The Iran war is being driven by bad actors across the board and without concern for the people whose lives are most immediately and irrevocably impacted. As a result, ordinary Iranians are facing the double danger of a war of aggression in the midst of continuing state-based repression and violence.
As an Iranian-Irish and US-Irish couple who have been working for more than 20 years in the fields of human rights and peace studies, this war feels very personal to us. We condemn the serial, systematic and lethal violations of fundamental rights and freedoms by the Islamic regime as well as the illegal, irresponsible and deadly nature of the US-Israel military intervention.
In our house, there is irreparable family loss related to the 1980-’88 Iran-Iraq War. We know all too well how the repercussions of such international conflicts span generations. We have also witnessed how the calculated violence of thousands of executions and imprisonments perpetrated by the Islamic regime over 47 years has left a space empty at the table of too many friends.
Some Iranians, both in the country and among the diaspora, have welcomed military intervention as a way to be rid of a brutal regime from which there seems no other escape. Faced with a corrupt state that kills its own citizens without accountability, these groups believe there is an opportunity in war to escape the prison of theocracy in Iran.
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Any sense of opportunity, however, is fast being overshadowed by the reality of war. We do not yet have reliable damage assessments or casualty numbers and, due to low internet connectivity, it is difficult to access trusted information about what is happening on the ground. But we do know that many people inside Iran feel trapped and exposed without bunkers or air raid shelters in which to seek protection. There are no sirens before attacks and no warnings. The credible reports we do have describe the increasing prevalence of explosions, the pervasive sound of fighter jets, houses shaking and windows breaking. There has been a substantial rise in the numbers of armed revolutionary guards and checkpoints on the streets. A word repeated again and again in civilian reports is “vahshatnak” – frightening.
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On March 12th UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, confirmed that up to 3.2 million people have been temporarily displaced inside Iran as a result of the war. And Unicef reports that since February 28th more than 1,100 children have been injured or killed across the region as a result of the war; this includes the children who were among the 175 deaths recorded at a primary school in Minab in southern Iran.
Iranians have received threats issued by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the form of automated push messages to their mobile phones. These indicate that the revolutionary guards will treat any dissent as an act of terrorism. There have also been threats made by the Iranian prosecutor-general’s office and regime media outlets to Iranians living outside of Iran, which threaten consequences to those who speak up against the regime.
Yet despite the regime’s continuing hold on power, most evidence suggests the majority of Iranians wish to see an end to the Islamic republic, and a transition to a new form of government. This position has crystallised following the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement and the Islamic regime’s bloody suppression of protests in January 2026. Even with this common goal, questions of transitional co-ordination and leadership remain in dispute. These questions will not be resolved by a new government representing US neo-imperial interests. Nor will Iran flourish as a free country through a continuation of the rotten politics of the Islamic regime by another name. As a result the current moment is fraught. There is an opening for change, but no clear path forward.
Polls in the US show that a majority of Americans oppose the war with Iran, its lack of a specific objective, and its enormous cost, which by the Pentagon’s figures is estimated at over $11 billion in the first week. The war has not been authorised by Congress, and popular opposition includes parts of Maga that favour a more isolationist politics. At the same time, the war has focused attention on the increasingly dangerous influence of US Christian nationalism in international affairs.
The differences in opinion on this war, which have been evident in many protests and counter-protests, demonstrate that this is not a binary conflict that breaks cleanly along national lines.
Rather, it represents multiple contests in an international context: rule of law versus brute force; democratic accountability versus autocratic exercise of power; reason versus madness. Trump is not offering liberation for Iran, and the Islamic regime is not offering resistance to empire. Both are bullies buying time to navigate domestic protests, to test the limits of their power and to rally their political base on a war footing. In the worst-case scenario, the war will be claimed as a victory by both the Islamic regime and Trump, and each will use it to consolidate capricious political power to their own respective advantage. The only other winner will be the arms industry; violent aggression against violent repression cannot deliver anything better than the sum of its parts.
Even so, many Iranians remain hopeful for the future, hopeful of a viable political transition. This must be rooted in serious diplomacy and careful planning and it must pursue justice and accountability for historical wrongs, encourage confidence in new national institutions and ensure core human rights protections – including freedom of religion or belief, women’s rights, and minority rights.
The longer this war lasts, the harder that process becomes. The need to repair critical civil infrastructure, cultural patrimony and regional ecosystems will complicate other aspects of transitional justice. A number of hospitals and schools, significant heritage sites in Tehran and Isfahan, and desalination plants such as Qeshm have been damaged.
War comes to this world with an even more terrible aspect when it is waged by mendacious men who, in their own crude throes of self-preservation, entitlement and acquisitiveness, condemn the innocent to death. This war reflects a culture of might is right. Our shared future, and the best hope for a free Iran, lies elsewhere – with those members of the international community who continue to work for just democratic outcomes against the excesses of unchecked power.
Prof Roja Fazaeli, who was born in Iran, is established professor of Law and Islamic Studies at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, University of Galway. Dr Joel Hanisek is research fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway.
