Kaitlyn Hughes | news writer

Asal Hamidi lived 29 years of her life in Iran, abiding by the rules of the Islamic Republic.

So when she got word that Israel and the United States launched airstrikes on her home country, she was overcome by a wave of emotions.

“It’s really complicated,” the Duquesne graduate student said.

On Feb. 28, Israel and the United States coordinated military operations against Iran.

Since then, the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed; Iran retaliated by attacking U.S. military bases, Israeli cities and oil fields in Gulf states; crude oil prices have skyrocketed and more than 1,200 people have died  — including seven U.S. Soldiers.

In the following days, Americans and Iranians both have spoken out with mixed feelings about the ongoing situation in the Middle East.

Devastation and hope

Kiarash Aramesh, an associate professor at Pennsylvania Western University in Edinboro who lived in Iran for 40 years, said Iranians have many differing viewpoints surrounding the war.

On one side, Aramesh said that Iranians are tired of the “brutal oppression” the Islamic Republic has put them through, and they think the only possible way to get rid of the current government is through the intervention of other countries.
But others are concerned about the impacts of the war, Aramesh said.

“This war will be devastating. Stopping the war without changing the government will also be devastating,” he said. “I’m not sure war will topple the government without having boots on the ground. For me, it’s not clear the war will be beneficial.”

Sogand Seddigh, a student at the University of Pittsburgh who is from Iran, remembers growing up under the rules of the Islamic Republic.

“I didn’t know how to write my own name, but I was getting told to say ‘death to the U.S., death to Israel,’” Seddigh said.

“It’s disgusting.”

Hamidi was familiar with similar rules.

She said they would tell kids in school “if you don’t wear your hijab you will burn in hell after you die.”

“We were kids, we believed it,” Hamidi said. “It’s ridiculous how they manipulate people’s minds.”

After thousands of Iranian citizens were killed during January protests, Seddigh said that intervention from the United States and Israel is the only way for the Iranian government to be taken down.

“No one in Iran is celebrating the war, but many Iranians are celebrating the death of the regime,” she said. “People in Iran prefer getting bombed by the U.S. than getting shot by the regime.”

Hamidi said she was shocked and happy to hear Ayatollah Khamenei was found dead. She attended a march in Washington, D.C., to celebrate his death.

“You have no idea how it is to live all your life under a dictator,” she said. “There was so much blood on his hands.”

But this does not mean Hamidi is not concerned about her home country.

“It’s an awful image,” Hamidi said about the current strikes hitting the city of Tehran. “People are hopeful that this war ends in a good way. We believe that we can rebuild the country. The only thing that’s gone forever is human life, but everything else you can rebuild.”

Weakening a government

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. and Iran have been in a state of enmity, said Mark Haas, a political science professor at Duquesne.

In June, Israel and the U.S. bombed nuclear sites in Iran. Haas said the latest conflict is different because now the U.S. also wants to decimate Iran’s ballistic missile capacity and is seeking regime change.

“The implied goal is to weaken Iran’s government so much in terms of capabilities and killing leaders that the regime is overthrown by the Iranian people and a government comes into power that is more sympathetic to U.S. interests,” Haas said.

When something like this happens, he said replacing the leadership of a foreign country “tends not to result in a significant change in policy.”

“There is reason to be dubious that unless there is a revolution in which you have a change in values and institutions that there won’t be a significant change,” Haas said.

Additionally, he said significantly weakening a government in the absence of new power tends to create fragments in countries and sometimes leads to civil war.

So far, Haas said the U.S. has done very little to avoid this and that there needs to be some type of policing power on the ground if the government falls.

About a week after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed as his successor.

Haas said the new leader is a hard liner like his father, and this decision indicates that the regime has little intention of capitulating to the United States at this time.

“The appointment signals the continuation of past domestic and international policies, which means continued intense conflict with the U.S.,” he said.

Concerns with the conflict

Bruce Ledewitz, associate professor emeritus at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law, said the current conflict is unnecessary, and is a result of Trump’s 2018 decision to walk away from the agreement with Iran to constrain their nuclear program.

“The idea that now it’s been constant warfare to keep Iran from having a bomb is crazy because we had an agreement that kept Iran from having a bomb,” he said.

Along with the price of gas being raised, Ledewitz said that innocent lives in Iran and the lives of American soldiers are being lost.

“Any American soldier killed in this conflict is a wasted life,” he said.

Christine Mohamed, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations, said one of her biggest concerns with the ongoing conflict in Iran is that it will lead to backlash against American Muslims.

There has been an increase in Islamophobia after large-scale events such as the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Hate crimes against Muslims in the United States remain 5 times more common than before Sept. 11, 2001, and although overall hate crimes in America dipped in 2014, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by 14% over the prior year

“They shouldn’t be held accountable for the actions of foreign governments,” Mohamed said.

She said to mitigate this, the group is making sure American Muslims are aware of their rights and helping people reporting instances of bias.

Kate Daher, a founding member of the Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, said the conflict is not in the best interest of the American people, and she said she thinks it should stop immediately.

Daher said that the U.S. will be unsuccessful in trying to bring a better government to Iran because there are issues within the U.S.’s democracy that the government should focus on, such as health care, homelessness and education.

“Do we really think the U.S. will bring democracy to Iran?” Daher asked. “I don’t see it.”

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu