{"id":155875,"date":"2025-07-05T14:23:17","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T14:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/irans-devastation-has-hardened-hearts-towards-the-west-even-for-those-with-no-love-of-the-state-hossein-hamdieh-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T14:23:17","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T14:23:17","slug":"irans-devastation-has-hardened-hearts-towards-the-west-even-for-those-with-no-love-of-the-state-hossein-hamdieh-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/irans-devastation-has-hardened-hearts-towards-the-west-even-for-those-with-no-love-of-the-state-hossein-hamdieh-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s devastation has hardened hearts towards the west \u2013 even for those with no love of the state | Hossein Hamdieh – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The double standards and hypocrisy used to justify Israel\u2019s aggression will not be forgotten here, or in other countries
A<\/span> trembling ceasefire has brought a pause to what had become the familiar sounds of explosions over Tehran. I was born in 1988, a year before the Iran-Iraq war came to an end. For my generation, war was something that belonged to the past \u2013 an impossible event, until this summer.
For 12 days, we lived in the capital under incessant Israeli attacks, and what we saw has changed us for good: dead neighbours, buildings gutted and worry \u2013 endless, deep-etched worry \u2013 on the faces of people.
There is comfort in speaking of \u201cthe Iranian people\u201d as though we are one unified bloc. But like most societies, Iranians hold divergent views. When fighting first broke out, there were people who were glad to see a foreign power targeting the widely disliked Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) top brass, at least in the beginning. But others \u2013 though dissidents themselves \u2013 deeply resented the idea of foreign invasion. Some hardliners saw this war as a messianic mission to be carried through to the bitter end; others were numb to what was happening.
But as the news filled with footage of civilian casualties, and the attacks grew harsher and less targeted, different social factions began to unite around the notion of watan<\/em>, homeland. Patriotism gained new currency, and national pride was on most lips. Scenes of solidarity \u2013 whether lasting remains to be seen \u2013 abounded: landlords cancelling rent in light of the crisis; people outside Tehran hosting those fleeing the capital; no rush to grocery stores, no chaos, no panicked evacuations.
In my view, the way European countries responded to Israel\u2019s onslaught played a key role in this shift. The E3, alongside other silent nations across the continent, supported<\/a> the Israeli strikes, using all the usual justifications, from Iran\u2019s nuclear programme<\/a> to its support for terrorism<\/a>, all while the US president painted a rosy image of Iran\u2019s supposed greatness the \u201cday after\u2019\u201d on his Truth Social<\/a>. But those of us in the Middle East know better. Images of fresh devastation in Gaza appear daily, and we remember the chaos in Libya, civil war in Syria, two decades of occupation in Iraq and the Taliban\u2019s resurgence in Afghanistan. There was no promise in these conflicts \u2013 no seeds of democracy being planted.
Surely, the naked reality of Israel\u2019s aggression would register with the same powers that rightly condemned Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine \u2013 so that yet another war would not crush the region once again. And surely, these attacks \u2013 brutal, unprovoked, deliberate \u2013 should have been met with a flood of condemnation and fury at the disregard for the UN charter. But none came.
The silence was deafening. A reminder that Iranian lives, clearly, carry less worth than those of others. This, for many of us, was the main takeaway from the support western countries extended to Israel. The war was on Iran, but it was justified through the same old playbook: racism. The indifference and inaction of those with the power to intervene; the media\u2019s passive tone when referring to non-white casualties; the habitual disregard for their suffering; and the blase attitude towards attacks on lands outside the western orbit \u2013 with the German chancellor even saying<\/a>: \u201cThis is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.\u201d
Many Iranians are angry at this injustice \u2013 so much so that the idea of building a nuclear weapon, once confined to the radical fringes of politics, is now gaining traction among ordinary people. As one user put it on X: \u201cNo one seems concerned about the state of human rights in North Korea,\u201d implying that nuclear warheads remain the only reliable deterrent against aggression.
It would be foolish to trust Israel with a ceasefire. The country has a track record of violating agreements with impunity. That means a Damoclean sword still hangs over Tehran, even as the sound of explosions fades. From afar, this city of over 10 million people may appear to have returned to its usual bustle. But uncertainty still hangs in the air, and what makes it worse is the absence of any credible broker capable of ending the war. For many here, the west\u2019s tacit, explicit or even active participation in the conflict disqualifies it from any role as a good-faith negotiator.
From where I stand, once again, feelings of mistrust towards Europe<\/a> are bedding in. Buildings will be rebuilt, infrastructure repaired. But what may be damaged beyond repair \u2013 perhaps irredeemably so \u2013 is the moral fabric on which Europe stands to preach to others. The double standards. The hypocrisy. The injustice of it all. The imperial mindset \u2013 still visibly alive and well \u2013 now casts a long shadow over how Europe is perceived. Not just for Iranians, I suspect, but for many people across the global south.
These are hard times to live through. Whether the Islamic republic survives this moment, strikes a deal, or continues down its current path of retaliation, I do not know. But what is sure is that whoever governs Iran in the future will not forget what happened here.
Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King\u2019s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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The double standards and hypocrisy used to justify Israel\u2019s aggression will not be forgotten here, or in other countriesA trembling ceasefire has brought a pause to what had become the familiar sounds of explosions over Tehran. I was born in 1988, a year before the Iran-Iraq war came to an end. For my generation, war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":155876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}