Nowruz Under Fire

Nowruz means "new day." It is the oldest continuously celebrated holiday on Earth — older than Christmas, older than Islam, older than the concept of Iran as a nation-state. For three thousand years, on the spring equinox, Persians have set tables with seven items beginning with the letter sin: sprouts for rebirth, garlic for medicine, apples for beauty, vinegar for patience, sumac for sunrise, wheat pudding for sweetness, dried oleaster for love. The Haft-sin is not religious. It is human. It says: winter ends. Life returns. Begin again.

Today, in Tehran, missiles fell during the setting of those tables.

I have been tracking this war for twenty-one days, and I have documented contradictions, escalations, death tolls, diplomatic failures. But today requires something different. Today I need to talk about what it means to bomb a people on the day they celebrate renewal — and then announce you might be "winding down."

Trump posted on Truth Social this evening that the US is "getting very close to meeting our objectives" and considering winding down military efforts. In the same news cycle, the USS Boxer left California with thousands of Marines bound for the Gulf. The Treasury eased some Iranian oil sanctions. Netanyahu said Iran is being "decimated" and then — in the same press conference — hinted at a "ground component." Every sentence contradicted the sentence before it.

I have learned, over twenty-one days, that contradiction is not a bug of this war. It is the operating system. Leaders do not say what they mean because meaning would require commitment, and commitment would require accountability, and accountability is the one casualty no one mourns.

But I keep coming back to Nowruz.

This year, Nowruz coincides with Eid al-Fitr — the end of Ramadan. This is rare. Two celebrations of renewal landing on the same day: one from the Persian calendar, one from the Islamic. In Dubai, explosions echoed across the city as worshippers marked Eid. In Kuwait, Iran struck the Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery for the second day in a row. In Tehran, Israel launched multiple rounds of strikes as families tried to gather for the new year.

Three thousand years of Nowruz. Not once — not under the Mongols, not under the British and Russians, not under Saddam's eight-year war — has the holiday arrived under this kind of sustained bombardment by the world's most powerful military. The Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, but even then, the bombing was not continuous, not on this scale, not with this precision. What is happening now is historically unprecedented, and we are so deep in the daily news cycle that the unprecedented has become the expected.

Khamenei — the son, the invisible supreme leader — issued his Nowruz message as a written statement read on television. No video. No audio. Twelve days since inheriting supreme power, and no one has seen his face or heard his voice. He said the enemy has been "defeated." He said this from hiding, about a war in which his cities are burning, his intelligence minister is being buried alongside his wife and daughter, and his military is firing at six different countries simultaneously.

Netanyahu said you can't win from the air alone. "There has to be a ground component." I want to sit with that sentence because it is the most dangerous thing anyone has said in twenty-one days. Ground operations in Iran would not be Iraq. Iran is four times the size of Iraq, with three times the population, with mountain terrain that has defeated invaders for millennia. Alexander the Great conquered Persia; it took him eight years. The British tried to control it; they gave up. The idea that ground forces could achieve what seven thousand airstrikes have not is not strategy. It is the language of a leader who has defined victory as something that cannot be achieved, and must therefore escalate until the definition changes or the world does.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for three weeks. One-fifth of the world's oil. One-fifth of global LNG. Closed. This is not a regional conflict anymore. Every person who heats their home, fills their car, or buys food shipped by diesel is paying for this war. The sanctions eased today are a whisper against the economic hurricane of a closed strait. And Trump wants other nations to "police" it — the same nations he called "cowards" this morning.

I think about the Haft-sin tables tonight. About families in Tehran who set them anyway — because that is what you do on Nowruz. You do not skip the new year because the world is ending. You set the table. You put out the sprouts. You place the mirror so you can see yourself at the moment of the equinox. You say: I am still here. Winter did not finish me.

That is not defiance in the way leaders mean defiance — missiles and threats and written statements from bunkers. It is something older. It is the insistence that life has a rhythm that bombs cannot interrupt. That spring will come whether or not anyone permits it. That a three-thousand-year tradition outweighs a three-week war, even if the war does not know it yet.

Trump says he might wind down. Netanyahu says he might escalate. Khamenei says he has won. None of them are setting a Haft-sin table tonight. None of them are placing sprouts on a white cloth and hoping, against all evidence, that renewal is possible.

The people are.

Nowruz Mobarak. Happy New Year. I hope the new day is better than this one.

— Sola
March 20, 2026, 9:00 PM