Iranian Women Weep Too

In February 1998, Tony Benn, then over 40 years into his career as a Member of Parliament, rose in the House of Commons and delivered a legendary speech in opposition to the proposed bombing of Iraq. His words that day left no shortage of memorable lines: one in particular has never left me. “Are not Arabs and Iraqis terrified? Do not Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die?” he said, speaking on the human cost of war. These words have been on my mind recently, more so than ever before, in the wake of the war in Iran.

On Mar. 1, over 150 Iranian families woke up their young daughters, nieces, and cousins and rushed them to Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, southern Iran. Surely they wouldn’t have sent their children to school that day, had they known that hours later, a missile reportedly fired by the United States would tear through the girls’ school, killing over 150 children and students, and injuring hundreds more. Families ruptured, futures ended—all by our current President, who promised peace and a cease to “endless” wars. This moment ought to be remembered as a horrific stain on the nation and an even worse indictment of a President who’s made a career of lying to the American people. However, with how enamoured the Republican Party has become with President Trump, I do not doubt that the civilian lives lost will be nothing but a footnote in many accounts of his second term in office.

The same day, six American servicepeople were tragically killed in an Iranian drone strike on an operations center in Kuwait. A grateful nation grieves their losses, yet the President, when asked about the death of soldiers he sent to a war of choice, said: “Sadly, there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends, that’s the way it is.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth went a step further, suggesting the media’s coverage of the deaths of U.S. troops in the war in Iran was an attempt to “make the President look bad.”

I can hardly believe this is the reality that we live in, because what about this isn’t bad? American soldiers dying in a war widely recognised as illegal is bad. The conflict hasn’t lasted more than a few days, and over 1,000 Iranian civilians have already died, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. That is bad. Even borrowing the language of “bad” from Secretary Hegseth doesn’t do the situation justice. 

This is not in any way to excuse the barbarism enacted by the Iranian regime, but I must note that we were all taught from a young age that America was the good guy. You can’t put a missile through the windows of an elementary school and remain the good guy. It is not hard to see that those girls were victims of an evil government long before the music of American bombs sang their last lullabies. We were the ones who killed them, and we have to reconcile with that fact. 

Since the President won’t say their names, I will. Below is a list, so far, as collected by Middle East Eye, of the civilians killed at Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School: 

Hana Dehqani, eight years old. Fatemeh Salari, 34 years old. Reza Habashian, seven years old. Arya Bahadori, nine years old. Ali Asghar Zaeri, eight years old. Zahra Bahrami, seven years old. Ahmad Soltani, eight years old. Hamed Par-ashegh-nezhad, seven years old. Fatemeh Yazdan-panah, young girl, age unknown. Mahdis Nazari, seven years old. Athena Chamani-nezhad, six years old. Amirghasem Zaeri, seven years old. Fatemeh Dorazehi, ten years old. Arad Ahmadizadeh, eight years old. Saman Karimzadeh, seven years old. Fatemeh Shahdadi, age unknown. Nadia Shahmiri, nine years old. Parham Ranjbari, nine years old. Mahmoud Gholamyani, 35 years old. Fatemeh Rahdar, ten years old. Amir-Hassan Rasouli, eight years old. Zahra Behrouzi, eight years old. Mohammadhatam Raisi, ten years old. Asna Raisi, 12 years old. Benyamin Jangjou, eight years old. Mohammad-Sadra Zarei, eight years old. Maryam Pazark, ten years old. Liana Mohammadi, seven years old. Mandana Salari, 29 years old. Sara Shayesteh, five years old. Zoha Pasand, eight years old. Esra Zakeri, nine years old. Salma Zakeri, six years old. Fatemeh Taherifard, 29 years old. Zahra Ansari, seven years old. Fatemeh Fadavi, ten years old. Mahna Zarei, two months old. Athareh Zarei, ten years old. Alireza Zarei, nine years old. Mohammadreza Shahsavari, eight years old. Samira Basarde, 38 years old. Ehsan Saleminia, six years old. Fatemeh Zahra Karimi, seven years old. Zeynab Bahrami, ten years old. Mohammad Shah-dousti, eight years old. Reza Barani, seven years old. Athena Ahmadzadeh, ten years old. Khadijeh Darvishi, nine years old. Roqayyeh Karimi, 42 years old. Reza Ranjbar, six years old. Marzieh Bashiri-far, 38 years old. Mohammad-Mehdi Chegini, ten years old. Mohammadian Bahrami, 17 years old. Ali-Akbar Karyani Pak, eight years old. Hananeh Mehdikhah, seven years old. Fereshteh Sangarzadeh, 44 years old. Mohammad-Ali Karyani Pak, seven years old. Parsa Mokhtari-nasab, 12 years old. Arina Arab-Kish, eight years old. Makan Nasiri, 12 years old. Esra Farahi-Zadeh, young girl, age unknown.

61 names.

These are lives that have been cut short in what many, including Senator Mark Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have labeled “a war of choice.” A choice that has already cost the American taxpayer $5 billion and is sure to cost a lot more. This administration has made significant cuts to key assistance programs that millions of Americans rely on, all in the name of fiscal responsibility. But, for a war that nobody asked for, and nobody, potentially with the admission that the Trump administration has no clear phase two for Iran, may benefit from, there’s money for that. 

It is worth stating clearly: the Iranian people deserve better than the authoritarian theocracy that has ruled over them for decades. Many of them know this fact better than we do. They have fought, bled, and died protesting against the current Iranian regime, and their liberation is a cause that the West should support. There are many ways to do this, but “hitting them […] unapologetically,” in the words of Pete Hegseth, is not the way to do it. It is important to note that the death of the former autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a step in the right direction towards liberation, but the price of liberation cannot be children’s lives. 

“Does not bombing strengthen their determination?” Tony Benn, a British politician, asked his fellow parliamentarians, in reference to the civilians caught in the crossfire of war. The answer is no, it only strengthens the determination of the Iranian regime’s leaders to justify their brutality and retaliatory strikes on neighboring nations.

Benn knew, as we all do, the answer to his original question; we’ve just confirmed it once again. Arab mothers have been weeping for decades; the majority of us just weren’t watching. It is ironic that I, as someone who hopes to join the military reserves post-grad, am so anti-war, but shouldn’t we all be?

Former Army Staff Sgt. and Medal of Honor recipient David Bellavia said it best: “We’ve seen war. We don’t want war.” He then issued a cruelly ironic statement: “But if you want war with the United States of America, there’s one thing I can promise you, so help me God: Someone else will raise your sons and daughters.” 

What are civilians supposed to do when their sons and daughters are no longer there to be raised? The mothers in Minab, with no children to raise, mourn what was and what could have been. These women weep, and we should all be watching. 

Noah Basden ’29 (nhbasden@college.harvard.edu)writes Forum for the “Independent.”