‘Endless fears’: Even if fighting stops, the damage to Iran’s children will endure
‘Endless fears’: Even if fighting stops, the damage to Iran’s children will endure
Ali’s mind is haunted by the war. A slamming door or dropped cutlery sends him into a panic. The truce fails to ease this persistent fear. “Before the conflict, I had no stress at all,” he recalls. “But now, even the smallest sound triggers my brain to react violently.” At 15, Ali—using a pseudonym—grasps how the echoes of US and Israeli airstrikes linger in the psyche. The blasts’ aftermath leaves him hypervigilant, reacting with an involuntary startle reflex to any sudden noise.
The Psychological Toll
Over 20% of Iran’s population—nearly 20.4 million children—has been shaped by the war’s chaos. Psychologists identify the constant anxiety as “hyper arousal,” a potential precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder. Ali observes his parents’ frayed nerves, seeking the comfort of home life but finding it elusive. His father is jobless, his mother perpetually on edge. “My mother stays indoors, and whenever fighter jets pass overhead, she becomes terrified,” he says. “I feel the same fear, but I also lose contact with my friends. I should be studying, preparing for a future… not surviving in endless dread.”
“Try to do the things I mentioned to you to create a calmer environment for him,” says Aysha, a counselor at a Tehran human rights center. “If possible, play with him and keep him engaged. And if even then things don’t improve, bring him back to the center.”
Aysha’s center is overwhelmed with calls from worried parents. “We see sleep disturbances, nightmares, difficulty focusing, and even aggression in children,” she explains. “When you fight so hard to raise a child, only for that child to be killed—whether in protests or war—no parent would willingly bring a child into the world.”
A Call to Arms
Iran’s regime has pushed children into the frontlines. Under its security laws, boys under 15 can be enlisted into the Basij volunteer militia, a key state force. In a televised speech, a government official urged parents to “take your children by the hand and step onto the streets.” He framed the conflict as a test of masculinity, saying, “Do you want your son to become a man? Let him feel like a hero in the battlefield, commanding the fight. Mothers and fathers, send your children to the checkpoints at night. These children will turn into men.”
For 11-year-old Alireza Jafari, the call to arms meant death. He was killed by a drone strike while accompanying his father on duty in Tehran on 29 March. His mother, Sadaf Monfared, told a local newspaper that the boy expressed a desire to “become a martyr.” Amnesty International condemns this practice, calling it a “grave violation of international humanitarian law” that amounts to a war crime. The recruitment of minors under 15 violates global norms, exposing them to combat at an early age.
A Tehran resident, known only as Noor, vows to shield her teenage son from the military. “I’ll keep him safe,” she says. “A 12-year-old shouldn’t be sent to fight.” Yet, the war’s shadow looms over the entire region, from Iran to Israel, the Gulf, and Lebanon. The conflict has turned children into constant witnesses of fear, their lives irrevocably altered by the sounds of war and the specter of violence. The damage, they say, will not fade easily.
