My deepest sympathies lie with the Iranian people, whose hearts are torn in many directions. Many long for freedom and dignity, yet they remain wary of the long history of Western imperial intervention across the world, including their own country.
The Iranian people who took to the streets in recent years did not call for one form of domination to replace another. They demanded an end to oppression in all its forms, not the beginning of a new round under the Western thumb. Nor did they want change at any cost.
At every step, history teaches us – these promises of freedom offered by the West are never fulfilled.
The reason is simple. The freedom of others is simply not on the Western agenda, no matter its public rhetoric. Imperialism of this nature does not want freedom; it wants control, domination, power and profit.
On March 4, as bombs were falling around him in Tehran, Mohamad Maljoo, an Iranian dissident, was finally able to connect to the internet. He wrote on his Telegram channel: “Those who claim that one can rain fire on the body of Iran in the name of striking the Islamic Republic while imagining that the people will remain unharmed either do not understand the reality of war or deliberately choose to ignore it. Bombs do not discriminate. Destruction does not operate selectively.”
The truth of his warning echoes from Palestine to Iran: “Life does not flourish in the shadow of oppression. Nor does it grow beneath the rubble of bombs.”
As a Palestinian, I feel the pain and determination in these words. I cannot help but feel solidarity.
We, Palestinians, know the horror of war in our bodies. We understand the shudders caused by yet another explosion, the tears of orphans and the despair of sleepless nights as fires burn everywhere. From the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) to the current Ibadah (destruction), we have felt the pain of genocide for many generations. We see the echoes of our experience in the plight of others.
The US-Israel war on Iran began with something all too familiar to us: a strike on a school.
According to UNICEF, an average of a classroom full of children was killed each day for two years in Gaza; 432 out of the Strip’s 564 schools sustained “direct hits” from the Israeli army.
The Shajareh Tayyebeh, a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab in southern Iran, was also a “direct hit”. About 170 young girls between the ages of six and 12 and staff were killed by two high-precision US-made Tomahawk missiles on February 28.
After the initial strike, teachers rushed to protect the students. Paramedics hurried to the scene to rescue the wounded. And then, a second bomb fell.
It was a double-tap strike – a horror of modern-day warfare that people of Gaza know all too well. It is designed to kill its target and then kill again those who come to the rescue.
Like in Gaza, the attack on the girls’ school in Minab did not remain an exception. Over the past three weeks, Israel and the United States have rained death and destruction on public spaces across Iran. Schools, hospitals, sports halls, stadiums, stores, cafes, bazaars and historical sites have been attacked. More than 5,000 residential units have been hit, and over 1,900 civilians have been killed.
As in Gaza, the cumulative goal is not only physical destruction, but also the spread of fear and terror. The targeting of civilian spaces thus operates as a form of psychological warfare — an assault on the very idea of safety and normality.
Targeting civilian infrastructure is against international law. Yet the US and Israel view international legal norms through the lens of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly expressed his disdain for the rules of engagement, calling them “stupid”.
By now, it is clear that Gaza has served as Israel’s laboratory, as a testing ground, for the vision it seeks to impose across the entire region.
Just days ago, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a chilling warning: “Dahiyeh [in southern Beirut] will look like Khan Younis.”
The destruction of Khan Younis – my hometown – has become the new model of devastation to be repeated elsewhere. In Lebanon, in the span of 20 days, this model has resulted in the massacre of nearly 1,100 people, including 120 children – a full classroom every three days.
What we witness in Gaza travels to Lebanon, then on to Iran.
What is the ultimate goal? The consolidation of Israeli hegemony in the region. The strategy is not necessarily the complete overthrow of the Iranian regime, but rather to break the Iranian state itself and significantly curtail its capacity to project power. A weakened or broken Iran would no longer be an obstacle to Israeli regional supremacy.
All this is happening with the full support of the US. Just last month, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee voiced his approval for Israeli expansion into “Greater Israel”.
Other Western powers have also consented, supporting the illegal war on Iran, albeit refusing to commit their own troops, ships and aircraft.
In his poem “The Earth Is Closing on Us”, Mahmoud Darwish wrote:
“Where should we go after the last frontier?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?”
Soon, this may become the reality for the entire region. Under Israel’s absolute and unrestrained dominance, we will all feel as if we have nowhere left to go. What will life under this reality look like?
If Gaza is the laboratory, then we can picture that the region will burn in flames for years to come. Whenever Israel wants to, it will “mow the lawn” to impose its will over any government and to suppress any rebellion from the people of the region.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
