{"id":1396,"date":"2026-07-17T19:40:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2026-07-17T19:40:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T19:40:55","slug":"where-the-war-is-still-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1396","title":{"rendered":"Where the War Is Still a War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

An adviser to Iran\u2019s negotiating team recently said that Tehran should ready itself for years of \u201cneither war, nor peace.\u201d The phrase has become popular among Iranian political analysts trying to make sense of an ostensibly ambiguous situation: The conflict is supposedly over, but Iran\u2019s military keeps striking ships and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf, and the United States keeps bombing Iran.<\/p>\n

Read more Atlantic Reads: The Small Stuff With Ian Bogost<\/a><\/p>\n

The people of Bandar Abbas, a port city of about half a million on Iran\u2019s southern coast, do not find this to be an ambiguous situation at all. \u201cFor days, we haven\u2019t been able to sleep due to constant explosions,\u201d a 45-year-old resident, whom I will call Omid, told me (all of the Iranians in this article asked for their name to be withheld for their safety). \u201cIs it only called war if they hit Tehran?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dozens of U.S. strikes in the past two weeks have hit the 1,120-mile Iranian coastline, as well as islands in the Persian Gulf, and they have killed more than 30 civilians, according to official Iranian sources. Bandar Abbas has sustained particular damage, but the strikes have also landed on targets all the way from Mahshahr in the southwest, near the Iraq border, to Chabahar in the southeast, near the Pakistan border.<\/p>\n

The seaboard where Iran meets the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman is target-rich because it contains so much military and civilian infrastructure. Omid lives about a mile from port facilities that were hit last week. \u201cIt was like a storm,\u201d he said. \u201cThe whole house shook. I dropped the kids on the ground and covered them with my body.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many southern Iranian cities, electricity has been cut, sometimes for hours on end, on summer days when temperatures can reach 130 degrees. And the attacks aren\u2019t limited to the shore. On Tuesday, a strike on an army base in southeastern Iran killed seven soldiers, five of whom were young conscripts. The base is about 200 miles inland.<\/p>\n

The Iranian regime has plenty to answer for in this return to hostilities. The terms of the memorandum of understanding that it reached with the United States on June 17 seemed to favor Tehran but, determined to reassert its control over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran launched recurrent attacks on passing ships, eventually leading to the war\u2019s resumption.<\/p>\n

An ultra-hard-line faction within the ruling establishment, largely outnumbered and out of favor, disapproved of the deal with the United States and had pushed for Iran to continue fighting. This group is now widely blamed for the war\u2019s renewal. On Wednesday, an editorial in the centrist newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami <\/i>attacked \u201cthose who shamelessly violated the dignity of Iran\u2019s negotiators,\u201d saying that \u201cthey normalize hostility to rationality.\u201d The newspaper accused the ultra-hard-liners of speaking from comfort in Tehran and rhetorically called for them to be sent to the war-stricken areas in the south \u201cto see how people suffer there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A petition online calling for ultra-hard-liners to be sent to the south has gathered more than 60,000 signatures. It singles out Saeed Jalili, thought to be the sole member of the national-security council who didn\u2019t vote to approve the memorandum of understanding, as well as commentators on Iran\u2019s state TV, which is controlled by the ultra-hard-liners (Jalili\u2019s brother Vahid is its vice chair).<\/p>\n

Addressing this faction, which purports to defend Lebanese Shia from Israeli aggression, an Iranian veteran of the Iran-Iraq War posted on X: \u201cI wish you had as much zeal for southern Iran as you have for southern Lebanon.\u201d The veteran\u2019s profile includes a picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, signaling that he is not an outright opponent of the regime.<\/p>\n

Read more Photos: Wildfire Smoke Blankets Parts of North America<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a subtext to this poster\u2019s admonition. During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980\u201388, which Khomeini prolonged for several years after repelling the Iraqi invasion, a disproportionate burden fell on Iranians in the southwestern and western provinces. The region recovered only slowly and suffered economically as well as physically. Now the Iranian south may again suffer from an ill-advised prolongation of a war that disproportionally hurts southerners.<\/p>\n

Attacks on the coast have destroyed civilian and commercial boats used for fishing or trade. These can be very costly to replace. Alireza, a college student in a small town in the province of Hormuzgan, told me that before the war, his father had earned as much 250 million Iranian rials a month (about $140) doing construction work in Bandar Abbas. Since the strikes began, his pay has dwindled to about half that. \u201cNobody wants to build now, and building material is expensive,\u201d Alireza said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know why they call it \u2018tensions,\u2019\u201d Alireza said about the official rhetoric around the conflict. \u201cThis is war. I don\u2019t know why they say, \u2018They hit the south!\u2019 No, they hit Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iranian students are right now preparing for the Konkur<\/i>, a high-stakes university-entrance exam, held in August, that all but determines their professional future. \u201cAt night we study under the sound of missiles,\u201d Narges, an 18-year-old who will sit for the exam in Chabahar, told me. \u201cAnd in the mornings we go to school with explosions around us.\u201d<\/p>\n

This destruction comes at a time when more Iranians than ever have strong, positive associations with the country\u2019s south. The coast has become a recreational destination in recent years. Domestic tourists had come to appreciate its hummocky beaches, quaint islands, and rich maritime culture, not to mention its easygoing ambience. New eco-lodges and resorts had mushroomed. Last year, a vacation complex on Hormuz Island won a top global architecture award. Now popular islands such as Kish and Qeshm lie in rubble. Many Iranians have observed the destruction with horror.<\/p>\n

Aware of this, government officials are scrambling to pay lip service to their love of the south. On X, President Masoud Pezeshkian hailed the region as a \u201csymbol of anti-colonial resistance\u201d and pledged to stand by its residents. \u201cIran\u2019s south is the beating heart of this land,\u201d his spokesperson posted. Other officials have made similar gestures.<\/p>\n

But the southerners I spoke with wanted an end to the war, not paeans to their region\u2019s virtues.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooks like both sides have an interest in war,\u201d Narges said. \u201cBut for us, it only means stress and lack of sleep, water, and electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Plan for November Is Failing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The southern coast of Iran is still getting battered. Some Iranians want their government\u2019s hawks to see for themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global"],"yoast_head":"\nWhere the War Is Still a War - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1396\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where the War Is Still a War - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The southern coast of Iran is still getting battered. 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