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A Diary of War From an Unlikely Author: the Son of Iran’s President

In an online journal, Yousef Pezeshkian offers readers a mix of personal anecdotes and glimpses behind the scenes as Iranian leaders are picked off one after another.

Farnaz Fassihi has covered Iran for more than three decades, living and traveling through the country. A native Persian speaker, she been reading Mr. Pezeshkian’s daily writings since the start of the war.

March 20, 2026Updated 7:39 a.m. ET

When Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran, appeared in public very briefly to greet citizens at an anti-Israel rally last week, another member of his family was also there.

Yousef Pezeshkian, the president’s 44-year-old son, who serves as his adviser, had not seen or spoken to his father since Israel and the United States began the war against Iran on Feb. 28 and the country’s leadership went underground. He was hoping to get a glimpse of him. In a diary he has been posting on a Telegram channel, he lamented that it had been to no avail.

The son, who has a doctoral degree in physics and is a college professor, has kept a daily diary of the war mixing reflections both personal and political. The diary offers a rare glimpse into how Iran’s political figures are faring as the war rages — and closes in on them. And perhaps inadvertently, Mr. Pezeshkian at times takes his readers into the arguments and inner deliberations of Iran’s top leadership.

While Iran’s leaders have projected defiance in public statements, the younger Mr. Pezeshkian writes of the fear underneath the facade as multiple leaders are targeted and killed in Israeli bombings.

“I think some political figures are panicking,” he wrote on the sixth day of the war, in early March. “The people are stronger and more resilient than our pundits and political leaders. We have to keep reminding ourselves that defeat will only come when we feel defeated.”

He worries for his father, he wrote, and said that he and his two siblings could not wait for the two remaining years of the presidency to end so “we can all get back to our normal lives.”
As Iran enters the fourth week of war, with leader after leader killed, those who remain have all retreated to what they hope will prove secure locations. Israeli and American airstrikes have so far killed the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and wiped out his top military command chain; Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council and de facto ruler of Iran, and the head of the ministry of intelligence Esmaeil Khatib, among others.

Mr. Pezeshkian wrote in his diary that protecting the lives of officials has become the No. 1 priority for the country. Stopping the targeted killings, he said, “is now a matter of honor.”

Mr. Pezeshkian has posted diary entries on his Telegram page nearly every day since the war started, continuing a practice that dates back at least a year. He has linked some of the entries to his other official social media pages, like Instagram.

His writing mixes personal anecdotes about time with his family with messages of loyalty to the rulers of the Islamic republic and nods to their critics. That includes defending his father against attacks from rival factions.

Mr. Pezeshkian recounted attending a meeting with government officials in the first week of the war at which disagreements about strategy surfaced.

“The biggest serious disagreement we have is: How long are we supposed to fight?” he wrote. “Forever? Until Israel is destroyed and America retreats? Until Iran is in complete ruins and we surrender? We have to study the different scenarios.”

Mr. Pezeshkian did not respond to a request for comment. Two Iranian officials and a former senior official who know him and work with him in his father’s administration said that the social media pages were authentic and that he wrote the entries and managed the accounts. Iranian media have sometimes referred to his writings.

In the diaries, Mr. Pezeshkian says that he keeps receiving messages about the war not just from friends and acquaintances but also from strangers. Occasionally, he said, “the messages call for us to surrender and return the power to the people,” a notion that he dismissed as “ignorant and delusional.”

He did say that he worried that Iran’s attacks on Arab countries in retaliation for the U.S. and Israeli strikes might backfire. “It’s so sad that to defend ourselves we have to attack American bases in friendly countries,” he wrote. “I don’t know if they will understand our situation or not.”

Mr. Pezeshkian fiercely defended his father for apologizing to Arab countries for the strikes in a video message on March 7 and saying they would stop. Conservatives and military commanders reacted angrily to the apology, and the president’s pledge to stop the strikes was reversed within hours.

“Apologizing to neighbors is an ethical duty, not a legal one,” the younger Mr. Pezeshkian wrote. He said that people living in Arab countries in the Persian Gulf were not at fault and that their lives had been upended by the war.

