U.S.-Israeli War on Iran Hurts All Iranians, Including Regime Opponents

Interview with Naghmeh Sohrabi, Charles Goodman professor of Middle East History and director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, conducted by Scott Harris

war on iran atrocities

Naghmeh Sohrabi discusses the impact of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and average Iranian people not generally discussed in U.S. media, as explored in her blog, “These Are the True Things,” which focuses on stories written by Iranians coping with life inside the Islamic Republic.

SCOTT HARRIS: And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with Naghmeh Sohrabi, who’s the Charles Goodman professor of Middle East History and director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. We’re going to be talking about her important blog that really amplifies the voices of average Iranians who aren’t heard much in our media at all and certainly not during this war. So we’re looking forward to that.

But before we get to our first guest, Naghmeh, I did want to just summarize some of the just very dark news coming out of this war. As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its sixth week, President Trump is warning he will bomb Iranian power plants and bridges by tomorrow if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s threats, which would constitute war crimes, came in a profanity-laced Truth Social post on Easter Sunday, in which Trump wrote, “Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the “f—n strait, you crazy bastards or you’ll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah.”

That’s a direct quote from Donald Trump—what many characterized as an unhinged—social media post just the other day, Sunday. Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy responded to Trump’s threat by posting in social media this statement: “If I were in Trump’s cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more. “That’s a quote from U.S. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. And of course, the 25th Amendment is one way in which a majority vote by the presidential cabinet can remove a president from office. And this morning, Iranian state media is reporting that Majid Khademi, the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike.

There’s been other really bad news in terms of missile strikes and petrochemical factories; people unable to breathe in some cities where they’ve been affected by this destruction. And thousands of people have been killed across Iran and now more than a thousand in Lebanon as well, as this war expands.

But right now, I’m very happy to welcome to our program, Naghmeh Sohrabi, again, Charles (Corky) Goodman professor of Middle East History and director of research at the Crown Center for the Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Professor Sarabi writes “These Are the True Things” blog, amplifying the voices of Iranian people rarely heard in U.S. media. Naghmeh, thank you so much for making time to join us tonight.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Thank you for having me.

SCOTT HARRIS: So first of all, please tell our listeners about your blog, “These Are the True Things” where you feature your own writing. But importantly, too, the writing of ordinary Iranians, some of whom you know personally, having grown up in Iran in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. But tell us about the blog. I think it’s important for our listeners to understand this really valuable resource for gaining an insight into what’s going on inside this country certainly before this war, but even more importantly, now that our nation is engaged in this very dark and deadly war against Iran.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Absolutely. And I really appreciate you giving me this time to talk about it. And I obviously agree with you about it’s really important for us Americans to actually hear the voices of the people who our country is at war with. “These Are the True Things” is a Substack, which means that you can go subscribe to it, you’ll get it in your mailbox just delivered or you can read it on the app or on the website.
And I started it because my mother has a tendency to say, “These are the true things” when she agrees with someone or she thinks someone made a good point. As you mentioned, I write about—I’m an expert on Iran. I’m a professor of Middle East history, but my specialty is on modern Iranian history. And I provide analysis, but at some point it was before the war as your listeners might know, there were massive protests in Iran at the end of December into January and on Jan. 8th and 9th.
The Iranian government very brutally suppressed these protests and over two days they killed over 7,500 people. And the idea for shifting the Substack to platforming Iranian voices came to me after that real … I mean, that moment, Jan. 8th and 9th was such a massive moment of communal grieving for a lot of Iranians. And yet, despite this blow that people have that had gone into the streets with the hopes that they would change the government, which has been mismanaging the economy and brutally suppressing descent—they thought they were going to change it and the reaction was a level of violence that the population had actually not experienced before that.
And it caught my attention that despite this, despite the fact that the government immediately on Jan. 8th shut down the Internet and limited communications between Iran and the outside world, people pulled themselves out of that grief and were beginning to start talking about, “How can we turn this around? How can we create a space? And how can we think about our future despite this tragedy that we as a society had experienced?” Almost everybody in Iran knew someone who had been lost in those two days. Primarily, a lot of intellectuals, journalists, students were at the forefront of creating spaces. And their idea was that we create spaces in which differing opinions will come together and talk about the moments that we were in. And so I began profiling these very singular, very unique ways of dealing with such a massive tragedy.

