May 25, 2026
Kourosh Ziabari
Hamidreza
Afarideh and Sheida Ebadatdoust inspect the ruins of the Honiak Music Academy
in Tehran, Iran, after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes destroyed the private arts
school on March 23, 2026.As the musician
steered toward the often-crowded Pirouzi district in eastern Tehran, what he
could see was not the line of towers and commercial centers that immediately
come into view on the highway, but a massive cloud of smoke raging from afar.
When Afarideh approached the Jalal Building, he found most of it in ruins. The Honiak Music Academy, which he had co-founded in 2024 with his wife, Sheida Ebadatdoust, had been destroyed, along with a gynecologist’s clinic and the office of a small marketing agency. They were all located on the fourth floor of a 22-unit building hit by a U.S.-Israeli airstrike.
“We weren’t political, we weren’t in the armed forces. Maybe they wanted to target a different building behind us or in front of us. These are not important to me,” Afarideh said in an online interview with Truthout that was significantly slowed down due to state-mandated internet restrictions in Iran.
“This incident is a cultural pain. It’s a social pain. It’s a shared global issue and not limited to a specific geography,” he added.
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 125,000 civilian buildings were damaged or destroyed during the 39 days of war on Iran that preceded a tenuous ceasefire. Although some reconstruction work has already begun, many buildings, like the music school and its properties, can never be repaired.
The Iranian couple, both musicians and art teachers, had raised 70 billion rials, mostly through loans, to purchase instruments, rent a space, equip the classrooms, and fund their operation. Two years ago, when the music school was first founded, that amount would have been roughly $115,000 in U.S. dollars — the equivalent of 30 years of paychecks for a mid-career Iranian teacher.
With the continued devaluation of Iran’s currency, a U.S. dollar is now traded at roughly 1,800,000 rials; their original fundraising sum is worth less than half of what it was in 2024.
The destruction of the Honiak Music Academy is just one example of how the U.S.-Israeli aggression has impacted civilians and inflicted harm on a population already grappling with economic sanctions, international isolation, and domestic repression. A war that was said to have been launched to help Iranians with their resistance against authoritarianism at home has instead further impoverished them.
Shortly after the airstrike on Honiak, Afarideh was able to bypass the stringent internet restrictions imposed by the Iranian government and share the story of his school with the world through social media. Given the rapid flow of war reports and news about assassinations, he didn’t expect many reactions to his post. But his Instagram timeline was flooded with messages of sympathy pouring in from around the world.
Afarideh wasn’t alone in his grief. The music school was also an economic lifeline for 22 teachers. More than 250 music learners were enrolled in different programs at Honiak, receiving private mentoring from instructors on the craft of Persian music and its different instruments. Many of them were in disbelief.
“Half of our students were children aged 4 or 5. They don’t have any understanding of war, and perhaps they don’t understand suffering, even though they may feel grief and mourning,” Afarideh told Truthout. “Even if families try to conceal the news from them, they can’t hide the rumbling of bombs and missiles from them.”
He recounted an anecdote from a Honiak student who was with her mom, walking past the neighborhood where the school was located a few days after the strikes. “The mom told us that her daughter stopped talking as soon as she saw the building was wrecked. She was quiet for a long time,” Afarideh said.
Not many Iranians who lost their belongings or businesses have had the social media attention or news coverage that Afarideh’s school has received. CNN and China’s CGTN ran stories on Honiak. On its Instagram page, the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, published a video of Afarideh performing one last song in the rubble of his school.
In the post, the nonprofit, which is a living memorial to famed anti-militarism organizer Martin Luther King Jr., urged people to reach out to their representatives and say they don’t want to be “purveyors of war.”
“The destruction of our music academy was reported by some reputed media organizations, and as a result, many people sent us messages of sympathy,” Ebadatdoust told Truthout.
“But we haven’t been supported by any national body or organization, and we have also been feeling that we’ve been forgotten. Of course, those people whose stories never make it to the media experience this feeling more intensely, and it’s tragic,” she said.
