refugee

Sana* is a 27-year-old woman living with her roommate, Fatemeh, in a two-bedroom apartment in western Tehran. The economics master’s student and risk control analyst at an investment firm had already survived the June 2025 Israel-Iran war. When the latest war began in late February, she promised herself she would not run away from the city again. As told to Ariya Farahand. 

The night before the war, every piece of news arriving on my phone had two possibilities: Either they strike, or they don’t. I stayed up late, waiting. Previously, the strikes had come around midnight, so I kept watching. When nothing happened, I put on some Persian music, poured myself a drink to take the edge off, and went to bed. I told myself the night had passed without an attack.

I was wrong.

It was 9:40am on February 28 when the first missiles hit Tehran. I was caught between sleep and wakefulness in my apartment in the west of the city. My neighbourhood hadn’t been targeted yet. I hadn’t heard any explosions. I didn’t know what to expect.

My phone began chiming with text messages I couldn’t bring myself to get up and check. When it started ringing, I realised that it was urgent. It was my boyfriend, his shaky voice enquiring if I was OK. Before I could answer, he blurted out: “They struck. They attacked.”

He didn’t need to elaborate further.

Within minutes, my mother, my father and my younger sister were calling from Sari, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north in Mazandaran province, where they’re based, begging me to leave the capital. I stared at my cat, Fandogh (Hazelnut). She stared back. I made myself a promise: No matter what happens, I am not leaving Tehran.

The 12-day war last June had broken something in me. On its third day, my family’s pressure forced me out of the city. The drive to Sari was miserable, and my parents’ house was crowded; none of us found peace. This time, I refused. My boyfriend urged me to go somewhere safer. I said no.

By mid-afternoon, my roommate Fatemeh had finally made it home from work, the gridlock traffic making her typical hour-and-a-half journey take four hours. She walked in, still wearing her coat, sat down in the middle of the living room, and wept – the first explosion, she told me, had hit right near her office.

Routine

The war settled into a grim routine. We learned to anticipate strikes during certain windows: early morning, the afternoon, and after 11 at night. The bombings were never predictable enough to be safe, but those were the hours we instinctively braced. We relied on supermarket deliveries to avoid going outside. If we absolutely needed something, we made a frantic dash to the shops and rushed straight back.

The internet was another kind of suffocation. When friends who had emigrated abroad heard there was “no internet”, they assumed it meant social media was blocked. But, for most people, it was a total blackout – we couldn’t even load Google. We kept buying virtual private networks (VPNs) that would work for a day and then stop. My daily life ran on podcasts and YouTube. Now there was nothing. I downloaded foreign TV series from local servers that were still operating just to keep my mind occupied. I read. I found a copy of Baghdad Diaries (a 2003 book recounting the war in Iraq), and its mirroring of my own reality sent a chill through me. You could write a whole book, I kept thinking, about what we were living through.

March 16 was one of the worst nights of my life – though it had started gently enough.

At my friends’ urging, I had gone to a nearby cafe that evening, the first time in weeks that anything felt briefly, superficially normal. I got home about 9pm, did some light cleaning, and was asleep by 11.

At 2:30 in the morning, a massive explosion tore through the silence. The force of it jolted me upright. Fatemeh was already awake. We stumbled into the hallway, peered out the window – and then an intense flash of light flooded the apartment, followed by a blast so violent we both screamed. Still in our pyjamas, without stopping to grab our phones, we sprinted down the fire escape to the lowest level of the parking garage. Several neighbours were already there.

Seven or eight more explosions followed. They were bombing near Mehrabad airport, close to us. I genuinely thought I was going to die.

When I finally went back upstairs, my cat was hiding in the wardrobe, trembling. My family and boyfriend had been calling and texting, without response, for hours, watching the news reports about strikes near the airport and imagining the worst. Guilt washed over me for leaving my cat behind. I called everyone to say I was alive.

Attempting normality

I felt like a refugee in my own city.

The days had already been darkening before that night. One day, an oil depot was struck. I had stepped out to do some shopping at the corner of the street. I stopped and looked up. It was the middle of the day, but the sky had turned black. Pitch black. Like the end of the world.

April 4 was my first day back in the office – and the day we would find out whether our contracts were being renewed or not. When I arrived, a colleague was already standing in the hallway, termination letter in hand, crying about how she would pay her rent, how she was supposed to find work in the middle of a war. I will never forget her tears. By midday, half the staff – 18 out of 41 – had been laid off. Nobody did any work.

I kept my job. Three days later, on my commute home, the streets were nearly empty – a journey that once took more than an hour took less than 20 minutes. The only queues were at petrol stations, snaking down deserted roads, after US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran’s energy infrastructure and destroy our “whole civilisation”. In the lift, my neighbour stepped in, carrying two large packs of bottled water and talked anxiously about pooling money for a building generator. That night, Fatemeh went to bed early, claiming she didn’t care about any of it. She had been biting her nails all evening. She showered before bed – so that she would be clean, she told me, if the water was cut off after an attack.

When the ceasefire was announced, I couldn’t believe it. I waited for the denial that never came. When it was finally clear the war was on pause, it felt as though a 100-kilogramme weight had been lifted from my chest.

