By Mohammad Reza Farzanegan and Reza Majdzadeh - 10 August 2026

Children in Iran are living through a renewed and destructive US military campaign. This war of choice has reached far beyond military installations. US operations have destroyed civilian infrastructure, including schools, universities, health facilities, electricity networks, water systems, transportation, and telecommunications, disrupting the services on which children and families depend. This post examines how war interacts with sanctions and domestic restrictions to damage the systems on which childhood depends and what a child-centred policy response should protect.

When a school is attacked, the immediate cost is measured in deaths and injuries. However, the destruction reaches further. A school is where children learn to trust adults, form friendships, prepare for exams, and develop confidence in the future. It also provides routine, social connection, access to trusted adults, and, in many cases, an entry point for mental-health support. As a recent Global Policy contribution argues, kindergartens and schools are frontline institutions for protecting young people’s wellbeing. The reported US strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, which killed scores of children and teachers, is among the starkest examples of the violence inflicted on Iran’s children. It also exposes a wider crisis. War, prolonged economic sanctions, inflation, internet shutdowns, and damage to critical services are eroding the institutions on which childhood depends: schools, food, medicines, electricity, water, communication, family stability, and access to health care.

Children injured in war need specialized care. That need is urgent. Yet trauma care alone cannot protect a child’s future. In Iran, military violence, sanctions-related hardship, and unrest-related insecurity are converging on the conditions through which children learn, recover, feel safe, and begin to imagine adulthood.

Since the latest escalation of military operations involving the United States and Israel, Iran’s child-health crisis has deepened in a country where children form a large share of the population. Children under 15 account for about 22% of Iran’s population, or more than 20 million people. The death or injury of a child extends beyond the casualty count. It also means a parent in shock, a brother or sister in grief, and a community made less secure.

War injuries require specialized medical care, and their consequences often continue long after treatment. Burns, amputations, and brain or spinal injuries can affect a child’s mobility, educational participation, performance, self-confidence, and independence for years. Psychological wounds may also persist long after attacks have ended. Children exposed to military attacks in Iran are reported to struggle with fear, nightmares, disturbed sleep, poor concentration, or sudden anger. Global Policy has described this neglected dimension as a “silent frontline”: these experiences can remain with children in the classroom, affect friendships and family relationships, and shape their confidence in the future.

In Iran, the story extends beyond military conflict. Sanctions and over-compliance have delayed the delivery of medicines, vaccines, surgical supplies, assistive devices, and rehabilitation equipment, as banks, insurers, shippers, and suppliers avoid Iran-related transactions because of US sanctions risks and the high costs of due diligence. Inflation and currency depreciation reduce families’ purchasing power and delay decisions to seek care. Internet shutdowns during war and unrest damage remote education, telemedicine, counselling, family contact, and access to reliable information. Domestic unrest and associated restrictions can erode children’s sense of safety, families’ willingness to seek help, and trust in institutions. Economic pressures, partly caused by sanctions, shape household choices over food quality and quantity, medical treatment, schooling, and whether to seek help despite perceived risks. For poorer families, these pressures can force painful choices: whether a child remains in school, starts working to support the household, or is pushed into early marriage.

The damage to essential services is felt in everyday moments of care. A recent Global Policy contribution argues that hospitals should be treated as critical infrastructure and that their resilience depends on protected utilities, communications, and logistics. Electricity keeps incubators running and vaccines refrigerated. Water and functioning hospitals make treatment possible. Communication networks allow families to find one another and seek help. Payment channels and supply chains determine whether medicines and medical equipment reach children, while schools allow learning to continue amid crises. When several of these systems fail simultaneously, children with chronic illnesses or disabilities face especially severe risks. For children, these systems form the architecture of survival and development.

The response must go beyond emergency support. Children in Iran need protection across health, education, family life, and access to basic services throughout the life course. Four actions follow: 

• First, attacks on schools, hospitals, electricity, water, and communication systems should be prevented and treated as attacks on child-health infrastructure. Where violations of international law are alleged, evidence should be preserved and responsibility investigated, including at the level of political and military leadership.
• Second, humanitarian exemptions must be made functional through trusted banking, insurance, procurement, and shipping channels for pediatric medicines, vaccines, nutrition supplies, assistive devices, and rehabilitation equipment.
• Third, mental-health and psychosocial support should be embedded in schools, primary care, and community services. It should be age-appropriate, adapted to local conditions, and extend to parents, teachers, and other caregivers.
• Fourth, monitoring and reporting must consider more than deaths and injuries. It should track learning loss, school exclusion, food insecurity, treatment interruption, disability, digital exclusion, child labor, early marriage, mental-health distress, and children’s trust in institutions. These indicators would translate a child-centred humanitarian agenda into measurable protection for Iran’s children.

For a child, these harms are not abstract indicators. They can mean a closed classroom, a missed treatment, a lost connection with relatives, or months of fear that make ordinary life feel unsafe.

Iran’s children need survival, care, learning, communication, and protection to be treated as parts of a single humanitarian agenda. If the world measures harm only by today’s casualty figures, it will miss the slower destruction of a generation’s health, education, and future.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan (Professor of Economics of the Middle East, Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany) and Reza Majdzadeh (Professor of Global Health, School of Health and Social Care, University of Essex, UK).

Photo by Reza Khavarani from Pexels