 days for allegedly collaborating with Israel. Six were executed. Three of them, all Kurds, were hung in the northwestern city of Urmia near the Turkish border. They were Kurdish kolbars<\/em> or porters who carry banned goods on their back across the mountains into Iran. The Norway based Iran Human Rights group said the porters had been initially charged with smuggling alcohol over the border but were forced to confess to espionage charges for Israel, even though one of them had been arrested as far back as 2016.<\/p>\n
To cover up for the massive failure of the 12-day war, the government has already begun an internal crackdown, with the Revolutionary Guards and Basiji deployed to the borders and official warnings of \u201cthe danger from within,\u201d notably the Kurdish areas of the country. The Iranian human rights agency HRNA said many of the people who have been recently arrested have been accused of spying for Israel. This doesn\u2019t bode well for activists already held in detention.<\/p>\n
Someone had written online: \u201cThis war worked like a vacuum cleaner. It sucked up the dust \u2014 and the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
I was sitting in a dimly lit caf\u00e9 near Valiasr Square. Someone nearby said, \u201cWe lost. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another replied, \u201cNo, militarily we won. If you compare the size of Israel and Iran, then for every missile Iran fired, Israel would\u2019ve had to launch 50 to have the same impact. Iran has been under sanctions for years, and Israel wasn\u2019t alone \u2014 it had US and European support.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third person smirked: \u201cBrother, look around this city. There\u2019s no space here you could call a victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
When more than thirty senior commanders have been killed, how can this be a victory? In Israel, not even a single soldier died \u2014 let alone a senior officer. Two leaders ruined a country for the sake of their dreams. But the painful part is, some people still believe in those dreams. My friend\u2019s father insisted that Israel had been defeated \u2014 just because it eventually stopped the attacks. He had been watching Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), and mimicked the TV anchorman\u2019s sense of achievement. When I told him that not even a single Israeli commander had been killed, he just smiled and said, \u201cWhat matters is willpower.\u201d His generation had been raised on the memory of the Iran\u2013Iraq war \u2014 on images of young boys confronting tanks. For them, \u201cnot losing\u201d equals \u201cwinning.\u201d<\/p>\n
But people my age no longer believe in such narratives. The generational divide is real. One side still believes in patience and faith. The other side just wants a way out \u2014 even if that means leaving the country.<\/p>\n
\n
Have you seen the jokes online? Alongside a cross-section of the Earth, \u201cWhich layer of the Earth\u2019s crust is the Leader hiding in?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
I stepped from the caf\u00e9 and took a long walk. The air felt heavy, like the city itself couldn\u2019t breathe. I wandered aimlessly until I ended up in front of a computer shop known for selling Apple products, where people had lined up.<\/p>\n
It was strange. Phones in hand, they were waiting \u2014 not for the latest iPad or app, not for repairs \u2014 but for something that\u2019s become as essential as daily bread in Iran these days: a VPN.<\/p>\n
I followed everyone inside.<\/p>\n
The tired but friendly shop assistant repeated this same sentence dozens of times: \u201cI\u2019ll install the VPN for you, but don\u2019t think the internet\u2019s back. It\u2019s just a workaround. Maybe Instagram and WhatsApp will open \u2014 if they don\u2019t, the government has shut them down again.\u201d<\/p>\n
My eyes landed on one of the store\u2019s employees. He was sitting behind a monitor, repairing a small electronic motherboard. A magnified view of it was displayed on the monitor above him \u2014 complex circuit boards, the gray tones of capacitors, and hints of greenish-blue edges. I joked, \u201cLooking at that screen, you\u2019d think we\u2019re in a nuclear power plant!\u201d<\/p>\n
The seller laughed, \u201cYeah, that one\u2019s heavy water. This one\u2019s probably Natanz!\u201d One of the nuclear facilities where the US dropped buster bombs.<\/p>\n
Despite ourselves we both laughed.<\/p>\n
Behind me stood a man who overheard us. He murmured, \u201cMan, look what these 12 days of war have done to us \u2026 Now whatever we see, we call it a reactor. Everything\u2019s become nuclear, become a threat.\u201d He added pointedly, \u201cWhere is the Supreme Leader?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nSupreme Leader of Iran Khamenei pops out of the ground like a mole and asks, “Did we win?” A real mole looks over at him and says, “I don’t think so\u201d (cartoon by Mana Neyestani @neyestanimania).<\/p>\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
On the eighth day of the 12 -day war, on June 20, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Geneva for diplomatic talks. After negotiating with European officials, he needed to get final approval from Khamenei. But access to him \u2014 for reasons that were never clearly explained \u2014 wasn\u2019t possible. This delay in communication led to missed opportunities, or more precisely, allowed the Israelis and Americans to take advantage.<\/p>\n
Have you seen the jokes online? Someone posted a cross-section of the Earth and wrote: \u201cWhich layer of the Earth\u2019s crust is the Leader hiding in?\u201d<\/p>\n