I pulled the blanket over my head, but found I still couldn’t sleep. What happens next?

The first thing I did the following morning was book an appointment to get my hair cut and my nails done. The second thing I did was buy a high-grade VPN – expensive, about $4 a gigabyte — and scroll through Instagram for the first time in weeks.

Small things. The kind that makes you feel human again.

*The names used in this article are pseudonyms chosen for security reasons

Islamabad, Pakistan — The war launched by the United States and Israel on Iran has already killed more than 1,400 people, set off retaliatory attacks by Tehran targeting Gulf nations and Israel, and pushed global oil prices above $100 a barrel.

Now, eighteen days into the conflict, aid agencies and countries neighbouring Iran are increasingly concerned about a potential refugee crisis.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that 3.2 million people have already been displaced in Iran since US-Israeli strikes began on February 28. For now, the number of people physically crossing Iran’s borders remains comparatively modest. But this is what could happen next, and has put Iran’s neighbours on high alert.

Iran borders seven countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkiye and Turkmenistan. Iraq shares the longest frontier, stretching for almost 1,600km (994 miles).

Each of these states faces its own political pressures, economic limitations and security concerns.

But pressure on the ground in Iran is mounting. The country’s Red Crescent Society reports that more than 10,000 civilian sites have been damaged since the war began, including 65 schools and 32 medical facilities, while more than 1,400 people have been killed in the US-Israel attacks. Strikes have hit residential areas in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan.

Meanwhile, commercial flights out of Iran have been suspended as airspace is closed.

Eldaniz Gusseinov, head of research at the geopolitical advisory firm Nightingale International, noted that because strikes have so far been concentrated largely on Tehran and western and southwestern Iran, other parts of the country — especially provinces bordering Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan are absorbing much of the internal displacement.

“If the strike pattern remains the same, internally displaced people inside Iran will increasingly concentrate in provinces located near those states, creating the preconditions for cross-border movement,” the Almaty-based analyst told Al Jazeera.

And things could get worse. If Tehran, a city of about 10 million people, were to lose its electricity grid or water supply in a US-Israel attack, for instance, residents could be forced to leave en masse.

“Infrastructure destruction does not produce the gradual, manageable flows that the Syrian war initially generated. It produces sudden, massive displacement, driven by the collapse of basic urban services,” Gusseinov said.

Turkiye fears repeat of Syrian migration crisis

Among Iran’s neighbours, only Turkiye, Iraq and Pakistan have extensive experience of hosting large refugee populations.

Imtiaz Baloch, an independent researcher focusing on conflicts in Pakistan and Central Asia, said that if the crisis in Iran deepens, many Iranians could seek refuge in neighbouring states, particularly Iraq and Turkiye.

Analysts say no country faces greater political exposure than Turkiye.

“Turkiye is currently hosting many refugees from Syria and other countries. A new influx of Iranian migrants would likely intensify the humanitarian burden and create new challenges for both host countries and international relief agencies in the coming days,” Baloch said.

Turkiye shares a 530km (329-mile) border with Iran and allows visa-free entry for Iranian citizens. It already hosts the world’s largest refugee population, including roughly 3.6 million Syrians, and anti-immigrant sentiment has hardened within domestic politics over the past decade.

Turkiye’s interior minister, Mustafa Çiftçi, said earlier in March that the government had prepared three contingency plans for the war in Iran.

The first involves intercepting migration flows within Iranian territory before they reach the border. The second proposes establishing buffer zones along the frontier. The third would allow refugees to enter Turkiye under controlled conditions as a last resort.

Turkish authorities say they have already strengthened the border with Iran, adding 380km (236 miles) of concrete wall, 203 optical towers and 43 observation posts – undertaken, according to a Turkish Ministry of National Defence statement issued in January, as the US was building up its armada in the Gulf late last year.

“Although there is currently no mass migration detection at our borders, additional measures have been taken on the border line, and these measures will be implemented if needed,” the Defence Ministry stated on January 15.

So far, this has not been necessary. According to Turkish government data on the movement of people from Iran, 5,010 entered Turkiye from between March 1 and 3, while 5,495 exited.

But Turkiye has felt the effects of the war’s spillover in other ways. On March 9, NATO confirmed it had intercepted an Iranian ballistic missile over Turkish airspace. The debris landed near Gaziantep, in the western-most part of the country, about 50km (31 miles) from the Syrian border. Iran denied that it was behind the attack on Turkiye.

Crisis on an unprecedented scale?

What makes the current situation in Iran particularly urgent is the scale of its population, say analysts.

Syria had approximately 21 million people at the start of its civil war. Iran has roughly 90 million. The Syrian conflict caused more than 13 million people to be displaced, including more than 6 million who fled the country.

A proportionate displacement from Iran would represent a humanitarian crisis with few modern parallels. To put it into perspective, if a country of 90 million experienced the exact same scale of crisis as Syria, nearly 56 million people would be forced to flee their homes, and nearly 26 million of them would become international refugees.