Unfortunately, the war actually—which started on Feb. 28th—put an end to that. After three weeks, after the Jan. 8th massacres, the Internet came back on and we had access to a lot of these voices. With the beginning of the war, the Internet has been shut down, communications are very, very limited between the world and Iran. And yet people, I’ve noticed because I’m in touch with so many of them and I can talk about that later, have managed to get their voices out. They’re still thinking, they are still … they’re not hopeful, but they still believe that there is a way out of it.

Unfortunately, that process that had started before the war though, the war has put an end to it. Universities are shut down. Schools are shut down. People are in a communications blackout and are in constant bombardment. In fact, they’re being bombarded as we speak right now.

SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that summary of this important blog. And you know what? I’m going to mention this at the conclusion of our conversation tonight, but mention how folks can subscribe briefly, if you would, right here, and we’ll repeat it.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: You just go to the website. It’s called truethings.naghmehs, that’s Naghmeh Sohrabi, or just look for “These Are the True Things.” And when you get there, there’ll be a little box and you put your email in. It’s for free and you subscribe.

SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks for that. We’ll repeat that for folks who might not have jotted that down. I wanted to ask your personal reaction to this U.S.-Israeli war against Iran that has killed thousands now with President Trump’s most recent threat to unleash hell on Iran by targeting civilian infrastructure like the electrical grid, energy production, universities, desalination plants and even a threat to take over Iran’s oil. And of course, there was the Trump comment that if the leaders of Iran did not comply with his demands, they would send Iran back to the Stone Age. What’s your reaction to that, knowing people who are either for or against this regime that’s very much disliked, as you talked about, what’s your reaction to this in what many people might call collective punishment?

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: I mean, I can’t speak to what President Trump is going to do or not do and what his reasons are. So why don’t I just use this time to say a couple of things. One is that I think it’s really important for us to know that civilian infrastructures have already been attacked. There’s a threat as if the attacks on civilian infrastructure is looming. It is not looming. It has happened. And I can give you a series of examples.

Yesterday, for example, Shadif University was bombed. Shadif University , often considered to be akin to MIT, which is my alma mater, also. It is a engineering and technical university. It’s the pride. The best students often in Iran go to Shadif University. They’re very proud of themselves for doing that. It’s hard to get into. It’s not the only university that has been bombed.
And it’s really important to remember that these are civilian infrastructures in that, first of all—it’s a university, so it’s a big part of society. It’s a big part of the future of any society. But also importantly, if we care about a democratic future for Iran, if we care about Iran opening up and not being under a repressive regime, so many of the protests that listeners have heard of, for example, the Women Life Freedom Movement, actually was happening within the grounds of this university, these universities, including Shadif University. So that’s one example.
Another example of, for example, infrastructure. When we talk about infrastructure, it’s mentioned … We think of power, electrical grid. We talk about water desalination and these are crucial, crucial infrastructures. But for example, last week they bombed the Mobarakeh steel factory complex, and this complex is within … it’s a built city is around it and not just the Mobarakeh, but other ones that they’ve already bombed. For example, Mobarakeh is connected to 20,000 households who are being employed, whose livelihood comes out of this complex that was bombed.

Now, when we say, “Well, it’s only military and not civilian,” we forget that any country’s infrastructure is civilian and might have military uses, but they’re all complicated and connected to each other. So already that has happened. There is a huge fear since Sunday when President Trump put out his Truth Social in Iran that what is coming though is going to be basically bombing the electrical grids, electrical power plants and water supplies. And that then moves this war from a devastating war that has affected thousands and thousands and thousands, and millions of people. Let’s not forget that Iran is a country of over 91 million people. This war is affecting every single one of them, but something like that would actually be a turning point, even though civilian infrastructure has been bombed, that would basically be about starving a population and driving them into the ground.

So Stone Age gives a sense to people that there’s nobody there when we think of a Stone Age. We think about an empty landscape, but Iran is a very densely populated country and so bombing it into the Stone Age basically would mean that we would not just kill—we keep talking about killing people—but this is not about the people who are dead, which is horrible, but it’s about how the people who are left behind are going to be able to live.

SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, Naghmeh. I wanted to ask you to share some of the stories that you’ve received from people inside Iran during this war and how they’ve been personally affected, they and their families on the death and destruction that’s been wrought on the country since the start of this war, Feb. 28th.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: So I platform a wide variety of people. I platform, as I mentioned, journalists, intellectuals, artists and writers. And I do that in addition to ordinary everyday people whose job might not be to write. I do that because Iran is a country, it’s a highly educated country and this group of people are really at the forefront of forging a new path despite both the war and the repression. And I platform them because one of the common ideas that comes out of what they’re writing and posting on their Instagrams or on Telegram channel—it’s a very common idea amongst that segment of the population that it is possible to be anti-war and anti-Islamic government. A false choice has been presented to multiple publics, including our publics here, that if you are against the Islamic Republic of Iran, that you should be for this kind of foreign intervention. Or, if you are against this foreign intervention, that means that you support the Islamic Republic.

But these people under this severe bombardment and this uncertainty for the future are capable of articulating a path forward that says we neither agree with this foreign aggression: “We do not agree with the actions of Israel and the United States, not just towards us, but towards the region.” Let’s not forget that there’s over one million displaced people in Lebanon in a war that was started on March 6. It is connected, but it is happening through its own logic. So there is a lot of grief happening in the region and of course, all the countries in the region that Iran in response to this aggression has been bombing.
But these people are able to articulate such a nuanced and such a powerful and in some ways hopeful position despite this lack of hope. And I platform it because it needs to be heard, but also because one of the questions I keep thinking to myself is, why do we not have an anti-war movement in America?
I think it’s a really good question. It’s an important question for all of us to consider and think about, which is why is it that when our country is spending our money, quite a lot of it on a daily basis to bomb a country in which we are not only not benefiting, but we will also feel this after effect. We talk about the rising price of gasoline in this country. That is a real, real, real thing. But let’s not forget all the other things that are going to over the short and medium term affect us. When there is this level of environmental damage, even if it’s in the Middle East, it is going to have a global effect. We already feel that we already know that there is food shortage happening in the region because of what is going on with the Persian Gulf and because of the tanker wars and the closing of the strait.
American farmers are already feeling the cost of fertilizer prices going up. They are changing the way in which they’re planting crops. That is going to have a direct effect on us. So this is both a moral and a practical war. And I bring these voices on the platform just also as a way for us to think about how can we articulate a very difficult position in the position that we have. If they can articulate it, perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned for us here in the United States where bombs are not falling on us. And so we have more of a luxury to think through the moral positions that we want to take. In terms of everyday life for people, I would say that people, 91 million people have not slept through the night since the war started because the bombings are continuous and as importantly, the jet fighters are flying very low over the city.
There’s the sound of drones, there’s the sound of planes constantly in the city, in multiple cities in Iran, but Tehran in particular where I know the most amount of people. And that has actually a huge effect on people’s mental health. As I mentioned, schools have been out. So you basically have these kids who are … they just started remote learning. It’s both remote learning in terms of Zoom, but also just television is saying, “Here’s some lessons that you have to learn” and people have to watch the television and take their lessons. Universities are out and basically communal life is being atomized as a result of this war. And you read it and you feel it in people’s writings and also the things that they tell you.
And there’s of course just the physical destruction. So when these targeted bombings happen, they might hit their target, but Iran is, as I mentioned, a dense country and urban center. Tehran has a population of roughly 11 million people. So when a bomb falls on this one house that was the target, what happens is the shock blast of these bombs reverberate throughout the neighborhood and blasts windows out and doors out of their hinges. So while people again might not die, they have none of the life that they worked for is left. And Iran already, last year, about 30 percent of the population was under the poverty level and already the number is 40 percent. So it was economically struggling. In fact, the protests in December were because of economic reasons initially.
\And right now you have a situation in which these targeted bombings are actually taking away people’s homes. They’re sitting in these bombed out houses unable to … There’s nothing left really of their homes. They might be alive, but nothing is left. And I spoke too much, but I was wondering if you would allow me to just read a paragraph of something I translated today that brings us home, if I may.
SCOTT HARRIS: Sure. I wanted to make sure we had time for one story that particularly moved me, what I read, but go ahead and we’ll get to that story in a moment.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: It’s a couple of sentences. Yeah, sure. She wrote, “Debris, debris, debris. Not as a word, but as reality. Layer upon layer. Heavy, merciless. 12 people were killed, 16 housing units completely destroyed, but numbers show nothing. I saw a woman running with a hyacinth flower in her hand, holding it tightly as if she were to let it go, she too would collapse, as if that flower was the last witness of something called life just hours before.”

