A war diary from an unlikely author: the son of Iran’s president

when Massoud PezeshkianThe Iranian president made a brief public appearance last week to greet the crowd at an anti-Israel rally, where another member of his family was present.The president’s 44-year-old son, Yousef Pezeshkian, who serves as an adviser to the president, has not spoken to his father since the war broke out and the country’s leadership went underground. He wished he could catch a glimpse of him. In a diary posted on his Telegram channel, he lamented that the move was ineffective.The son of a university professor kept a daily war diary mixed with personal and political reflections. The diary provides a rare glimpse into, and access to, the lives of Iranian politicians at the outbreak of war. Perhaps unintentionally, Yusuf sometimes draws his readers into the debates and deliberations of Iran’s leadership.While Iran’s leaders expressed disdain in public statements, the younger Pezeshkian wrote about the fear beneath the surface as multiple leaders were targeted and killed in bombings in Israel. “I think some politicians are panicking,” he wrote on the sixth day of the war in early March. “People are stronger and more resilient than our experts and political leaders. We must constantly remind ourselves that failure will only come when we feel it.”He wrote that he and his two siblings couldn’t wait for the remaining two years of the president’s term to be over so “we can get back to our normal lives.”As the war entered its fourth week, many leaders were killed and those who remained retreated to what they hoped were safe locations. Yusef wrote in his diary that protecting the lives of officials had become the country’s top priority. Stopping targeted killings was “a matter of honor,” he said.Yousef has been posting diaries on his Telegram page almost every day since the war began, a practice that goes back at least a year. He links some entries to his other official social media pages, such as Instagram.Youssef recalled attending a meeting of government officials in the first week of the war, where strategic differences arose. “Our greatest serious disagreement is: How long should we fight?” he wrote. “Forever? Until Israel is destroyed and the United States withdraws? Until Iran is reduced to rubble and we surrender? We have to look at different scenarios.”Yusef did not respond to a request for comment. Two Iranian officials who knew him and worked with him in his father’s government and a former senior official said the social media pages were authentic and that he had written the entries. His work is sometimes quoted in the Iranian media. Yusef said in his diary that he continued to receive information about the war. He occasionally said, “These messages ask us to surrender and give power back to the people,” which he dismissed as “ignorance and delusion.”“He did say he was concerned that Iranian attacks on Arab countries could backfire. “It’s so sad that in self-defense we have to attack U.S. bases in friendly countries,” he wrote. “I wonder if they will understand our situation.”Youssef defended his father’s apology to Arab countries for the attack. “Apologizing to your neighbor is a moral obligation,” he wrote. People living in Arab countries are not wrong, but their lives have been turned upside down, he said. But he said in his diary that unless Iran could stop targeted killings, “we will lose this war.”