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For Iranians, Despair Is Not Strategy

By
Hoda Katebi

An Iranian American reflects on how the diaspora, grieving for the Iranians caught between domestic repression and imperialist intervention, came to be at war with itself.

Demonstrators wave pre-1979 Iranian flags, as well as American and Israeli ones, on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on March 29, 2026.

The unjustifiable US-Israeli war on the Iranian people has undermined decades of social uprisings in Iran, interrupting revolutionary struggles and replacing them with a nationalism that has emboldened hard-liners. (Amid Farahi / AFP via Getty Images)

Home may be perilous and the destination out of reach

But there are no paths without an end, do not grieve

— Hafiz

My cousin’s message arrived on January 21 at 8:39 p.m. After the January massacres in Iran. Before the war and its precarious ceasefire.

She wrote to me on WhatsApp:

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