The bombing of the beloved music school became a prominent example of the indiscriminate nature of wars. Still, some militant members of the Iranian diaspora didn’t spare Honiak and its founders from their online wrath.
Ever since the U.S. and Iran entered a ceasefire on April 8, several diaspora activists have been agitating for the resumption of the war, a demand echoed by the son of Iran’s late shah, Reza Pahlavi. Many of them found the musician couple in Tehran to be a lightning rod for the surge in antiwar sentiments, and left dozens of derogatory comments on the social media timelines of Afarideh and Ebadatdoust, charging them with familiar, baseless accusations of being allied with the Iranian government.
Still, despite the distress and hardships they’ve been enduring, the couple doesn’t ascribe any malign intentions to the statements made by some Iranians overseas, who criticized them for sharing their story and allegedly undermining the momentum around the U.S.-Israeli intervention.
“People may have different attitudes to war, and if you talk to them, they may say war can produce good results. Now, the war is over for the time being, and we haven’t seen any good results,” Ebadatdoust said.
“I think the consequences of the war have been much more significant than what they expected, and these are the impacts we experienced inside the country. Even the fear that follows the sounds of explosions and bombardments is difficult to cope with, let alone the destruction that has happened across Iran,” she told Truthout.
Iranians in Iran, like Afarideh and Ebadatdoust, are the ones who will have to struggle with the long-term consequences of the war, intensified financial constraints, and a civic space that will be more restrictive in the postwar environment — conditions that Iranians also lived through after the country’s eight-year war with Iraq.
Afarideh is already navigating the labyrinths of Iran’s confusing bureaucracy to obtain the licenses required to continue the operations of Honiak, all while struggling to pay back the funds he had borrowed from friends and institutional lenders. This is not an easy task, especially if arts institutions aren’t going to be priority recipients of reconstruction aid.
“They will have lower priority naturally in war and postwar,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech. “Art production is generally a luxury that has low priority in reconstruction, so, yes, they are likely to be worse-hit.”
Independent artists in Iran have often been at a disadvantage when it comes to the allocation of resources, including venues, promotional opportunities, grants, and even licenses for performance and exhibitions. Thanks to the absence of private broadcasting channels within the country, it is difficult for artists to share their work more broadly at home unless state media platform them. Securing subsidies to support their work also requires powerful connections.
The destruction wrought by the war will not only leave the private-sector owners of creative industries in financial turmoil. In a country where the state has cracked down on cultural production and opportunities for independent artistic endeavors are limited, misfortunes like the destruction of a music academy will affect the fabric of the communities tied to these spaces.
“The long-term impact will be a form of collective trauma and enduring psychic devastation that is transmitted across generations through cultural memory and lived experience among the students and instructors at the Honiak school,” said Babak Rahimi, professor of culture, religion, and technology at the University of California, San Diego.
“Such trauma includes not only the loss of memories but also the disappearance of dreams, aspirations, and hopes for a life in art and music that embraces the creativity of play and seeks alternative sensibilities,” he told Truthout.
According to Rahimi, one of the many damages of a wide-ranging war in which civilian infrastructure is targeted is the suppression of civil society. In a turbulent security environment marked by the dilution of financial resources that support cultural activity, artists will face increased vulnerability.
“A darker consequence of postwar reconstruction is the way independent artists are often compelled to rely either on the state or on wealthy donors, frequently with ties to the state, in order to rebuild their livelihoods and reappear within the cultural sphere,” he said. “Such dependency can gradually reshape the conditions of artistic production itself, narrowing the space for autonomy and critical expression.”
As the Honiak Music Academy founders navigate these tensions, they have found solace in support from abroad. It’s especially meaningful to them that these messages of solidarity are coming from the United States, which launched the war together with Israel.
“We received many messages from American people expressing solidarity with us, saying that they oppose these policies,” Ebadatdoust told Truthout. “I believe ordinary people everywhere understand each other much better.”
