We learned English in buildings the U.S. bombed. Now we are using it | Opinion

I write on behalf of a group of Iranian-Americans living in Washington.

On March 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about reports that a U.S. strike had hit a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran — a strike that killed more than 150 children. His response: the United States would not deliberately target a school and had “no incentive” to strike civilian infrastructure.

That claim demands scrutiny from journalists, policymakers and the public. Independent investigations have already raised serious concerns about civilian harm. According to Amnesty International, the U.S. strike on the school in Minab may have violated international humanitarian law.

But beyond reports and investigations, there are lived realities. Many of us once sat in those classrooms. And we are the evidence.

Allameh-Helli High School in Tehran was struck on March 9. That was our high school — a place where teenagers studied calculus and physics — not a military site. Sharif University of Technology was hit on April 5. That was our university — long known to American academics as “the MIT of Iran.” We studied science and engineering in those buildings. Now, these buildings do not exist, among hundreds of schools and dozens of universities damaged or destroyed in recent strikes.

We brought what we learned in those classrooms to the United States. We became engineers in Seattle, doctors in Spokane, researchers in Pullman, entrepreneurs across Washington state. We contribute to the economy, pay taxes and participate in civic life. Some of us have lived here for decades. Many of us are citizens.

And yet, when bombs fall on our hometowns, we deal with a pain that is invisible to our colleagues. A meeting goes quiet. A phone is checked under the table. Someone steps outside.

We call home. Sometimes the call goes through. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we wait hours or days to learn whether someone we love is still alive. This is not abstract foreign policy to us. It is personal.

So when American officials say these strikes do not target civilian life, we ask: What do you call the destruction of the schools that shaped us? What was the military purpose of our high school? What was the strategic value of our university classrooms?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are moral ones. When officials deny that civilian infrastructure has been hit, they are erasing people and dismissing the lived experiences of thousands of Iranian Americans who now call places like Washington state home.

We do not have a podium. We do not hold press briefings. We have diplomas. We have transcripts. We have memories of classrooms that no longer stand.

So we are using the language we learned in those very buildings to speak directly to the American public. Iranians are not abstractions. They are not slogans. They are not “animals,” as political rhetoric has claimed. They are students, teachers, families. They are us.

We are Iranian Americans. We are your neighbors. And we are asking a simple question: If these were not civilian targets, then why do our schools lie in ruins?

Zahra Eslami is an Iranian American technologist and education advocate, and a graduate of the University of Minnesota. She writes from personal experience shaped by her life in Iran and her work advancing equity and community voice in the United States.

This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 3:00 AM with the headline "We learned English in buildings the U.S. bombed. Now we are using it | Opinion."