Protesters rally downtown to say 'No War On Iran'
John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
'I'm an
Over the past two weeks, decades-old tensions between Israel and Iran once again erupted into warfare. On June 13, Israel struck nuclear facilities across Iran.
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According to Iran's health ministry, this and subsequent strikes reportedly
Kimia Kahalzadeh, a 19-year-old UMass Amherst student and Iranian American who immigrated to the United States when she was 6, said she boarded a flight out of Tehran just hours before the bombing began on the evening of June 13. While in the air, she received frantic messages from family members following the attacks in real-time.
'My heart sank,' she said.
Her great-grandmother, who lived just two houses down from a bombed building in Tehran, fell during the blast and tore her ACL.
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'She hasn't been able to walk,' Kahalzadeh said. 'Thankfully, her son was able to get her out of Tehran.'
Kahalzadeh said she hardly could believe she had walked through the same streets that were bombed just days later.
'These weren't military targets. There were homes. There were neighborhoods, communities, people,' she said.
In the following days, both countries exchanged further strikes until the conflict escalated on Saturday, when the US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities.
A tentative ceasefire between Israel and Iran
was announced early on Tuesday, with both sides agreeing to halt offensive operations. But many protesters do not 'actually trust the ceasefire will hold' and continue to worry about an escalated conflict, Sharafi said.
Iranian-American organizer Ziba Cranmer said successive US administrations have failed to reckon with the country's role in shaping Iran's current circumstances.
'[The United States] got rid of a democratically elected leader that was wildly popular and very social justice oriented in the '50s,' Cranmer said, referencing former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh,who was overthrown in a US-backed military coup that cemented the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
'We've spent trillions of dollars in the last two decades around war in the Middle East,' she added. 'People cannot afford to live in this city. I want them to fund housing vouchers, schools, and hospitals. I don't want to fund weapons.'
State Senator Jamie Eldridge,who represents the Middlesex and Worcester districts, urged Congress to 'pass the War Powers resolution and stop Donald Trump from taking us into another war in the Middle East.'
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'It is absolutely critical that the American people rise up and say, 'Not in our name,'' said Eldridge.
Staffers from both Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Edward Markey's offices also spoke at the rally, voicing their bosses' opposition to what they called President Trump's 'unconstitutional' attack on Iran and expressing support for the War Powers resolution aimed at limiting further military action.
Sharafi said organizers plan to keep pushing for a permanent ceasefire. She sees a need for a 'robust anti-war movement' in the US.
'There's a lot of stress and trauma of not knowing what is going to happen. It's been great that we have allies here,' she said, pointing to the crowd of protesters. 'People in the [Middle East] don't deserve to constantly be bombed or threatened.'
Nathan Metcalf can be reached at
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