“We are Overwhelmed by Despair”

Everyone is in a severe state of shock. Daily life has been completely disrupted. As much as we can, we don’t leave the house; right now, there isn’t a single neighborhood in Tehran that has remained untouched. Our windows have all been shattered as a result of the strikes. The intensity of the attacks in just the past two or three days has been greater than the total of the previous twelve days of war in June 2025. Many people have left Tehran—for example, to the north or to other places they believe are safer.

In the past few days, because of internet shutdowns and heavy jamming of satellite channels, we’ve had very little opportunity to access foreign media. Our priority is following moment-by-moment news of the war rather than analysis.

Friends and relatives who have children aren’t sending them to school. That means they have to look after their kids at home 24 hours a day—at a time when the children deeply feel the war and everyone is experiencing intense anxiety. Usually, several families or even groups of friends are staying together in one house. We ourselves are extremely anxious, but we also have to manage the anxiety of others. But compared to the lives of all these people who have been killed, all this destruction, and the dangerous future I see ahead, these are not the most important things right now.

As a feminist, I am completely opposed to war and any military attack. But I know many people around me who initially welcomed the attack in the hope of regime change - especially because of the massacre the regime committed during previous protests. Some of them have changed their minds in just these past two or three days, especially after experiencing war up close -for example, the innocent little girls who were all killed in the bombing of a school in Minab.

As a woman who opposes war, the moment I express my opinion, I face a wave of extremely sexist insults, misogynistic remarks and online intimidation. Many of these people claim to defend women’s rights and freedom, yet they silence the voice of a woman who opposes war. Verbal violence, especially on social media, has risen sharply. Completely unlike the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in 2022, public discourse right now is dominated by violent, hyper-masculine and anti-woman language. There is no tolerance for dialogue or patience for hearing opposing views anymore. If you oppose the war, you are immediately labeled a supporter of a bloodthirsty, dictatorial regime. If you support the war, you are immediately labeled a traitor, a sellout, or a foreign agent.

The streets are very empty. Security forces and Basij forces [volunteer militia within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] are present in neighborhoods under attack. They’ve set up checkpoints to prevent people from suddenly thinking about protests or uprising. But in these past few days, I haven’t seen them harassing women over hijab. Iranian state television, meanwhile, is showing images - clearly for propaganda purposes - of unveiled women whose homes have been damaged in the attacks.

The Iranian women’s rights movement has been fighting for 150 years, advancing step by step every day. This struggle is deep-rooted and multilayered, the result of decades of women’s efforts in political, legal, cultural, academic, artistic and civil spheres.

Turning the suffering of Iranian women into a tool for political or geopolitical competition is dangerous. When women’s rights become a pretext to justify war, in practice the safety and lives of the very women who are supposedly meant to be “protected” are put at even greater risk.

Honestly, many of us - myself and many of my friends - are now so overwhelmed by despair and disillusionment with the international community and the games of international politics that we no longer have any hope for meaningful support from them. Those who hear us have no power. Those who have power do not listen.

What was the point of all the analysis and research about the Iraq War and the lessons that could be learned from it? Whose ears did the voices of women affected by previous wars ever reach, that ours would reach anyone now? I don’t think the people who started this war truly care about us, and I don’t expect them to suddenly repent tomorrow.

The writer is a women’s rights activist based in Tehran.