Kourosh Ziabari
The destruction of
Honiak Music Academy shows the devastating impact of the US-Israeli war on
Iran’s creative spaces.
Tehran’s sky was
still half-lit around 5:00 am on March 23 and the Iranian capital’s
characteristic traffic jam hadn’t formed yet. Hamidreza Afarideh hadn’t left
for work, but he heard blaring alarms from a remote anti-theft system on his
phone that suggested something ominous may have happened at his workplace.
When Afarideh approached the Jalal Building, he found most of it in ruins. The Honiak Music Academy, which he had co-founded in 2024 with his wife, Sheida Ebadatdoust, had been destroyed, along with a gynecologist’s clinic and the office of a small marketing agency. They were all located on the fourth floor of a 22-unit building hit by a U.S.-Israeli airstrike.
“We weren’t political, we weren’t in the armed forces. Maybe they wanted to target a different building behind us or in front of us. These are not important to me,” Afarideh said in an online interview with Truthout that was significantly slowed down due to state-mandated internet restrictions in Iran.
“This incident is a cultural pain. It’s a social pain. It’s a shared global issue and not limited to a specific geography,” he added.
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 125,000 civilian buildings were damaged or destroyed during the 39 days of war on Iran that preceded a tenuous ceasefire. Although some reconstruction work has already begun, many buildings, like the music school and its properties, can never be repaired.
The Iranian couple, both musicians and art teachers, had raised 70 billion rials, mostly through loans, to purchase instruments, rent a space, equip the classrooms, and fund their operation. Two years ago, when the music school was first founded, that amount would have been roughly $115,000 in U.S. dollars — the equivalent of 30 years of paychecks for a mid-career Iranian teacher.
With the continued devaluation of Iran’s currency, a U.S. dollar is now traded at roughly 1,800,000 rials; their original fundraising sum is worth less than half of what it was in 2024.
The destruction of the Honiak Music Academy is just one example of how the U.S.-Israeli aggression has impacted civilians and inflicted harm on a population already grappling with economic sanctions, international isolation, and domestic repression. A war that was said to have been launched to help Iranians with their resistance against authoritarianism at home has instead further impoverished them.
Shortly after the airstrike on Honiak, Afarideh was able to bypass the stringent internet restrictions imposed by the Iranian government and share the story of his school with the world through social media. Given the rapid flow of war reports and news about assassinations, he didn’t expect many reactions to his post. But his Instagram timeline was flooded with messages of sympathy pouring in from around the world.
Afarideh wasn’t alone in his grief. The music school was also an economic lifeline for 22 teachers. More than 250 music learners were enrolled in different programs at Honiak, receiving private mentoring from instructors on the craft of Persian music and its different instruments. Many of them were in disbelief.
“Half of our students were children aged 4 or 5. They don’t have any understanding of war, and perhaps they don’t understand suffering, even though they may feel grief and mourning,” Afarideh told Truthout. “Even if families try to conceal the news from them, they can’t hide the rumbling of bombs and missiles from them.”
He recounted an anecdote from a Honiak student who was with her mom, walking past the neighborhood where the school was located a few days after the strikes. “The mom told us that her daughter stopped talking as soon as she saw the building was wrecked. She was quiet for a long time,” Afarideh said.
Not many Iranians who lost their belongings or businesses have had the social media attention or news coverage that Afarideh’s school has received. CNN and China’s CGTN ran stories on Honiak. On its Instagram page, the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, published a video of Afarideh performing one last song in the rubble of his school.
In the post, the nonprofit, which is a living memorial to famed anti-militarism organizer Martin Luther King Jr., urged people to reach out to their representatives and say they don’t want to be “purveyors of war.”
“The destruction of our music academy was reported by some reputed media organizations, and as a result, many people sent us messages of sympathy,” Ebadatdoust told Truthout.
“But we haven’t been supported by any national body or organization, and we have also been feeling that we’ve been forgotten. Of course, those people whose stories never make it to the media experience this feeling more intensely, and it’s tragic,” she said.
