Peace is Essential for …

Peace is Essential for Our Community and All Human Communities!

Hooshyar Afsar

These words are written on the first day of the cease fire between Iran and Israel. In this short war, more than 630 human beings have been killed, and over 5,500 injured, including many children. More than 90% of them were killed or injured in Iran. Israel has killed many of the high-ranking generals of the Islamic Republic, its nuclear scientists, and their families. The Israeli attacks started when Iran was engaged in diplomatic negotiations with the United States through the government of Oman.

While I hope that when you read these lines, the cease fire has continued to hold, one thing is very clear—war only resulted in more civilian deaths in Iran, Israel, and occupied Palestine, more infrastructure damage, more instability and chaos, and even more repression. History has shown that, except in a few completely distinct circumstances, war will not result in freedom and democracy for human beings. The Israeli siege on Gaza in the past 18 months—which is being considered as a plausible case for genocide by the United Nations International Court of Justice—has resulted in over 54,000 deaths and the destruction of over 90% of buildings in that tiny strip of land, more shocking daily evidence of the destructive power of war.

While there is no credible evidence that the government of the Islamic Republic is pursuing a nuclear weapon—including the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, as testified to by Tulsi Gabbard, United States Director of National Intelligence, in March 2025—Trump and the mainstream media in the United States either justified the U.S. and Israeli attacks on the grounds of alleged nuclear bomb capacity or engage in false equivalence, meaning that both sides share the blame. Regardless of my views on the human rights record of the Islamic Republic that have been reflected in my writings here and elsewhere, let me be very clear and unequivocal: this was an Israeli and U.S. aggression against Iran, its people, and its civilian infrastructure and, as such, I am relieved that the attacks have ended. Attacking nuclear enrichment facilities was also against the rules of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), threatening the safety of people in Iran and neighboring countries. Also, the preemptive attack against any country in the world without the approval of the UN Security Council is against many articles of the United Nations Charter, hence the illegality of the Israeli attack against Iran.

I was personally affected. I have close family in Iran and many of them, from a 2-year-old to an 89-year-old to an unborn baby in the final months of pregnancy, were forced to flee Tehran or had taken refuge in the basement of the apartment high-rise they live in. The dark days of the Iran-Iraq war were repeated for me and my family all over the world for twelve days. I feel for all human beings affected in Iran and elsewhere in that region.

Standing up for a stable ceasefire is now beyond an Iranian American call of duty; it is a human imperative. As history has clearly shown, without peace, democracy and human rights will have no chance of taking root in Iran or anywhere in the Middle East. As written on these pages before, while it seems that a full blown regional war was averted, a U.S. war with Iran will not only have catastrophic consequences in Iran, the Persian Gulf, and the whole world, including for the United States, but it will jeopardize the basic civil rights of our Iranian American community, regardless of our immigration status. Humanity came back from the brink of a catastrophe.

Standing for a stable peace is our calling of the moment!