And another one has written: \u201cI thought we\u2019d reached the end of the clerics. Turns out, we\u2019ve reached the cleric with no end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another person said, \u201cThey\u2019re all the same. Trump was boarding his plane when he said, \u2018China can buy oil from Iran.\u2019 But the next day, he made the sanctions even harsher. All they care about is making headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the way back, I was able to get online and scrolled through Instagram and Facebook. One post said that when a Revolutionary Guard base in Karaj was hit, the casualties were so high that people were saying, \u201cThe soldiers were flying through the air \u2014 you could see them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran International TV reported that Israel had carried out 1,500 airstrikes into Iranian airspace and hit 1,480 targets, as opposed to 550 ballistic missiles and nearly 1,000 fired by Iran at Israel, 90 percent of which were intercepted, according to figures available on the internet. Meanwhile, on Iranian state television the news subtitles read: \u201cWe no longer permit foreign powers to interfere or negotiate regarding uranium enrichment within our territory.\u201d This was followed by a quote from the Vice President: \u201cWe learned important lessons from these 12 days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well for us, the lesson was that the Basiji inspected cars stopped in the middle of highways for random searches \u2014 just in case they were carrying helicopters. For ordinary people, another lesson was that oil, rice, and other essentials vanished from store shelves. While these changes were ones that many of us lived through, the officials described them as, in their words, \u201cgreat achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Ferdowsi Square, flags were going up for the start of Muharram, Islamic New Year, with posters announcing religious speakers. I went down into the metro. The escalators weren\u2019t working. People were quiet. The only sound was the horn from the train echoing through the tunnel.<\/p>\n
A tall man with a brown beard pronounced softly, \u201cYou know what\u2019s scary? People no longer want victory. They don\u2019t even want the truth. They just want to escape from under the rubble of politics. Just somewhere quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The condition of being Persian these days defies simple categories; it\u2019s full of deep contradictions about one\u2019s country \u2014 caught between pride in a rich, cultural past and shame over the current political reality; torn between the pull to stay and the push to leave. These feelings are shaped not only by external exile but also by a kind of internal exile \u2014 even while you\u2019re in your own home. You grieve for strangers killed in a war you never chose, and worry for older family members and friends who still believe in a dream that has turned into a vicious nightmare.<\/p>\n
In such circumstances, the silence around you carries the heaviness of reflection; a place where every word and feeling hang suspended in a turmoil of paradoxes.<\/p>\n
While state media celebrated a victory, the streets looked like someone who had just come out of surgery \u2014 wounded in a way that felt neither triumphant nor hopeful, just in need of some kind of tender loving care. Tehran felt like a body still under anesthesia. In the shadows, people walked with tired eyes. Everyone was just searching for something to calm them down. A little peace. A little silence.<\/p>\n
When I came out of the metro, a warm wind was blowing. A thin layer of smoke hung in the air \u2014 like a sheer curtain draped over the face of the city.<\/p>\n
On the way home, I called a friend who had fled to the north to check in on them. They said, \u201cI had a Bank Sepah account \u2026 during all that chaos, they hacked and froze all the accounts. No withdrawals, no payments, nothing. For a whole week, we just stared at a locked bank card and a fridge emptier than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then they observed, \u201cSame thing happened with Bank Melli. Everyone was stuck \u2014 no money, no updates, no idea what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another friend in Tehran told me, \u201cWe didn\u2019t have space at home. My mom and sister came to stay with us. The place turned into a family dorm. People were sleeping on the floor, on the couch, in any corner they could find. No one knew how many days this was going to last.\u201d<\/p>\n
Someone else said, \u201cWe left for Isfahan the moment they told people to evacuate Tehran. But four days later, my sister called. Her son had a panic attack and was taken to the hospital. We got back on the road. But by the time we arrived \u2026 he was gone. He was 35. Just got married. There was nothing left of him but fear. It was like fear itself had killed him.\u201d I had known this young man since he was a boy.<\/p>\n
It suddenly occurrs to me that Tehran too is having a panic attack. My brother\u2019s daughter, just five years old, jumps at the sound of a glass dropping. She clings to the wall, trembling. No one ever told her what war means. But she\u2019s learned to recognize the sounds. When someone says, \u201cIt was a cyber-attack,\u201d she believes a monster is coming.<\/p>\n
Seemingly the war has fallen from the sky right into the minds of our children. People have even started doubting the stars. And me? Every night, when I see a bright dot in the sky, I still wonder: \u201cIs that a drone \u2026 or just a star?\u201d<\/p>\n
A writer in Tehran surveys the wreckage after 12 days of missiles, bombs and rhetoric flying between Israel and Iran.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990,"featured_media":37499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,51],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4548],"class_list":["post-37496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-tmr-weekly","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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