Update from The Iranist
March 6, 2026
Salam reader,
On February 28, I woke up to news of the war and felt a mix of emotions. Many of us Iranians in the diaspora and even inside the country were still trying to process the unprecedented massacre in January.
Numerous videos posted online showed some Iranians celebrating the initial strikes (X/X/X/X/X). The fact that these people were celebrating rather than cowering in fear is a telling reminder of what the Islamic Republic has done to the populace over the past forty-seven years.
This initial response is unsurprising given the scale of the massacre. Many Iranians, including prominent Iran-based human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, have been calling on the international community to invoke its R2P principle (“Responsibility to Protect”) and intervene against the Islamic Republic. President Donald Trump’s prewar promise that “help is on its way” made them hopeful, though it remains unclear how these Iranians will feel in the longer term if many civilians are killed in the process, or if regime remnants manage to emerge from the ashes and take over.
Zhila, a Tehran-based filmmaker, captured this sentiment well:
“Our young don’t have a future in this country, the sanctions and every other restriction which has crippled the economy is the regime’s doing because they kept getting rich. Despite this, I still hoped we could have brought this regime down. We tried it all, so even if I am against this war, I do not believe we have an option but to seek help. How many die is something that’s killing me inside, but also how many were killed by the regime is still fresh on our minds. We have become so numb after what we saw in January that now we are in a strange state of mind.” (The Guardian)
By evening, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed, and anti-regime Iranians, in an act of bravery, took to the streets to celebrate in various cities across Iran (The Guardian/X/X/X/X). Here, in the US capital, Washington, it was a moving scene outside the Iranian Interests Section where people cried tears of joy and danced to a popular Persian pop song about “going back to Tehran.” (X) Read my obituary of Khamenei in The Guardian.
That same day, an internet shutdown was imposed (X). Sometimes messages trickle out of the country, including from my own family, hoping to see me in Iran soon. Iranians in Tehran, where the bombing is worst, speak of hope and fear: Hope that the regime goes, trying to keep normalcy, and fear about war, and the damage it causes (I shared them on my Twitter account).
In response to Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion, Tehran launched missiles and drones across much of the Middle East, targeting Israel as well as numerous Arab countries—including Persian Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, with which it had worked hard in recent years to improve relations (Axios).
That being said, like the 12-day war in June, there are neither air raid sirens nor shelters to protect Iranians. Most Iranians avoid state media because of its propaganda and instead rely on diaspora satellite news channels, which were jammed days before the war, further restricting access to information. Those who could afford to fled the capital—often to the Caspian Sea, Damavand, or villas on the outskirts of Tehran.
Unfortunately, this is wartime, and with it comes civilian casualties. According to the group, Human Rights Activists in Iran, 1,168 civilians were killed, including 194 children (with 336 under review) (HRANA).
You may have seen reporting on the all-girls Shajareh Tayyebeh School in the town of Minab in southern Hormozgan province, which killed at least 175, most of them children. According to Reuters, “US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible.”
The New York Times reported that:
“…the most likely explanation was that the school had been a ‘target misidentification’—that forces had attacked the site without realizing that it might have had large numbers of civilians inside… Some theories have circulated online suggesting that a misfired Iranian missile was responsible for the strike on the school, but The Times and other online analysts debunked the claim, in part by determining that a single errant missile wouldn’t have caused such precise and targeted damage to several buildings across the naval base.”
US officials say the strike is still under investigation.
This is what I can provide right now, as the Israel-US-Iran war is evolving so rapidly that it’s difficult to keep up with timely reporting for The Iranist.
Feel free to follow me on X for real-time updates and on LinkedIn, where I’ve been sharing additional interviews and commentary.
I leave you with this artwork by Iranian artist Saba Soleymani.
More soon,
Holly