‘You Want to Leave Us Alone With Mojtaba?’

The war in Iran has horrified many inside the country, but some worry that peace could be just as frightening. “I am shit-scared,” Shaghayeh, a 32-year-old living in Tehran, told me last week. “But I won’t cheer if the war ends now. You want to leave us alone with Mojtaba?”

Shaghayeh, a left-wing activist, was referring to the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, whose regime continues to impose a near-total internet blackout. Contacting anyone within Iran’s borders is a challenge, but I have managed to speak with more than a dozen people over the past three weeks. (To protect their safety, I am referring to them by pseudonyms.) I was struck by how many people in Iran expressed the same paradox: They fear the continuation of the war, yet they also fear its end.

Iran is a country of 90 million people, and I can’t claim that the ones I spoke with are representative. But very few of them told me they were content with their lives before the war. At first, some saw America and Israel’s intervention as a sign of hope—a possible escape from economic ruin and social repression. Now some of those same Iranians have begun to fear that the United States and Israel have locked them into a worse fate: Either the war persists and bombs keep falling on their heads, or it ends, giving way to an even crueler regime.

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Some Iranians began our phone calls with a dark joke: “As you can see, I am still alive.” Others wasted no time, mindful that the line could cut out at any moment. “We are under bombardment, Arash,” Ali, a left-wing anti-regime activist in Tehran, told me earlier this month. “Get our voice to the world: No to war, no to killing, no to Israeli and American bombs.”

After more than three weeks, the war has killed at least 1,443 Iranian civilians, including 217 children, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a U.S.-based nonprofit run by Iranians. Some in Iran told me that the costs of the war have been so severe that no end could justify them.

Ziba was crying uncontrollably when she left me a voice message. She was staying at her grandmother’s house in Tehran, and a bomb had just broken the windows. “Why can’t people understand that these conditions are no better than a lack of freedom?” she asked. “Fuck freedom if this is the price we pay for it. I was about to have a heart attack. Fuck this freedom. I still can’t breathe.”

When I spoke with Nastaran, her windows had recently shattered too. Still, she was optimistic. “Hope must not die,” she told me. Nastaran, who is 26, said she’d barely had enough money to survive in Tehran before the bombs started falling. “I hate this war. But something better can follow.” Hassan, 32, went further. “I’ll just tell you one thing,” he said. “I am only unhappy when I don’t hear the sound of missiles.”

That may be the strongest endorsement of the war I’ve heard. Most of the people I talked to have soured on the conflict, and not only because of the destruction it has wrought.

Shahrzad moved to Europe several weeks before the war. I had spoken with her in January, days after the regime had massacred protesters. Back then, the 29-year-old told me that she was in favor of foreign intervention, hoping it would dislodge the Islamic Republic. But last week, Shahrzad said she no longer believes that America and Israel care about achieving that result.

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“I can now see that their intention is perhaps to make Iran weaker than before, even if the regime stays in power.” She pointed to America’s apparent willingness to negotiate with Khamenei and his inner circle. “I thought they had concluded that an Iran without the Islamic Republic was in their best interests too. Now I know this isn’t their priority.”

Melika, a 21-year-old, also recently left Iran for Europe. Back in January, she told me that she wanted to see the supreme leader killed, but now she opposes the war. “When Khamenei died, I was happy, but only for a moment—like you get a hit from a drug,” Melika said. “It didn’t even last a day. After that I’ve only felt one thing: fear, fear, fear.”

Some Iranians said that they had expected anti-regime forces to revolt after the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—a hope that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu had expressed too. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah, has called on Iranians to help bring down the regime. But some of those I spoke with have lost faith in him. “I think people haven’t risen up because they don’t have a proper leader,” Shahrzad said. All Pahlavi does, she said, is “try to placate Trump.”

Even if they did have a proper leader, protesters would still have to contend with American and Israeli bombs, as well as the ample security forces that the regime has mobilized. Dissidents would also face resistance from their fellow citizens, some of whom back the regime. I spoke with one man in his 40s who supported Mojtaba Khamenei and said he would “fight to death to not let Pahlavi come back.”

Some anti-regime Iranians cannot imagine the war yielding any positive outcome without an organized opposition. Melika and Shahrzad both reiterated the grim paradox I’d heard from others: They fear the fighting, but they also fear its conclusion.

“I am amazed at how strong the regime has been,” Melika said. “Even though I want the war to stop, I know they’ll be really brutal once it does.”

Shahrzad echoed her alarm. “The war upsets me, of course,” she said. “But I am worried that when it ends, the regime will be even worse.”