The bombing of the beloved music school became a prominent example of the indiscriminate nature of wars. Still, some militant members of the Iranian diaspora didn’t spare Honiak and its founders from their online wrath.
Ever since the U.S. and Iran entered a ceasefire on April 8, several diaspora activists have been agitating for the resumption of the war, a demand echoed by the son of Iran’s late shah, Reza Pahlavi. Many of them found the musician couple in Tehran to be a lightning rod for the surge in antiwar sentiments, and left dozens of derogatory comments on the social media timelines of Afarideh and Ebadatdoust, charging them with familiar, baseless accusations of being allied with the Iranian government.
Still, despite the distress and hardships they’ve been enduring, the couple doesn’t ascribe any malign intentions to the statements made by some Iranians overseas, who criticized them for sharing their story and allegedly undermining the momentum around the U.S.-Israeli intervention.
“People may have different attitudes to war, and if you talk to them, they may say war can produce good results. Now, the war is over for the time being, and we haven’t seen any good results,” Ebadatdoust said.
“I think the consequences of the war have been much more significant than what they expected, and these are the impacts we experienced inside the country. Even the fear that follows the sounds of explosions and bombardments is difficult to cope with, let alone the destruction that has happened across Iran,” she told Truthout.
Iranians in Iran, like Afarideh and Ebadatdoust, are the ones who will have to struggle with the long-term consequences of the war, intensified financial constraints, and a civic space that will be more restrictive in the postwar environment — conditions that Iranians also lived through after the country’s eight-year war with Iraq.
Afarideh is already navigating the labyrinths of Iran’s confusing bureaucracy to obtain the licenses required to continue the operations of Honiak, all while struggling to pay back the funds he had borrowed from friends and institutional lenders. This is not an easy task, especially if arts institutions aren’t going to be priority recipients of reconstruction aid.
“They will have lower priority naturally in war and postwar,” said Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a professor of economics at Virginia Tech. “Art production is generally a luxury that has low priority in reconstruction, so, yes, they are likely to be worse-hit.”
Independent artists in Iran have often been at a disadvantage when it comes to the allocation of resources, including venues, promotional opportunities, grants, and even licenses for performance and exhibitions. Thanks to the absence of private broadcasting channels within the country, it is difficult for artists to share their work more broadly at home unless state media platform them. Securing subsidies to support their work also requires powerful connections.
The destruction wrought by the war will not only leave the private-sector owners of creative industries in financial turmoil. In a country where the state has cracked down on cultural production and opportunities for independent artistic endeavors are limited, misfortunes like the destruction of a music academy will affect the fabric of the communities tied to these spaces.
“The long-term impact will be a form of collective trauma and enduring psychic devastation that is transmitted across generations through cultural memory and lived experience among the students and instructors at the Honiak school,” said Babak Rahimi, professor of culture, religion, and technology at the University of California, San Diego.
“Such trauma includes not only the loss of memories but also the disappearance of dreams, aspirations, and hopes for a life in art and music that embraces the creativity of play and seeks alternative sensibilities,” he told Truthout.
According to Rahimi, one of the many damages of a wide-ranging war in which civilian infrastructure is targeted is the suppression of civil society. In a turbulent security environment marked by the dilution of financial resources that support cultural activity, artists will face increased vulnerability.
“A darker consequence of postwar reconstruction is the way independent artists are often compelled to rely either on the state or on wealthy donors, frequently with ties to the state, in order to rebuild their livelihoods and reappear within the cultural sphere,” he said. “Such dependency can gradually reshape the conditions of artistic production itself, narrowing the space for autonomy and critical expression.”
As the Honiak Music Academy founders navigate these tensions, they have found solace in support from abroad. It’s especially meaningful to them that these messages of solidarity are coming from the United States, which launched the war together with Israel.
“We received many messages from American people expressing solidarity with us, saying that they oppose these policies,” Ebadatdoust told Truthout. “I believe ordinary people everywhere understand each other much better.”
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