Tears in Tehran won’t dry soon

At the funeral, a woman clutched a photograph of two smiling pupils—perhaps her own daughters, now dead. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights demanded a “prompt, impartial and thorough investigation” into what it called a “horrific” attack. Iran is in mourning. One hundred and sixty-five schoolgirls and staff were killed in a strike during the US–Israel war, their small coffins draped in the national flag and borne on trucks through grieving streets. I read all these on Al Jazeera!

What kind of people spend their days and nights designing, manufacturing and storing weapons that mass-kill innocent school kids and which can ‘take out a city’ in minutes? Are those ones even human? And what kind of men think nothing of shedding human blood to prove, just to prove they have superior powers and report to no one? Those ones too, are they humans?

I am scared. The world is going up in flames. Nukes and warheads are making high rises dissolve like alum in water. If you are not scared, it is because you think the war this time is happening somewhere far far away, a war that may never get here. I feel you. I see you. In your cocoon. You think Iran is a million miles away and the stench of trapped bodies under hot rubbles will never get here. Well, let me break your bubble, that stench will get everywhere, including your kitchen. That is why it is called war. It is an intractable phenomenon.

Our fathers had a saying long before flying missiles, ibeere ogun l’aa mo, enikan o mo ibi ti yo pari si. Everyone knows how a war starts but not where or how it will end. Even the United States of America that has ‘budgeted’ four to five weeks for this hot smoking war has hinted that it could take longer. Meaning, many things unplanned can show up as this fire burns, as more leaders of Iran are taken out and refineries are attacked. I know the economists are already tallying up the numbers and projecting how much global financials will record in losses. Oil, crude and cooked, will flow in the wrong directions, forced to flow in drops instead of barrels and all of us, including the woman selling okro and crayfish will pay a price. But my real fear is in reprisal attacks and how that could play out badly, really badly.

Have you thought of that angle? If this war is drawn out for too long (it is already too long, according to me), both the antagonists and protagonists would end up with their own sympathisers and supporters. Already, there are talks about who has the right to invade a sovereign nation and who doesn’t have the right to build and assemble weapons that can wipe the world out in minutes. I can see a future of plenty of arguments about existential threats and mismanaged information and unclear images.

READ ALSO: How US–Israel strike on Iran reshaped Middle East and shook global order

Call my fear funny, foolish or even wise, timid or sharp. Right now, all I can smell is smoke and artillery, gasoline like we are at the petrol station. The kind of fear that hits a pregnant woman when she’s told her baby is in a breach position at 39 weeks. Yes, that kind of fear you cannot do much or anything about. Knives, sorry, scalpels, blood and her open tummy would be most likely the images that would fill her mind. But the Iranian fear is widely different because it is not likely to give birth to a good child. War is not like pounded yam and vegetable soup with seven lives, it is about gore, blood and sudden termination of lives, dreams and ambition. One minute, a man is at his desk and the next, he’s just another figure on the casualty tally. Widows, orphans, childless aged parents everywhere.

My fear is Iran fighting back, Iran finding friends to supply her support that will prolong this war. Imagine if one day the lifeblood of modern life as we know it—oil and gas—simply became unreachable.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway hugging Iran’s shores, is a funnel through which a huge chunk of the world’s oil and gas passes. About 20% of global petroleum traverses it every day. If this chokepoint is blocked—even if for one week—prices will spike, factories across the globe will start gasping for breath and ordinary people will pay more for fuel, food, transport, and electricity. As if we are not tried and tired already as it is. This isn’t theory. It has happened before — and economic analysts warn it could happen again.

Modern wars are rarely clean. They are monstrous. They feed on human flesh and future, and everything in sight. A strike in one city can spark retaliation in another, proxy forces might enter the fray. Some Nigerians are already doing notice-me-dance so Mr Trump can add more to our sins.

Further strikes — whether by Iran, Israel, the United States, or others — will most likely drag other nations into the cauldron of chaos. Blocked straits, displaced people, missiles flying across borders, and shifting loyalties are all part of the terror and horror ahead.

But wait, why do leaders of nations think first with their brawn before deploying brains? From where I am sitting on my balcony, I don’t see how America, Iran, or Israel will just wake up one day and just stop firing missiles. The Gulf states caught in the middle are not going to sit on their hands. They are already dropping bad things. These leaders of the developed world will waste truckloads of money that could and should have gone into more profitable things. Every nation involved in this war will lose money and men. They will leave thousands or corpses behind. Then one day, they will walk through the blood and rubbles to ‘discuss ceasefire and the way forward’. Right now, they are drunk on muscle-flex cognac, prime cut ego and my-armory-is-bigger than-yours powdery stuff. This war will kill, maim and destroy dreams. Yet, it will all stop one day, maybe later than sooner. The drones will stop dropping. The missiles will stop flying. Trillions would have caught fire. Then, boom, the demon of war intoxication will return to the pit of hell and there will be ceasefire, first a small one, then a full stop after the comma, and many in coma. These leaders will stop. But the dead will remain dead. The felled high-rise buildings will remain charred dust and bent iron. The orphans and widows will remain bewildered. The world, our world will not remain the same. But these angry leaders will eventually go to that place they call the round table. Not now. They have not shed enough blood!

Even if a war is “short” the consequences are not measured in weeks or months — but years and decades. Previous skirmishes between Iran and her neighbours damaged infrastructure, plunged economies, and left communities scarred. The echoes of those conflicts are still there in their markets, politics, and families. Once trust is lost and wounds are inflicted, healing is slow — not just for nations, but for the whole global community that depends on stability. Let us not forget that all of the tough talk and press conferences will produce refugees who will seek safety beyond borders. There will be social tensions in neighbouring states and humanitarian crises that will spread wider and beyond the battlefields.

Who is going to tell our world leaders that fear, in the right measure, is not weakness?

Who is going to tell them to talk instead of shooting?

Who is going to push for peace rather than escalation?

Who is going to remind world leaders that bullets may talk loudly — but their echoes are deafening?

Peace isn’t the absence of trouble. It’s the presence of resonance and leaders who reason—the kind that let us share stories, not sorrows.

Why would nations be interested in weapons of mass destruction, anyway? That part I still do not understand.