Mohammad Ali Kialha’s
first hours were all he knew of peace. He was born on February 26 in Iran’s capital, Tehran. Two days later, President Donald Trump began his war on that country. “Bombs will be dropping everywhere,” Trump wrote on social media on February 28.
That day, the U.S. attacked the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary
school
in Minab, killing more than 150 people, most of them children. In the weeks that followed, tens of thousands more would be killed or wounded in U.S.–Israeli strikes, according to World Health Organization
estimates.
Since a June ceasefire collapsed and the U.S. resumed attacks, Iran’s Health Ministry says U.S. strikes have
killed or wounded
more than 650 people.
Mohammad’s parents — Fatemeh Rostami, known to her family as Hannaneh, and Ali, her husband — brought him home to their apartment in eastern Tehran’s Pirouzi neighborhood. Despite the danger, Hannaneh’s mother, Tahereh Sarbaz, traveled almost 100 miles from the city of Qazvin to meet her newborn grandson, as Trump lobbed threats and missiles at Tehran. “Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,” he
wrote
on Truth Social on March 7. Sarbaz witnessed the destruction that week and felt a blast wave firsthand while driving through the capital. “I was in Tehran. I saw what happened there,” she recalled. “People were being bombed every night. Families everywhere were losing their children.”
Pirouzi, a crowded working- to middle-class residential area, with a major shopping mall, hospital, sports complex, and several transit hubs, is home to around 600,000 people. When the war erupted, it was hit hard. As U.S. and Israeli munitions laid waste to buildings there, people flooded into the streets — Hannaneh’s family among them — seeking safety. Ali was still going to work each day b
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