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… 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.