Israel’s ability to hunt down senior officials in their secret locations has unnerved Iran’s leaders and caused anxiety about who may be next, and how the losses can be absorbed, according to three senior Iranian officials who asked that their names not be published because they were discussing sensitive issues. Some losses hit harder than others, the officials said.
Mr. Larijani, for example, had singular power and influence across different political factions and within the security and military apparatus. He was viewed as a figure who might be able to engage with the Trump administration in cease-fire talks.

“I did not want to believe it at all,” wrote Mr. Pezeshkian of the news that Mr. Larijani was dead. “We should not have allowed the enemy to have another successful assassination.”
Many wonder who is now running the country in the absence of Mr. Larijani. Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as supreme leader, remains out of sight.

The three senior Iranian officials said in interviews that the country was currently being run by a committee.
Commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are leading the charge, with Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, their newly appointed commander in chief, running the tactical side of the war. A member of Mr. Khamenei’s inner circle, Gen. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has been quietly filling in for Mr. Larijani. A former commander of the guards who is now speaker of the Parliament, he is in charge of strategic decision making.
President Pezeshkian and his vice president, Mohammad Reza Aref, are in charge of the day-to-day running of the state to make sure it continues to function, the officials said. They said that retired generals, along with former officials and managers, had been called back to service.



Analyst say that Iran’s system of governing has evolved into a resilient ecosystem of overlapping institutions. A network of leaders, loyal civil servants, military cadres, and civil and defense foot soldiers have mobilized not just to maintain the Islamic Republic’s rule but also to continue waging the war.

Eliminating the top tier of leadership has not led to a collapse.
“Facing the constant risk that Israel could take out its senior leadership, the Islamic Republic is running the war effort as a networked survival machine, with all hands on deck and authority diffused across overlapping centers of power,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group.

But in his diary, Yousef Pezeshkian says, that unless Iran can stop the targeted killings, “we will lose the war.”
He has also shared some anecdotes about his personal life. He speaks of coloring with his children, taking them out to play in the park, buying them balloons. He writes of meeting a friend for a long walk in the park and his resolve to exercise so he can maintain his mental stamina.

Once, he said, he received a mysterious message directing him to show up at an address. He panicked, suspecting an Israeli trap. But after checking with security, he said, he realized it was just an iftar invitation from friends to break the Ramadan fast with them.

One evening, Mr. Pezeshkian said, wondering what the future might hold for his beloved country, he turned to the Quran. He shared his interpretation of a verse that he had read: “My impression is that the calamity we are now grappling with is the result of our own behavior. Maybe tears will be our redemption and asking for forgiveness.”

Then this week, he said, he paid a visit to his grandmother. For most Iranians, the war is inescapable, but his grandmother was completely unaware of the events unfolding in their country, he said. It broke him.

“After 19 days of war, I finally broke down and cried, several times,” Mr. Pezeshkian wrote.

Details Of Fire On US Navy's Largest Carrier Much Worse Than Previously Known

There was chaos aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford after a major onboard fire knocked out a big swathe of living quarters, leaving hundreds of US sailors without beds in the middle of a live war deployment, in what marks a much bigger incident than what the Pentagon previously disclosed

The fire occurred last week, raising immediate questions of whether it was hit by an Iranian drone or missile attack, as Tehran has claimed, amid Pentagon insistence that it was none of these - but just an accidental fire.

Already the crew and ship are strained to their limits, given the carrier is on its way to achieving a record deployment, entering ten months. The crew has reportedly been informed that they will be deployed into May, which would make an entire year at sea, after the prior Caribbean deployment focused on the Venezuela anti-Maduro operation.

The NY Times says this marks twice the length of a normal carrier deployment - one wrought with extreme difficulties and a major emergency, as the report details:

It took more than 30 hours for sailors to put out the fire aboard the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford last week, sailors and military officials said, as the beleaguered ship continued its monthslong slog through President Trump’s military operations.

The fire started in the ship’s main laundry area last Thursday. By the time it was over, more than 600 sailors and crew members had lost their beds and have since been bunking down on floors and tables, officials said.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said two sailors received treatment for “non-life-threatening injuries.” People on the ship reported that dozens of service members suffered smoke inhalation.

