Missile strikes. Sanctions. Nuclear negotiations. Drone attacks. Regional escalation. Regime change. The language is almost always strategic: deterrence, retaliation, regime stability, security interests.
But if you step back and ask a simpler question — who is living inside these headlines? — the story shifts.
This is where Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States becomes unexpectedly relevant.
I teach Zinn nearly every semester.
Zinn’s central argument was simple but disruptive–and I keep reminding myself and my students: history is usually told from the viewpoint of governments and power, not from the viewpoint of ordinary people who experience the consequences of those decisions. Presidents and generals narrate events; workers, families, and civilians absorb them.
When we apply that lens to Iran — especially in moments of renewed tension or military escalation — we begin to see a different story beneath the official one.
For many Americans, the U.S.–Iran story begins with the 1979 hostage crisis.
For many Iranians, it begins in 1953 — when the CIA and British intelligence helped orchestrate the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. The coup reinstalled the Shah and deepened authoritarian rule.
I know this from reading Zinn.
And that history matters. Not because it excuses present-day policies. But because it shapes memory, distrust, and identity.
Zinn often argued that when we ignore earlier interventions, we misunderstand current resistance. Power doesn’t operate in a vacuum; it accumulates over time.
When tensions flare today — whether over nuclear policy, regional conflict, or sanctions — they land on decades of layered history.
In official statements, sanctions are “pressure mechanisms.”
Airstrikes are “targeted responses.”
Retaliation is “strategic.”
But from a people’s-history perspective, we ask: What does a collapsing currency feel like for a family buying groceries? What does an internet blackout mean for students trying to communicate? What does escalation mean for a parent deciding whether to leave the country?
And now, as new reports make tragically clear, we must also ask: What does it feel like to bury your child after they were killed at school?
According to multiple news accounts, a girls’ elementary school in the southern Iranian city of Minab was struck during the current wave of U.S.–Israeli military operations. Iranian officials say that at least 148 people — primarily schoolgirls — were killed and dozens more injured when the school was hit on a Saturday morning while students were in class. Images and local testimony describe backpacks and schoolbooks among the rubble and families desperately searching for victims. Independent verification is limited, but verified footage shows the devastated school building and shocked residents at the scene.
As one Iranian health official reportedly described it, this was “the most bitter news” of the conflict so far.
Iran has also vowed reprisals, and officials have condemned the attack as a “war crime,” stressing the impact on children and civilians.
Iran has experienced waves of internal protest in recent years — women demanding autonomy, young people pushing for reform, citizens resisting repression. These movements rarely fit neatly into geopolitical talking points.
They complicate the narrative. They remind us that a nation is not its government.
Zinn’s approach insists we hold two truths at once: Governments pursue power. Ordinary people pursue dignity.
When Iran appears in the news cycle, coverage often swings between two extremes: Iran as a threat. Iran as a victim.
A people’s-history lens avoids both simplifications. It asks instead: Who is deciding? Who is resisting? Who is paying the price?
Zinn believed that history should not make us more patriotic or more cynical — but more aware. More conscious of how power operates and more attentive to those who rarely get to shape the narrative.
If we only follow the official storyline — sanctions announced, missiles launched, leaders condemning one another — we see strategy.
If we widen the frame, we see society.
And once we see society, the conversation becomes less abstract.
It becomes human.
The most important lesson from Zinn isn’t that the United States is uniquely aggressive or that Iran is uniquely wronged. It’s that history is always incomplete when told only from the top down.
A “people’s history” of the current moment in Iran would include: Women resisting state control. Young people navigating censorship. Families coping with economic hardship. Diaspora communities watching anxiously from abroad. Parents mourning children killed at school. Civilians caught in escalation they did not design.
When we shift perspective this way, the headlines don’t disappear — but they become more complicated. And maybe more honest.
In moments of international tension, it’s easy to speak in the language of nations.
Zinn would remind us to speak in the language of people.
Because long after leaders issue statements and policies change, it’s ordinary lives that carry the weight of history.