I Met the “Enemy.” They Were Just People.
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.
The U.S. government, under President Trump, has been bombing Iran since June 2025, bypassing Congress and the checks meant to restrain any president. In the latest wave of strikes, launched February 28 without a vote in Congress, a school was hit. At least 175 people were killed, mostly children.
As if any further escalation was possible, President Trump threatened to bomb the country “back to the stone ages,” to let “a whole civilization die” if Iran did not meet his demands. A ceasefire was announced hours before his deadline.
Do not let that obscure what happened: nearly 1,900 Iranian civilians killed, 26,000 injured, the bombs paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars, the threats of war crimes still on the table.
Officials call their targets “infrastructure.” That word hides schools, water systems, power lines. The things every town in America relies on.
I want to tell you who lives behind that language. In 2019, I traveled to Iran with a peace delegation. We went to see what years of sanctions and escalating hostility had done to ordinary people, and to meet them face to face while we still could. Before I left, friends called it scary. Some called me naive.
Let me tell you about the scary moments.
A car came charging at me in the street. It was Tehran, a metropolitan area of 14 million people. I was jaywalking. A man with an earpiece walked straight toward me, eyes locked and intense, and nearly knocked me over. He was staring at his phone. A young man approached me with a notebook open. He wanted to practice his English. Seven young men surrounded me and peppered me with questions from every angle. They were soldiers on their day off, excited to meet an American wandering around alone. We took selfies. My government-assigned minder asked to see my phone, right after showing me pictures of his children and calling his wife so I could say hello.
This is the banality of everyday life in a very, very scary country.
Our tour guide told me he photographs every group when they arrive and again just before they leave. Same story every time: they arrive looking afraid. They leave laughing.
That gap between fear and reality is not an accident. It is manufactured by the U.S. government and much of our media, which have spent decades building Iran into a monolith of evil, because that image makes war easier to sell. It also happens to be false.
On that trip, I met former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. I visited a school for underprivileged children, talked with a nuclear scientist, a university student who explained why she chants “Death to America,” another who was lamenting that he couldn’t afford a cell phone because of the sanctions, and a carpet merchant at the bazaar. And I spent time with a guide I will call Nasrin, a name I have changed to protect her identity.
Nasrin was sharp, warm, and completely clear-eyed about the problems in her country. She told me about her rebellious teenage daughter, about how U.S. sanctions had cut her off from basic financial apps, shrunk her income, and made fewer tourists willing to come. At the airport, controlled by the Revolutionary Guard, she walked us inside. Once through the doors, she quickly extended her hand and shook mine. Outside, she said, there were too many eyes. That handshake could have cost her her job. It was a small act of resistance, the kind Iranian women make every day, on their own terms.
Here is what our delegation came home understanding: Many Iranians I met went out of their way to welcome Americans, even while criticizing U.S. policy. When we met in 2019, Zarif said it plainly: “The U.S. difficulty with Iran is not because of the region, not because of human rights, not because of nuclear weapons. It’s because we decided to be independent. That’s our biggest crime.”
I have stayed in touch with Nasrin and another guide, whom I will call Dariush, since I returned. We check in on holidays and throughout the year, sharing updates about our families. They are not abstractions to me. They are friends whom I want to visit with my family one day.
When the U.S. strikes began, I reached out on WhatsApp. Nasrin responded once. Dariush did not respond at all. Since then, every message I send to both of them shows as not delivered. I check every day to see if the second checkmark appears. It does not. My personal concern for my friends is also a documented consequence of active warfare.
I do not know if they are cut off from the internet. I do not know if they are alive. What I know is that the missiles were paid for with my taxes, launched by my government, in my name. I am a peace professional. I oppose all war. But this one did not even clear the lowest bar: no vote in Congress, no declaration of war, none of the democratic checks that exist precisely so that no president can send your neighbor’s kid to war on a whim.
Not a policy debate.
Two names on a phone screen.
A message that will not deliver.
The people of Iran do not deserve what the U.S. government is doing to them. And we should not be a people who go along with it.
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