CENTCOM has said that the fire caused "no damage to the ship’s propulsion plant, and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational."

The nuclear-powered vessel has indeed been running around the clock fighter jet operations connected to Operation Epic Fury, amid ongoing heavy aerial bombardment of Iranian cities.

Biden's former national security spokesman, Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, has been cited as saying "Ships get tired too, and they get beat up over the course of long deployments." And ultimately, he explained: "You can’t run a ship that long and that hard and expect her and her crew to perform at peak capacity."

Skeptics have raised eyebrows at the abundance of major incidents listed as 'accidents' by the Pentagon:

Richard Medhurst
@richimedhurst
Three F-15s shot down.

One KC-135 "crashed".

The US' largest aircraft carrier on fire.

Several US troops dead due to "health-related incidents".

But don't worry -- all of this is pure coincidence and not combat-related. The Pentagon would never lie to you.

Navigator wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 10:16 pm

DaKardii wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 1:35 am They .(they public)... in their opinion, no government is worse than Washington. And they would rather live under a (relatively) moral dictatorship than under an immoral democracy.

You cannot possibly think that living under the direct rule of a Putin or a Xi would be better than the US Government, even in its current state. Because that is the alternative

BTW, there is no such thing as a "moral dictatorship".

The US government is in the mess it is in because of how people vote. In the end, the citizenry of the US are responsible for electing and then re-electing people of dubious morals and motivations.

We get, unfortunately, the leaders we collectively deserve.

thinker wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2026 9:49 pm I don't think military force will be needed as the dictatorial bastards in charge at the moment seem to be pooping their pants and are trying to figure out a way to not get droned but we will see.

Nuclear war

A question from a web site reader:

"In the predicted clash of civilizations war, the participants will be nuclear. If this is to be a genocidal crisis world war, won't there be a global exchange of thermonuclear weapons? The outcome would not be promising. If there is not to be a nuclear war, what would stop it?"

Another reader wrote,

"But let's face it, if US/EU/Japan/Russia/India/Israel all gang up on China plus Bangladesh and Pakistan, they will nuke them into the stone age in 5 minutes."

Unfortunately, nothing will stop it. I would expect every nuclear weapon in the world to be used on someone before it's all over.

I remember reading the novel On the Beach, by Nevil Shute, in the 1960s. According to the Spark notes synopsis, Albania starts an Arab-Israeli War (which is a pretty good trick, since the Albanians are neither Arab nor Jewish), which led to a Russia-NATO war, which led to a Russo-Chinese war. The story is told from the point of view of people in Australia who are waiting for the huge nuclear cloud from the Northern Hemisphere war to reach them. It'll be there within a year. They're the last people on earth, and it will kill them all. It's a "very 60s" message.

A few years ago I did some research and found that even the largest nuclear weapons have kill radiuses of about 5-10 miles -- and that includes the spread of radiation in the period after the explosion. So if there are 10,000 nuclear weapons in the world, then take a map of the world and put 10,000 very tiny little pinpoint dots on it in various places, and you'll see what effect the nuclear weapons will have.

So, nobody is going to be nuked back to the stone age in five minutes. If you put together all the deaths that will be caused by all the nuclear weapons in the world, it will probably be in the tens of millions. In 2004, based on historical demographic trends and the surging worldwide hunger problem, I estimated the about 2 billion people will be killed in the Clash of Civilizations world war. That figure still sounds about right, and it means that the overwhelming majority of the deaths will occur "the old-fashioned way," through conventional warfare.

It also means that this war will take a very long time,

"I disagree about application of nukes being highly dispersed. They are and will be targeted at wiping out urban areas which are highly concentrated."

I'm certainly no expert on military strategy in a nuclear war, but I would think that, while some nuclear weapons would target urban areas, most would target military personnel and installations.

"How long do we have?"

As you know, predicting dates is impossible, since events will unfold because of chaotic events that can't be predicted.