SCOTT HARRIS: Wow. Thank you for that. We’re speaking with Naghmeh Sohrabi and she writes, “These Are the True Things” blog, the voices of people in Iran. And we’ll mention the subscription information, how you can find that blog in a moment.
But Naghmeh, there was one story I read on your blog of an Iranian woman who during this war expressed conflicting emotions encountered when she came upon an Islamic Republic Basij soldier while driving her mother to a doctor’s appointment. And I thought that really spoke to this war, bringing people who have maybe little else in common together, which is what happens in a war when people are confronting an outside dire threat like they are now with the bombs falling.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Yes. I’m glad you mentioned it. That’s an essay that was written by a childhood friend of mine. She’s not a writer, but I forced her to keep a war diary and she sent it to me. And what she writes in that piece, it’s a very long piece as you know, but the segment that you mentioned is the checkpoint set up as the war is going on, because the Islamic Republic’s repressive arm is not functioning because there’s a war. So they have set up checkpoints all through the city. They check people’s cars. They want to make sure they’re not involved in anti-governmental activities. They call it a securitization. So as bombs are falling, people have to stand behind these checkpoints and get their cars checked by the Basij.

And in this story, she talks about how—because Israel, at the time that she was writing it— Israel was targeting these checkpoints. So just like—the bomb would just fall on the checkpoint and take out these Basijis who are in some ways brutalizing the population, but also are young men. They’re often under 20. And she talks about the story of how in this moment, as she gets to this checkpoint, this young Basiji actually wants to help her get her mother who’s going to the doctor out of the car and her heart just melts. Because at the end of the day, that encounter, the encounter between this man and this woman who are on different sides of the story is a human encounter. It becomes about a person wanting to help somebody else, despite everything that is going on.

And she talks about how her heart just broke, knowing that most likely in the next couple of days, another bomb is going to fall in this checkpoint and this young man is going to die.

And I’m really glad you mentioned this because that level of nuance and that level of just stripping politics out and becoming human is only possible when you are there. And it’s not just the story. It’s not just a political headline. It’s not just President Trump said this or the Islamic Republic Guard Corps said this, but it’s about humans living in a society together. And her essay, again, shows a way for something that we here in the United States also very much need—which is how to live a politics of empathy, how to have empathy even for somebody who does not want the best for you. And I really recommend that essay to people. So thank you for mentioning that.

SCOTT HARRIS: And what’s the title of that essay?

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: It’s called “A Catastrophe that Has Befallen All of Us.” And when she says all of us, she actually means both people like her who are anti-war and anti-Islamic Republic and the IRGC and the governmental actors.

SCOTT HARRIS: Well, Naghmeh, thank you so much for spending time with myself and our audience tonight. As you said, there’s a lot of nuance to what’s happening in Iran right now. And there’s a whole human dimension that we miss watching the news where there’s numbers mentioned of people killed, bombs dropped, all these video game-type videos of things exploding. It really dehumanizes what war is all about in terms of our media coverage and your blog and those like it are really an antidote to that kind of dehumanization. So much appreciation for the work you do on the blog and for joining us tonight. And to repeat, please do mention the way our listeners can subscribe.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Well, thank you so much, Scott, for having me and for giving me an opportunity to talk about it. You can go to, you can just Google, “These Are the True Things” with my last name, it’ll pop up or you can just go on the Substack app. Look for “These Are the True Things.” And when you get there, a box will open up and say, “Would you like to subscribe?” It’s for free. Just put in your email and every time I publish, I try to publish every two to three days. I am very exhausted, but I try to do two to three days and then you will just get the essay in your mailbox.

SCOTT HARRIS: Well, you have so much important information that you put on this website. I really want to stay in touch with you and have you back soon because there are going to be important stories that we might not hear otherwise. So I hope we can join you again on this one.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI: Absolutely. With pleasure.

SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you again.

Take care. Thank you very much.

NAGHMEH SOHRABI:  Take care.

SCOTT HARRIS: That’s Naghmeh Sohrabi, Charles (Corky) Goodman, professor of Middle East History at Brandeis University. She writes, “These Are the True Things” blog, the voices of real Iranians on all sides of the internal issues, but certainly giving a unique perspective on this war our nation and Israel is currently visiting upon the nation of Iran. Do stay in tuned. This is Counterpoint. My name is Scott Harris.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary