Iran is suspended between war and prolonged uncertainty, drifting from fear into numb exhaustion as everyday talk swings between hope, rage, and the fading sense of a shared future.
When human life has no value—both in the eyes of the government and of the loud, attention-seeking opposition—death loses its aura, and no one is afraid of dying anymore.
It seems people are watching themselves standing in a line of the dead; it makes no difference whether they are killed by a military strike or whether their own lives and those of their loved ones spill onto the ground in a street protest. What has exhausted and demoralized people more than ever is the lengthening of this line: the waiting for an attack.
Satellite TV channels and the overseas social-media sphere constantly speak of the imminent possibility of a strike. Domestic media speak of revenge and of executing detained protesters from the January uprising. At the same time, some influencers teach “survival tips” for the moment of attack: what foods to stockpile, what to do for a pet, and how to keep an emergency bag—essentials, medicines, chargers, flashlights, water bottles—always packed and within reach. In doing so, they boost their view counts, even as others insist that war will not target civilians, that today’s wars are not like the old ones, and that this would be a war of “precision strikes.”
With heads lowered into their phones, people ask each other more desperately than ever: how likely is a U.S. military strike? Trading this question and its answers, they look for a clue—should they fear war, or feel relieved if it happens?
In such a situation, the dollar exchange rate keeps jumping. In affluent neighborhoods, chain stores are emptied and refilled again and again. Those who can afford it buy as much staple food as they can; in poorer areas and on the city’s margins, there is no sign of stockpiling. Even the pre-Nowruz season (March 20/21) feels unlike other years, and local street markets—less lively than before—watch customers pass by without buying anything.
The Scent of Nowruz in the Heart of Darkness
A metro hawker pulls two small bottles from his coat pocket. Inside each bottle, two tiny fish—no bigger than a teenager’s thumbnail—swim. Price per bottle: 160,000 tomans. One or two people take a bottle and stare at the fish. The vendor says, “Buy it—otherwise it’ll be 200,000 by Nowruz.” A woman, worn out from work, asks: “Do you think we’ll even live to see the new year?” Another answers: “God willing there won’t be a war, and this Nowruz will come and go happily.”
A young woman lifts her head from her phone and smirks at them. She says: “I wish war would come sooner, so we can finally be done with this.” A sensible older woman nearby says: “My girl, if you’d ever seen war, you wouldn’t say that! You saw the anxiety of those twelve days too, but you still have a long way to go before you understand what real war means.” The girl shrugs and retreats back into her phone.
The hawker slips the bottles back into his pocket and says: “You have to always hope. Maybe there won’t be a war and we’ll have no Nowruz fish.” And he laughs. One or two laugh with him—coldly, drained, full of questions, waiting, and worried.
A relationship can be drawn between war talk and the intensity of social media use: the more absorbed someone is in Instagram, the greater their acceptance of—and waiting for—war.
These days, a flood of Google searches includes phrases like: “What time is the U.S. attack on Iran tonight?” “Likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iran tonight,” “Time of the U.S. attack on Iran,” “What percentage chance is there of a U.S. attack on Iran?” and so on. But these questions are not heard in the bakery line, while waiting for the metro, or in places where people can actually talk face to face.
In face-to-face settings, people watch each other’s eyes and mouths to see whether they can find any hope for relief in the other person’s expression. They avoid asking directly about war—not because they fear stating their own opinion. Stating an opinion means finding agreement, reassurance that you are not alone. But asking a question opens the possibility of disagreement—and these days, hearing disagreement is frightening.
One person wants to hear from another: “Come on, it’s nothing—he’ll hit and leave,” and the other replies: “No, it’s like this! He said this time he’ll hit much harder than before. What will happen to our kids?!” A woman says she has a nursing baby and cannot sleep at night out of fear. A man waiting in an ATM line says: “Those sitting abroad are happy for it to come and strike—let a bunch of people get killed so they can come back, comfortable and smug.” Someone else responds: “It’s not like that—they have family here too; they worry as well.” A voice from behind silences everyone: “Don’t talk about war—my mother has heart palpitations!”
