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The U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran on Feb. 28 that targeted military and civilian infrastructure, missile launchers, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and triggered hundreds of retaliatory missiles from Iran.

More than 1,200 civilians have been killed so far in the conflict, Iran reports, while nearly 10,000 civilian sites have been hit and 3.2 million Iranians have been displaced. An ongoing military investigation also determined the U.S. is responsible for a deadly strike on an Iranian elementary school, according to a report from the New York Times. 

President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have offered shifting, conflicting explanations for the war with Iran — now entering its third week — including the regime’s nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile capabilities and its support for groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Rubio said that the U.S. abandoned negotiations and bombed Iran because Israel had already attacked and Washington expected Iranian retaliation against U.S. bases. 

Before the strikes, in December 2025, massive anti-government protests erupted in Iran. The protests, driven largely by the economic crisis caused by U.S. imposed sanctions and regime corruption, were the largest since the 1979 revolution. The Iranian government killed thousands of protestors in response.

Aria Fani, a professor of Persian and Iranian studies at the UW, researches modern Iranian and Afghan histories and modern Persian literature and has been widely quoted in the media since the war began. He spoke with UW News about the U.S.-Israeli strikes, the impact on Iranians and more.

The spectacle of imperial violence is designed to demoralize a generation of youth all over this beautiful planet who dare to dream of a different system. To them I say: do not despair and work toward positive change at any level you can.

What should people know about how Iranians and the Iranian diaspora feel about the conflict?

Aria Fani: The Iranian diaspora is deeply fractured. A segment of Iranians in the West has advocated for war on Iran, while others have come out firmly against military intervention. Voices from within Iran appear conflicted as well, reflecting the precarity and desperation of the moment. As we have seen in Iraq, Venezuela and Cuba, the U.S. has relied on a security, economic and political apparatus that creates a state of paranoia for the ruling regime and collectively punishes the population, pushing them to the brink of despair. Equally undeniable is the Iranian regime’s brazen corruption, both moral and economic, and its violent repression of protesters.

When weighing in public opinion, as reflected in the media, we should not forget that the U.S. media has often proven itself to be a reliable partner for the military-industrial complex. The way in which pro-war voices are currently being amplified is a testament to this alignment. I immigrated to the United States when President George W. Bush was running for re-election and remember how the media failed to hold his administration to account. In many ways the media landscape is even worse today, as corporations and billionaires control a growing share of major outlets. Yet, unlike the early 2000s, we now also have a number of independent platforms that cover war with greater transparency and skepticism. 

On a personal note, as a teenager living under an Iranian regime that made anti-U.S. rhetoric a cornerstone of its revolutionary ideology, I held an abstract yet largely positive view of the U.S. Moving to the U.S. in 2004 — studying its history and traveling through and living in Latin American countries it has ravaged — profoundly shifted my perspective. Two wrongs do not make a right. The mantle of anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle has never been on the minds of this Iranian regime, but it is a mantle we cannot afford to put down for a livable planet. 

Iranian youth, much like their counterparts in places such as Hong Kong, Egypt and the United States, confront a militarized state that shows little regard for collective dignity and insatiable appetite for money and power. History teaches us that effecting durable change takes time. If change begins with a supposition of violence, it will undoubtedly end with more of the same. The spectacle of imperial violence is also designed to demoralize a generation of youth all over this beautiful planet who dare to dream of a different system. To them I say: do not despair and work toward positive change at any level you can.

What misconceptions about Iran do you see in Western media?

AF: The military-industrial complex thrives on generating hysteria and fear of racialized others. A familiar example is the claim that the Iranian regime is an ideological actor hellbent on the total destruction of the West. Yet the same regime entered into a nuclear agreement in 2015 with the United States and other world powers that placed its nuclear program under international scrutiny. Unlike the United States and Israel, both of which possess hundreds of nuclear weapons — the U.S. remains the only country that has used them — Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and its nuclear facilities were regularly monitored before the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Like Iraq, Iran is being attacked not because it has nuclear weapons, but because it does not. 

Every time politicians sell the public a new war, the narrative is predictably the same: baseless claims of an imminent threat paired with promises that military objectives will be easily attainable and the suffering minimal. However, Israel and the United States have a documented history of destroying civilian infrastructure; we have seen this clearly in Gaza and Beirut. That it is happening again breaks my heart. Whether one believes the current war is justified or not — and on what grounds — the abuse of power and violation of international laws through which it is conducted should concern everyone. Equally disturbing is the role of religious fundamentalism as evidenced by references to the end of times. 

Let me be clear again: the Iranian regime’s willingness to engage in diplomacy abroad does nothing to absolve it of state violence, which it directs at any form of dissent. The regime poses a deadly threat to its own people and to Iran’s ecology, as evidenced by the brutal suppression of protesters in recent weeks.

Vengeance does not offer a positive agenda for the working class and minoritized Iranians. The greatest victims in war are civilians and the infrastructure on which their lives depend.

How will this conflict impact Iran and its people in ways that are being overlooked?

AF: There are those in my community who accept any collateral damage if it means the Islamic Republic might ultimately collapse. This mindset is profoundly dangerous. For decades, the Iranian regime has invoked the men it lost during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) to justify cracking down on dissent years after the war ended. In effect, the regime has argued that any sacrifice at home is justified if it preserves the revolutionary state. Yet some of its most ardent opponents now accept the same logic in reverse: that widespread bloodshed and ecological destruction are acceptable if it leads to the regime’s downfall.

Even more troubling is that their idea of who counts as part of the “regime” is dangerously broad. It is not difficult to imagine a similarly vengeful purge to the one carried out by the regime’s own founders in 1979, should the regime fall. My mother recounts how her father — the Friday prayer imam in Shiraz — fled Iran after the Islamic Revolution because he was aligned with the Shah. He was never in the Shah’s regime, a fact that mattered little to those who were doing the purging. We cannot break the cycle of violence by doing one last purge.  

Vengeance does not offer a positive agenda for the working class and minoritized Iranians. The greatest victims in war are civilians and the infrastructure on which their lives depend. The more bombs that fall, the further we move from the day when those responsible for atrocities against the Iranian people might be held accountable.

For a big segment of the Iranian diaspora to throw up their hands and say, “bomb them,” is not an act of courage but the greatest abdication of collective responsibility. And to ask the same power that has economically strangled Iran to save it through its bombs is the stuff of Orwellian fiction. Millions of American voters feel deeply disempowered by the ongoing dismantling of democratic institutions here at home. Yet who among them would seriously advocate for their country to be bombarded by a foreign power? 

The world has changed in the wake of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. One thing seems increasingly clear: the cheerleaders of today’s war will later warn about a “caravan of Muslim refugees” supposedly arriving to invade the nation. This is already happening, as Iranian Christians have been deported back to Iran. While I do not begrudge any of my suffering compatriots celebrating the downfall of a brutal dictator, history suggests that the only actors ultimately left dancing on the global stage will be weapons manufacturers and oil industry executives. 

For more information, contact Lauren Kirschman at lkirsc@uw.edu.