‘We Didn’t Want This War’: Iranians Cope With Daily Bombardment

by Avina Shokouhi

For the past ten days, war has become a part of daily life for many Iranians, especially those living in Tehran.

Unlike previous conflicts, once praised by Iran’s former supreme leader as a “blessing” for the regime, this war feels different. Many people feel powerless, unheard, and alone.

Four Tehran residents, who have chosen to stay in different parts of the city, shared their experiences of navigating life amid fear, anxiety, hope, and a sense of responsibility.

Sepideh, a single woman living in Tehran’s Shahran district, has stayed behind with her dog, two cats, and a small garden.

Ten days into the war, she remains committed to staying put, saying her animals seem more frightened than she is, huddling together with anxious eyes at every unfamiliar sound.

Despite the atmosphere of fear, she continues planting flowers in her garden and finds joy in propagating her plants.

“When you put down roots, even in a pot, your heart won’t let you leave,” said the children’s book translator and author. “You whisper to yourself: I’ll plant my hands in the garden. It will turn green. I know it will.”

Before the war, Sepideh taught children both in-person and online. Now, all those connections have been severed.

The children who once listened to her stories have disappeared into silence and uncertainty.

“I worry about each one of them,” she said. “I don’t know where they are, how they’re doing, or whether they even have internet access.”

She added, “This lack of communication, which the government is responsible for, has caused many families to drift apart.”

Still, Sepideh tries to channel her worry into writing hopeful stories for the day after the war - for children who may still be waiting to hear her voice, and for a tomorrow that might be brighter than the days before, when children’s joy was already fading under the weight of the news cycle.

Sima, a nurse living with her 8-year-old daughter in Tehran’s Marzdaran neighborhood, describes this war as a new experience, though her past is marked by the wounds of protest.

From the 2009 Green Movement to the Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrations, she has repeatedly witnessed, treated, and cleaned the blood of the wounded.

But this time, the situation feels different. She is fighting on two fronts: one at the hospital, the other at home.

“When I’m at the hospital, I have to be there for people,” she told IranWire. “For those who come in with shrapnel wounds, blast injuries, or severe anxiety.

“Sometimes they just stare, saying nothing. But their eyes are full of questions and terror - as if asking: Did we want this war?”

But the harder part for Sima is returning home to her young daughter. She must reset her emotions as if nothing happened, wear a smile, hide the news, and become a storyteller for a child who just wants to go to the park.

“My daughter jumps at loud sounds,” she said. “She asks, ‘Mum, what does that sound mean?’ I tell her it’s just a drill, sweetheart, for peace of mind. Then I go to the kitchen, under the noise of the hood, and cry quietly.”

Sima says she’s exhausted, but staying is a personal choice. She believes people need one another more than ever now.

“These days, every smile, every bandage, every soothing word is a form of standing up, a kind of refusal to be afraid,” she said. “This has nothing to do with the government. I’m here for these people - one of whom is myself, my husband, my child, and my elderly mother.”

Arman, who lives in Tehran’s Yusefabad neighborhood with his wife and teenage son, has stayed not by choice, but out of necessity.

They have no second home in the north, and no way to move his aging parents, both of whom now struggle with Alzheimer’s.

“Where could I go with two people who don’t even know what day of the war it is?” he asked. “Who think every loud sound means the 1986 bombardment has returned?”

Arman is part of a generation till bearing the scars of the Iran-Iraq War on body and soul. His father, a former imperial army officer before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, had long warned that “the path the Islamic Republic is taking will, sooner or later, end in another war.”

Now Arman carries two war memories: one etched into the collective memory of his generation, and another that has returned in a different and unwanted form.

“But this war is different,” he said. “That war, right or wrong, was somehow connected to the people. But this one? No. This isn’t our war. We didn’t want it. Even my parents, despite their forgetfulness, remember that one war was enough. Enough to forget war, and to never wish it on the next generation.”

Each day, Arman cares for his parents, tends to his son, and walks through streets where the sky could light up without warning.

“We stayed because there was no one to take our place,” he said. “Because sometimes, staying is harder than leaving.

“But even this staying has become a kind of resistance, a kind of silent defiance. This is the story of those who stayed in the city, just as the homeless have their own.”

Reyhan, a single lawyer living in Tehran’s Haftom-e-Tir neighborhood, says her decision to stay comes not from fear, but from belief.

These days, the intermittent internet cuts and slowdowns frustrate her more than anything else.

“I can’t call my brother abroad. I can’t even speak freely with family in other cities,” she told IranWire. “We had gotten used to the internet, to video calls, to writing our thoughts. Now, even making a phone call comes with hesitation: Are they listening? Are they recording?”

Reyhan says the filtering of WhatsApp by President Masoud Pezeshkian's administration, which had promised to lift internet restrictions, and push toward domestic platforms amounts to "online espionage."

She remembers Tehran during the holidays as calm and peaceful but says that silence was pleasant. But now Tehran feels like "a city of the dead. A city of ghosts. A city gripped by fear.”

"Neither inside nor outside the house is safe," she said. "At home, sometimes the city's silence drives you crazy - a frightening silence that becomes more terrifying with the sound of bombardment. 

Still, Reyhan has chosen to stay. Despite her family’s pleas and repeated arguments, she’s determined to remain. Even if she’s “destined to die,” she says it will be in her own home.

“Maybe just staying is a kind of hope,” she said.

“Every morning when I wake up - if I’ve managed to sleep through the bombing - I say to myself, ‘I’m still alive, you bastards.’"

“And when I pull back the curtain to let the sunlight fall on my hair, turning it golden and beautiful, I know light will triumph over darkness.”