A few nights ago, after 12 days of open war between Israel and Iran, I finally heard back from my sister in Iran.
Though I had been in touch with my family in Isfahan during the early days, I hadn’t been able to speak with them at all in the last three or four days due to internet blackouts.
When her message came through, she had attached a short video of her 13-year-old son, Mohammad Hossein, playing Golden Dreams, a bittersweet and quietly powerful piece by the late Iranian composer Javad Maroufi.
"We are OK," she wrote.
That night, Mohammad Hossein, visibly shaken, kept biting his nails and told my sister he didn’t want to die. He didn’t cry. He just sat there, tense and silent.
Since then, he hasn’t been sleeping well.
The piano has become his sanctuary — a place of calm between the daytime echoes of drone and anti-aircraft fire and the nightmare-soaked nights.
Like millions of children across the Middle East — in Palestine, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria — he now knows the sound of war not from a history book, but from the vibration of windows and the scream of missiles overhead.
I watched all of this unfold from Dunedin, where I live now, feeling both disconnected and consumed. Like many in the Iranian diaspora, I spent those days endlessly refreshing news sites, switching between different applications to contact relatives, and wondering whether to let my 6-year-old son see my fear.
Even my Iranian-Kiwi friend Sal, who had travelled to Iran for a short family visit, became stranded when international flights were suspended.
Ironically, I was able to stay in touch with him more easily than with my own family.
It reflected the Iranian government’s chronic use of internet blackouts to control the flow of information during crises.
Sal kept insisting things were calm, but even over the phone, I could hear the unmistakable sound of anti-aircraft fire in the background.
The ceasefire was announced on June 23 — brokered by Qatar and, ironically, proposed by Donald Trump, the same man who had helped escalate the war by authorising strikes on Iran just days before.
It was quickly framed as a victory by all sides. Netanyahu called it a "historic win" for Israel. Trump claimed it as a diplomatic success for "everyone involved."
Even Iran’s vice-president declared it proof that Iran had "broken the West’s dominance".
But what does victory look like when 49 women, including two pregnant women, and 13 children — one only 2 months old — lie among the dead?
When more than 4000 people are injured, hospitals are overwhelmed, and the only certainty left for many is fear?
In Israel, 28 people were killed by retaliatory strikes from Iran, including a 7-year-old child. Yet political rhetoric quickly drowned out these losses.
As always, it is civilians who pay the price, not the men who give the orders.
What makes this moment even more painful is the timing.
Before the war, the Iranian people had been reclaiming a sense of collective voice through the Woman, Life, Freedom movement — a powerful push for justice sparked by the killing of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in 2022.
The movement had cracked open decades of silence and fear. It brought together young people across ethnic and class lines.
But war is the enemy of movements. Iran began cracking down on dissent during the war — jailing activists, executing protesters and silencing critics under the banner of "defending the homeland."
Now, several days into the ceasefire, repression continues with renewed force.
The voices that had begun to demand change — women, students, ethnic minorities — are being pushed further into the shadows.
Meanwhile, some in the Iranian diaspora welcomed the war.
Tired of 47 years of dictatorship, they viewed the Israeli and American strikes as a potential opportunity to topple the regime.
Among them were monarchists and supporters of exiled figures like Reza Pahlavi, who called on Iranians to rise up and "finish the job".
Some waved Israeli and American flags at rallies abroad, framing the conflict not as a national tragedy but as a necessary step towards regime change.
I understand the anger. I understand the longing for justice. But I don’t believe liberation comes on the wings of foreign missiles.
As a sociologist and someone deeply engaged in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, I believe meaningful change must come from the people — not be imposed from the skies.
Iran has lived this before. In 1953, the US and UK orchestrated a coup that removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and shifted the country’s political trajectory for decades.
That moment, and what followed, played a role in shaping the upheaval of the 1979 revolution — a legacy that still echoes through Iran’s political consciousness today.
Any change not rooted in the people’s will is doomed to repeat the cycle of violence, repression and betrayal.
That’s why I return to Mohammad Hossein.
His music, played in fear and defiance, is not just a melody.
It is a reminder of what we must protect: the right of a child to sleep, to dream, to play music — without fearing that tomorrow will bring another missile, another lie, another "victory."
• Ali Mostolizadeh is a Dunedin-based sociologist and former researcher at the University of Otago.
