Published in the June 2026 issue of The Nation.
The story of how millions of Iranians fell for the regime-change fantasy.
“There is nothing to be worried about. Israel and the US are only hitting military targets and bases of government repression. Not a single home has been destroyed. Except for perhaps some minor incidental damage.”
I read Amir’s words once, and then once again.
It was March 5, five days after the United States and Israel had launched a war on Iran. A thousand people had already been killed. Tehran was scarred by bomb blasts.
The Iranian authorities had blocked the Internet, but many Iranians turned to VPNs to bypass the blackout. Some, like my friend Amir, a businessman in his 40s, used that access to celebrate the bombing of their country.
Not everyone shared his sentiment.
“It feels like we’re living the apocalypse,” my friend Maryam, an activist in her 50s, told me over the phone. (Maryam’s name, like those of the other people interviewed for this article inside Iran, has been changed to protect her safety.) “The first day, the bombing started around 9:30 in the morning. Kids had just started school. But when the missiles hit, they closed and sent everyone home. There were children everywhere, screaming with tears in their eyes, as they waited for their parents to pick them up and loud explosions boomed all around. And at that exact moment, the Americans bombed a school in Minab, and more than 100 kids died. I don’t wish upon anyone the horrors we’ve lived.”
I spent the war’s first days contacting everyone I knew in Iran, where my family is from and where I lived for several years. Most messages I sent showed a single check mark on WhatsApp, meaning they went unseen and undelivered.
Over time, however, many got back to me, including my friend Kamyar, an architect in his 30s who lives in northeastern Tehran with his parents: “Our apartment is right next to a military zone, and the missiles were hitting all around us. We had to leave.”
On the second day of the bombing, they drove to the mountains near the Caspian Sea, joining 3 million Iranians who were displaced. It was their second time fleeing US and Israeli bombs in less than a year.
Maryam texted me every night of the war’s first week. The messages were almost identical: “Last night was the scariest so far.”
So did Amir. “This is not a war,” he said, telling me not to worry. “It’s a struggle for freedom. This is the victory of light over darkness.”
Bombs tore through schools, hospitals, homes, and a gymnasiumwhere teenage girls were playing volleyball. They hit bridges, universities, and mosques. Dead birds fell in Tehran’s streets, and plants shriveled up after Israeli missiles hit oil depots, unleashing massive explosions and a toxic cloud that turned the sky black and showered acid rain.
I managed to reach Maryam the day of the oil-depot strikes; she’d been stuck in bed with a migraine, overpowered by the gasoline smell that had invaded her home even with the windows tightly shut. Her voice was equal parts anger, resignation, and grief: “Why did so many people think this war was a good idea?”
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