Tariq Saeedi
In the previous part of this series, we listened to the voices from the pulpits — the Friday sermons delivered in Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad. Those messages reflected grief, resolve, and a call for national unity amid ongoing conflict.
Today, it seems fitting to take a step back and try to understand the deeper context of who the Iranians are as a people, and why they respond to external pressure in the way they do.
You can be an insider to only one culture — your own. With genuine curiosity and empathy, however, you can reach something adjacent to another.
Several years ago, while waiting for a flight at Tehran airport, I struck up a conversation with a well-known Iranian professor. Our talk began with the polite chaos of the terminal and naturally turned to politics.
He asked whether I understood the term Hiss-e Mohasereh. I guessed “siege mentality,” but he gently corrected me. “Siege mentality would be Zehniyat-e Mohasereh,” he said. “Hiss-e Mohasereh means a sense of siege — there is a fine but important distinction.”
He traced this feeling back to 1953, when the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint American-British operation (Operation Ajax for the Americans, Operation Boot for the British). The trigger was Mossadegh’s nationalisation of Iran’s oil industry — an internal sovereign decision that angered Western powers. The operation involved bribery, propaganda, and paid crowds. For many Iranians, this event planted the first deep roots of Hiss-e Mohasereh.
The subsequent decades under the Shah, supported by the West, brought modernisation but also widespread resentment. The heavy-handed rule of the Shah and his security apparatus (SAVAK) further eroded trust in Western intentions.
Yet the professor noted a nuance: Iranians often feel softer toward France because Ayatollah Khomeini, during his brief exile there, was given freedom to communicate with the Iranian people and the world. He returned to Iran on a chartered Air France flight.
The eight-year war launched by Iraq in 1980, during which nearly 47 countries provided support to Baghdad while Iran stood largely alone, reinforced this sense of encirclement. On the street, the simplified narrative became “the world against Iran” — where “the world” really meant the interventionist powers. Khomeini’s label of the United States as Shaitan-e Buzurg (the Great Satan) remains part of the collective vocabulary.
As my flight was called, the professor offered a final thought: “Iranians may argue loudly among themselves, but when faced with an external threat, they tend to unite. They always have.”
On another visit, an elderly engineer shared a different but related insight. He observed that Western media during the 2003 Iraq war repeatedly spoke of “Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds” as three parallel segments. He found this framing fundamentally flawed: Shias and Sunnis are branches of the same religion, while Kurds are an ethnic group. Many Kurds are Sunni, and both Shias and Sunnis in Iraq are largely Arab. Such simplifications, he said, create false perceptions that obstruct real understanding.
These personal encounters have stayed with me.
Iranians are among the most hospitable and polite people I have met. One small incident in Mashhad years ago remains vivid: arriving by bus from Zahedan, I struggled to find a cheap hotel near the bazaar. The taxi driver called a friend who spoke some Urdu. That friend then summoned another acquaintance who knew the city’s hotels. Three strangers spent nearly an hour helping me find suitable accommodation, simply because I was a traveller.
Hiss-e Mohasereh — the sense of siege — and an exceptionally strong tradition of hospitality are two defining threads in the Iranian character. They help explain both the deep suspicion toward external pressure and the remarkable resilience shown under it.
In the current conflict, seeing Iranians only through a security or political lens risks missing the human reality.
Animosity toward Iran may feel satisfying in the short term, but it is unlikely to produce a stable outcome. Genuine respect and a willingness to understand the Iranian perspective offer a far more viable path forward.
As the war continues, keeping these nuances in mind may prove more useful than any single intelligence briefing. Nations, like individuals, are more than the sum of their crises. They carry long memories — and long traditions of endurance. /// nCa, 31 March 2026