Gusseinov said such a scale of displacement and the capacity of international aid agencies is “fundamentally mismatched”.

Furthermore, Iran itself hosts one of the world’s largest refugee populations: about 3.7 million displaced people, most of them from Afghanistan.

“Any mass displacement from Iran, therefore, creates a dual crisis: Iranian civilians fleeing outward, and Afghan and Iraqi refugees who were already in Iran being displaced a second time, or pushed back to countries that cannot absorb them,” he said.

Iraq and the South Caucasus face difficult choices

Although most population movement is still taking place within Iran rather than across its borders, Iran’s neighbours do have cause for concern, analysts say.

“Iran’s neighbouring countries are already dealing with their own crises, which limits their ability to absorb a potential refugee influx. Countries such as Syria, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are facing varying degrees of economic, political, or security challenges. These internal pressures make it difficult for them to accommodate a large influx of refugees,” Gusseinov told Al Jazeera.

Iraq, which shares Iran’s longest border, faces a particularly complex situation.

The country is not only a potential destination for Iranian refugees, but has also been caught in military exchanges between Washington and Tehran. US forces have targeted armed groups operating from Iraqi territory, while Iran and pro-Iran armed groups have struck – or attempted to strike – US military and diplomatic positions inside the country.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration says disruptions on the Iranian side of the border have led to the closure of several crossing points, although Iraqi crossings remain technically open. Meanwhile, the UNHCR says it is monitoring developments closely, and that the Iraqi government would lead any emergency refugee response.

The semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which, unlike the rest of the country, still allows visa-free entry for Iranian passport holders, adds another layer of complexity.

The region hosts several Kurdish armed groups, some of which have reportedly been in discussions with Washington about receiving military support in return for joining the war against Iran. The development has prompted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to strike Kurdish positions inside Iraqi territory.

Baghdad has publicly stated that it will not allow its territory to be used to infiltrate Iran, but experts on the region say its ability to enforce the position is limited.

Further north, the South Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have each expressed concern while attempting to carefully balance relations with both Washington and Tehran.

Azerbaijan has closed its land borders to routine traffic, requiring government approval for any crossing, while Armenia’s border with Iran, which is just 44km (27 miles) long, remains open.

“Armenia is a small economy already absorbing Russian and Ukrainian migrants,” Gusseinov said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan confront overlapping crises

To Iran’s east lie Pakistan and Afghanistan, each grappling with existing refugee pressures.

According to the UNHCR, since October 2023, about 5.4 million Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Iran and Pakistan, many not by choice.

Following the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021, a huge wave of Afghans sought refuge across the country’s borders, fearful of economic collapse and security threats.

The UN and international migration agencies estimate that between 1 and 1.5 million Afghans fled to Iran in the immediate aftermath of the US withdrawal, pushing the total Afghan population in Iran to upwards of 5 or 6 million.

Concurrently, hundreds of thousands of newly displaced Afghans crossed into Pakistan, joining a long-established refugee community there and swelling the total number of Afghans in the country to more than 3 million.

In response to this influx and citing domestic economic and security pressures, both Pakistan and Iran initiated aggressive mass deportation campaigns, forcing millions back into Afghanistan. Between late 2023 and the end of 2025, between 2.8 million and 3.5 million Afghans are thought to have been sent back.

Pakistan’s stringent repatriation plans pushed out more than 1.3 million people, while Iran drastically accelerated its expulsions, deporting nearly 2 million individuals in 2025 alone.

According to the UNHCR, in 2026 so far, more than 232,500 Afghans have returned to their country, including 146,206 from Pakistan and 86,253 from Iran.

The primary concern now is that the war in Iran could accelerate these returns, pushing people into communities already struggling to cope and potentially triggering further onward migration. The UNHCR has also warned that largescale and hurried returns of refugees could trigger further instability in the region.

Further complicating the situation, Pakistan and Afghanistan have been engaged in fighting, as Islamabad claims that Afghanistan is providing a safe haven to armed groups launching attacks at Pakistan. Kabul has consistently denied the presence of any such groups on its soil.

Another bout of hostilities in October 2025 led Pakistan to close its borders with Afghanistan. Since then, Afghanistan’s trade and economic ties with Iran have deepened.

“Destabilisation of the Iranian economy, therefore, hits Afghanistan through two channels simultaneously: reduced trade flows and refugee return surges,” Gusseinov said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan faces its own geographical and security challenges.

The country’s border with Iran runs through Balochistan, its largest but most volatile province, where separatist sentiment has simmered for decades. The province has seen an increasing number of attacks by armed groups seeking independence from Pakistan. In February this year, Pakistan’s military concluded a weeklong security operation in the province, and claimed it had killed 216 fighters in targeted offensives.

While Balochistan’s provincial officials say they have sufficient resources to accommodate refugees if large numbers begin arriving across the southern border, researcher Baloch said the reality was more complicated. Any refugee crisis, he said, could make the situation in Balochistan difficult for Islamabad to manage.

“Balochistan’s porous border is next to Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province, a region that has historically been home to various separatist groups. Any significant influx of refugees across this border could impose additional security and economic costs on Pakistan,” Baloch said.