As war rages on in the Middle East, Iranian students at Yale grapple with what solidarity and responsibility should look like from so far away.
In New Haven, a world away from his home country of Iran, Hadi Mahdeyan ’27 had been waiting for a strike. At 6:30 a.m. on February 28, his girlfriend urgently shook him awake. “I think they’ve started to attack,” she said
Hadi checked the news and saw that the United States had launched an airstrike on Ayatollah Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. Whenever there was military action in the Middle East, pundits and bloggers flooded Iranian news channels and chat platforms speculating that the Supreme Leader had died. Hadi knew better than to expect anything. He waited for more information.
Some outlets began to report that the Ayatollah had been killed. Others held off. Finally, in the early afternoon, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu hosted a press conference and announced that there were “many signs” that Ali Khamenei was dead. Later that day, the U.S. confirmed. They were at war with Iran. It was the news Hadi had been waiting for most of his life. He rushed to tell friends, calling a fellow Iranian in the School of Drama and a graduate student working in a lab. Both answered and asked to call him back.
“No, no, you don’t understand,” Hadi urged them. “Khamenei’s dead.”
The next day, @yasi.yale—the Instagram account for Hadi’s newly founded Yale Alliance for Solidarity with Iran (YASI)—made its first post: a grainy photo of Iranian and Israeli flags hanging next to each other from the backyard balcony of a Yale fraternity house. The caption reads:
“The end of his life is a blessed day.
Long live Iran.
Khamenei’s finally fucking dead.
Long live Iran.”
***
Hadi founded YASI last February. The group hosted their first event, a protest on Beinecke Plaza, on Valentine’s Day—Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Iranian shah, had designated it a “Global Day of Action” against the Iranian regime following the massacre of tens of thousands of protesters in January.
Hadi, who has dark curly hair and a fondness for black-framed sunglasses, grew up in Iran. He wouldn’t say exactly where, since revealing his family’s specific location could put them in danger. But he didn’t hesitate to say that he grew up hating the Islamic regime that has governed Iran since the revolution in 1979—a regime that parked tanks in the alley right outside his house and gassed his neighborhood so frequently that his younger brother now has chronic eye infections.
“It is a very common goal, not just for me, but for basically most people my age in Iran, to leave forever,” Hadi said.
But it is difficult for Iranian students to come to the U.S. for college. Less than a dozen American universities offer need-blind admission to international students. With the dollar currently valued at around 1.3 million Iranian rials, most applicants from Iran have considerable financial need. The SAT is not administered in Iran, so Hadi had to travel to Turkey for the test.
When he got into Yale, he won what he considered “basically a lottery.” In the fall of 2023, Hadi arrived on campus looking for a community of fellow Iranians. He found the Persian Students Association (PSA).
“It is a very common goal, not just for me, but for basically most people my age in Iran, to leave forever.”
That September marked one year since the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman who died in prison after she was arrested for wearing her hijab too loosely. Her death sparked the grassroots Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Hadi was eager to see how the PSA planned to commemorate the anniversary—but they weren’t planning anything at all.
So, Hadi asked to organize something himself. The PSA met him with support. They agreed to help him host a vigil and set up some candles and flowers.
In Iran, protests are haunted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s primary armed force, which killed tens of thousands of demonstrators in January. Hadi had intended to fully exercise his freedom of speech in the U.S. He was disappointed when the PSA asked him to keep his vigil apolitical to protect public-facing members who might run into trouble if they visited family in Iran.
Hadi was taken aback. “I said, ‘Well, she was killed by the regime.’”
Nader Granmayeh ’23.5 was an unofficial leader of the PSA at the time. Before 2021, the PSA operated as an “informal network” of Persian students who knew each other through Farsi language classes. Even by 2023, most PSA gatherings were the products of open-invite texts in their group chat.
The group held their first political event a year before Hadi’s arrival: a vigil at the Women’s Table for Amini right after her death, where they displayed her portrait alongside bouquets of lilies. The PSA was motivated to show support for Iranians, demonstrating that “there is an international community that is behind them in their fight for freedom,” as Nader told the Yale Daily News in 2022.
Since its founding, the Yale Alliance for Solidarity with Iran (YASI) has held weekly vigils for those killed in the January vigils for those killed in the January 8 and 9 Rasht massacres. Under Hadi’s leadership, the vigils are every bit as political as what he wanted for the PSA. On Thursdays, YASI gathers at the Women’s Table to read out each victim’s name, their birth year, and the refrain that they were “killed in 2026 by the Islamic Republic for the crime of protesting.”
***
Iranians who support the war often compare the conflict to chemotherapy; removing a cancer like the regime, they argue, isn’t supposed to be easy. The war will hurt, but the alternative is unthinkable.
Shervin Issakhani, an Iranian graduate student at Yale and member of YASI, feels guilty all the time; for leaving his family and watching this war from halfway across the world; for spreading news from sources he’s never 100 percent sure he can trust; for not doing enough for the people of Iran.
He has no regrets, however, about his advocacy for the war. He would die if it meant a free Iran.
Milad Davaran ’28, outgoing PSA treasurer, told me that he did not know of any Iranians on campus who opposed the war. Shervin believes anyone who did would be too “embarrassed” to say so. After months of searching, I couldn’t find any Iranian students currently attending Yale who are anti-intervention.
