“I’m sorry for all those coming of age in these times. There will not even be a year of peace in their lives and no one knows what the job market will be thanks to AI. We are entering a great dystopian darkness,” read a post on X by the Pakistani journalist, Zarrar Khuhro. This made me think of what the younger generation is witnessing and the future of the world. In my last column, I mentioned the conversation of my friend, Zebunnisa Burki, with her 17-19-year-old students about joy and their hesitation when asked what gives them joy outside of social media. These children have seen the Covid-19 pandemic, they are seeing the ongoing genocide in Gaza being committed by Israel for the last two-and-a-half years, they are seeing the Ukraine-Russia war, a short India-Pakistan conflict, the illegal kidnapping and overthrowing of the Venezuelan president by the United States of America and, now, they are witnessing the US and Israel launch an illegal and unjust attack on Iran, the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The children are literally seeing the old world order collapse before their very eyes and a new world order emerging on the basis of the diktat: ‘might is right’. The war on Iran will enter its 13th day today. These youngsters have seen how international law does not apply to Israel and the US. They can see how war criminals are calling the shots when it comes to destroying the world. But they can also see that Iran continues to fight against them despite being bombed non-stop by the world’s sole superpower and its genocidal ally. Iran has been reeling under sanctions for decades that have devastated its economy and yet it has shown a spine and stood up to bullies.
In a defiant move and an equally defiant political message to the world, particularly the US, Iran selected the Late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as its new Supreme Leader. Iran is fighting for its survival but it has also made sure that the world sees how the spirit of the Iranian people cannot be crushed. Video after video has shown us how missiles are raining down on their cities but the Iranians stand their ground and chant slogans that tell the world what they stand for. The Donald Trump administration definitely miscalculated and misread the situation when it thought that the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will somehow make the Iranians come out on the streets in favour of a regime change. What happened was the exact opposite. Even those who opposed the regime now rally behind the country and mourn the death of Khamenei because the US and Israel started an unjust war against their country.
What the author, Arundhati Roy, recently said about Iran is something that should be said repeatedly: she said that the Iran war “is of course, a continuation of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. It’s the same old genocidaires using the same old playbook. Murdering women and children. Bombing hospitals. Carpet bombing cities. And then playing the victim. But Iran in not Gaza.” Iran is definitely not Gaza. Iran is a big country with a sizeable population and a large army. This is why Roy warned of grave consequences, of things that we think can happen and yet we hope may not happen. “The theatre of this new war could expand to consume the whole world. We are on the brink of nuclear calamity and economic collapse.”
This is a real danger. The way that a US submarine sank an Iranian warship when it posed no threat and Trump bragged about it shows that no rules of engagement are being followed. A war that started with the bombing of an elementary school and the killing of around 180 children, most of them seven to twelve-year-old girls, is clearly not going to follow any rules. A war that started in spite of Iran agreeing to the terms being dictated by the US in their indirect negotiations is a war that should not have started to begin with. This war has disrupted the world’s economies. We don’t know how long it will go on — some believe it may end quickly while others believe it will escalate.
However, what we do know is that the world has changed due to the genocide in Gaza and the war against Iran and we will not be able to recognise it in the near future.
Mehmal Sarfraz is a journalist based in Lahore; mehmal.s@gmail.com