The line shifts, and you see a mother and daughter staring at some undefined point, as if they weren’t just speaking. The hypermarket cashier, tallying prices, lets out a long sigh and says: “Damn Trump! Why doesn’t he just come and hit so we can be done with it?” When asked whether he supports war, he says: “Man, we’re tired of this uncertainty. Every day he says he’ll hit, then he says he won’t…”
The Revival of a Widely Used Proverb
There are still those who say they do not follow the news at all and want nothing to do with any of it. A female engineer working in an IT company, when asked about the likelihood of war and the future more generally, says: “This is beyond my control. I don’t struggle over something I can’t confront, can’t stop, and can’t affect—because it’s useless. I try to fill my life with the moments I do have: taking care of my son, doing my work, and getting on with things.” Her mother continues: “She spent her whole childhood in war, when her father was at the front. The fear of losing him has always stayed with her. That’s why the only thing that matters now is that he survives the severe illness he developed—and fortunately he has gotten through the hardest days.”
This small hope—life, and staying alive—is what the young engineer and her mother do not want to ruin by obsessing over why, where, how, and when war might come. But their concern, like most people’s, is economic more than anything else. The mother says: “Those who want war don’t have a bad economic situation. They’re not living hand-to-mouth; if something happens, they can get by with their savings.”
And yet among the lower classes there are those who see war as a blessing—a way out of the nightmare of having nothing—and they have no patience for analysis. They want that if war is like lightning, it should strike quickly and leave. If it hits their house, it hits; at least the tormenting thought would be over.
By contrast, a children’s book writer who drives for a ride-hailing app says: “I have not taken a single coin from the state in my life. I have no insurance, and I don’t have my hand out to the government. Books were already in a slump—now it’s worse. I don’t write for income. But I don’t want war for even a second. Why? Because all this infrastructure—built over forty years with all the theft and rent-seeking—was built by cutting into people’s lives. Should all of it be destroyed overnight? Do those who want war even know how they’d live afterward? Do they even know what it means to have no energy?”
He continues: “It sounds pretty to say everything should be turned upside down so that, if we survive, we’ll be saved—but what kind of salvation is that, on top of ruins? Someone who longs for war has not seen destruction. Either they have no imagination, or they speak from a warm, safe place and know war won’t harm them or their family. At most, they’ll mourn online for a few days—very stylishly—and then go drink, watch TV, and return to their routine.”
One point that emerges from people’s remarks—especially among the younger—is a fear of opposing war. If someone says war is bad—especially if they have friends who beat the war drum online—they are labeled a supporter of the status quo, and that can get them pushed out by their peers.
In the sauna of a swimming pool, a young man leans against the steamy wall and says: “If I say war is bad, my cousin won’t talk to me anymore!” His laughter disappears into the steam, along with the lines of his face. For a moment I look—he seems no longer there.
The point is that no one is worried about dying anymore—not about losing loved ones or their own life. Everyone is worried about an unknown future over which war has drawn a curtain. Young people—who even before this were suffocating under the absence of any clear horizon—now, seeing this curtain before everyone’s eyes, live less in fear of war; as if the absence of a future is something they have already experienced.
And yet there are still those who look toward hope and a future—like a reporter at a small local newspaper who says: “The only possible way is gradual change through the power of civil society, without foreign intervention.” He speaks of the impact of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement on society—of headscarves that did not return to women’s heads—and considers it a sign of people’s power. But how many can hold onto such a long horizon? Thinking about war has made looking toward the future almost impossible.
Overall, a relationship can be drawn between war talk and the intensity of social media use: the more absorbed someone is in Instagram, the greater their acceptance of—and waiting for—war. On the other side, some media outlets beat the war drum, influencing audiences who trust them—even if, in private conversations, those audiences hold a different view. Without credible polling, no definitive judgment can be made; but from the evidence it seems that, in an unstable situation, the match is tied—tied in a semifinal in which one side must advance: the outbreak of war, or its non-occurrence.