Nader, who grew up in the States and graduated from Yale in 2023, is vehemently in favor of regime change. But he is against the war, and was surprised that there is no visible anti-war sentiment from Iranians on campus. Nader has witnessed the question of intervention divide his family and the rest of the Iranian diaspora.
Nader thinks Iranian citizens or those who grew up in Iran are more likely, having experienced the regime’s violence, to feel that revolutionary change is urgent—anything else would be a betrayal.
This distinction is felt on Yale’s campus. Neither Hadi nor Shervin can safely go back to Iran until the current government has been deposed—they have been vocal about their anti-regime opinions and would likely be executed should they be forced to return. Their Iranian-American peers have an extra level of security because they have American passports.
Nader thinks Iranian citizensor those who grew up in Iran are more likely, having experienced the regime’s violence, to feel that revolutionary change is urgent—anything else would be a betrayal.
Shervin recalls how surreal it was to walk around campus in early January, after the regime’s massacres. Friends of his had been killed. It felt like no one had a clue that anything had happened. He spent that day in a trance.
For members of the Iranian diaspora, taking a stance in this conflict means signing on to a cascade of related opinions. Pro-war voices tend to reject diplomatic solutions. They are also more likely to align with Israel, a deeply polarizing force within the war.
Aaron Abrams ’27, a Persian Jew on YASI’s board, sees the stakes of this war as twofold: protecting Iranians from an oppressive regime and removing the Islamic government, which he sees as an existential threat to Israel, from power.
Neither YASI nor the PSA have any religious component to their organizations—both identify with the millennia-old Persian culture rather than Islamic practices. Having grown up in the theocracy, Hadi and Shervin are no fans of Islam.
“We have seen the true face of Islam and Iran,” Hadi said. “The way that this country is being run—it’s exactly what’s written in the Quran, what Islam wants.”
Nader thinks Iranian citizens’ first-hand experience with the regime can get in the way of their accepting diplomatic solutions. He has been shocked and saddened that anyone could advocate for the bombing of their own home.
But for Hadi and Shervin, who are Iranian citizens, faraway “diplomatic” discussions of issues like the Strait of Hormuz are really just corrupt backroom dealings with the regime. “You don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Hadi said.
***
Aside from on-campus political events, the vast majority of YASI and PSA members’ engagement with this conflict occurs on social media.
On March 1, the PSA posted a statement on Instagram: “Yesterday marked the end of one of the most evil leaders in modern history.” It continued, “This is only the beginning. Stay informed. Listen to Iranians. Stand firmly with the people of Iran.” For the last two months, YASI has reposted everything from news stories to techno-musical remixes of Trump’s announcement of Khamenei’s death to the definition of “Iransplaining.”
Instagram also serves another purpose for YASI: informing their followers. Given the compromised news and communication channels in and out of Iran, it is difficult to reliably deliver accurate information.
Hadi says much of his news comes from Iran International, a London-based media outlet—allegedly funded by the Saudi royal family—intended to inform the Iranian diaspora. But because Iran International has been declared a terrorist organization by the Iranian regime, their journalists seldom venture inside Iran’s borders. The outlet’s reporting is largely based on analyses of videos that make it out through Starlink.
Since the regime restricted Iranians’ access to the internet on February 28, it’s been nearly impossible to get calls through to Iran. The blackouts heighten the anxiety of having family in an overseas warzone. In January, during a shorter blackout after the massacres, Milad watched violent videos released via Starlink, but was unable to immediately confirm his family’s safety. During blackouts, all messaging from inside Iran depends on Starlink. Texts are occasionally possible, but unreliable.
Hadi has since verified that his family is alright, and he was able to get a few texts through to his younger brother before the Iranian New Year on March 20. Aside from the news that his brother had received a Lego set for the holiday, no texts came back in response.
***
YASI hosted a celebration of the Iranian New Year, or Nowruz, at the Yale Farm. For Nowruz, there is a tradition of recognizing the exact moment when winter turns to spring according to the ancient Persian calendar. Since he’s been at Yale, Hadi has FaceTimed his family to wish them a happy New Year. This year, Nowruz fell three weeks into the blackouts. More than a month later, he still hasn’t heard their voices.
So instead of family, he gathered with twenty fellow students. Several others also hadn’t been able to speak to their families for weeks.
Together, they replicated other traditions. On the Haft Seen table—traditionally arranged with seven items beginning with the Persian letter “seen”—YASI members had laid out flowers and figurines, an apple and sprouts, each with a symbolic meaning. The attendees sat around the table and talked about the war, about their families, and about the three young men who had been hanged in the city of Qom the day before.
The weekly vigil YASI hosts by the Women’s Table isn’t a large operation. They set up a projector screen across two metal tables and cast photos of each victim in succession. Sofiia Tiapkina ’28, a Ukrainian international student on the YASI board, sits at a separate table, clicking through the slides on her computer.
One week, Hadi read the names of nearly 100 victims of the January massacres. The sun had just set, and a chill was settling into the air. He read the last name, and three other YASI members recited “may their memory live on” in Persian. The projector screen went dark.
How do you keep alive the memory of 30,000 people who died demanding freedom? How do you hold constant vigil for a country of 93 million?
Hadi and the rest of YASI aren’t sure they have it right, but they are trying. They plan protests. They check Iran International’s updated list of victims. They try to get texts through to family members. And they wait.
Ella Piper Claffy is a sophomore in Silliman College.
Cover photo by Colin Kim.