Keep in mind that these wars usually progress slowly at first, and gather speed as they progress. So there may be an initial ground war between two nations that grows and expands to other nations over a period of months. The first nuclear weapon may not be used for a while -- I would guess the most likely first use would be in Asia, Pakistan vs India or China vs Russia. As the months go by, nuclear weapons will be used increasingly, until everyone is throwing out everything they have. In WW II the explosive climax was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This war will also have an explosive crisis, but I hate to imagine what it will be, and it won't occur for several years.

I guess I can't end this discussion without mentioning that there's a huge wild card that could speed things up: Once the conflict starts, many worldwide public health protocols will break down, and the climate will be right for a bird flu pandemic.

Another common claim is that World War III will be won by means of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons can do an enormous amount of damage, and they will be heavily used. But a war cannot be won with just by bombing, even by bombing with nuclear weapons. The war, whether it occurs this year, next year, or later, will be won with ground forces, and nuclear weapons will be used tactically.

Crisis Wars

The major findings of Generational Dynamics begin with the discovery that there are two kinds of wars: crisis (or generational) wars and non-crisis (or mid-cycle) wars.

Crisis wars are cyclic within a society, region or nation. They're the most horrible kinds of wars. They're so horrible and they traumatize a nation so much that there's unanimous agreement to do everything possible to prevent any such war from ever happening again. When the last generation of people who lived through the crisis war disappear (retire or die) all at the same time, then the nation enters a new crisis period, leading to a new crisis war. That's why a new crisis war typically begins around 60 years after the previous one ends.

Some people may think that America has been immune to genocidal crisis wars, but in fact there have been two since the nation's founding.

America's most recent crisis war was World War II. Before it was over, we firebombed and destroyed major cities like Dresden and Tokyo, with the intention of destroying the cities and their inhabitants, including millions of civilians. And we dropped nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities for exactly the same reason.

I'm not blaming the Allies for taking these genocidal actions, especially since our enemies would have done the same to us. But I'm making the point that genocidal actions like these always occur in crisis wars, and every nation and society has these crisis wars throughout it's history. Crisis wars are fundamental to human DNA, and are a requirement of "survival of the fittest."

Other 20th century wars did not exhibit anything like this kind of genocidal fury. America didn't use nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, and in fact the war was stalled by bitter political recriminations, which is typical of non-crisis wars. And World War I had no such genocidal fury either, and in fact was mostly a static war in the West, which ended when Germany unexpectedly capitulated, long before it had to.

Prior to World War II, America's previous crisis war was the Civil War. At the climax of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln OKed a "scorched earth policy": General Sherman marched through Georgia killing not only everyone in sight, but also destroyed all homes and crops so that any survivors starved to death.

This kind of genocidal behavior did not occur in any of America's other wars -- the Gulf War, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, World War I, the Spanish-American War, or the Mexican-American war.

The latter wars are non-crisis wars. Non-crisis wars are political wars -- they come from the politicians. They can start at any time a politician decides, and they can end at any time.

Crisis wars come "from the people" rather than from the politicians. They're almost like sex in their emotional ferocity. The recur in any society at roughly 70-90 year intervals. Crisis wars may get off to a bumpy start, but once they pick up speed they can't be stopped, and end with a genocidal fury.

About 55-60 years after one crisis war ends, the last generation of people who have personal memories of the genocidal horrors of the preceding crisis war all disappear (retire or die), all at roughly the same time, and the country enters a "generational crisis" period. This appears as a substantial change in attitudes in the public in general. We've already begun to see this in America, with the surprising and unexpected rise of "moral values" as a factor in the 2004 Presidential election. Whenever any country enters a generational crisis period, public opinions continue to harden until a new crisis war breaks out.

Donald Trump advisor warns Israel may unleash nukes in Middle East – 'Catastrophic'

David Sacks, the czar for AI and cryptocurrency in the Trump administration, warned that if Israel came under serious attack it could use the nuclear option

Mutually Assured Destruction

(MAD) is a Cold War-era doctrine holding that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by opposing sides would result in the complete annihilation of both attacker and defender. Based on deterrence, it assumes that assured destruction prevents either party from initiating conflict.