Since the ceasefire between Iran, the United States and Israel was announced, Iranians have repeatedly been told that the war is over.
But at the same time, attacks, threats and diplomatic talks have continued. Iranian authorities talk about negotiations, progress and even sanctions relief one day, only to warn of retaliation, further strikes and threats to Iran’s critical infrastructure the next.
This constant oscillation between war and diplomacy has left many people in Iran caught between hope and dread.
For many, that uncertainty has become more psychologically damaging than the war itself. The problem is no longer just the fear of violence, but also the inability to imagine a stable future.
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A society unable to plan
One lawyer based in Tehran, who asked not to be named, told DW that the hardest part of the current moment is not knowing when the crisis will end. “The most important feature of this moment is that the end of the war is unknown,” she said. “When you cannot plan how to endure hardship, it puts enormous pressure on you.”
She said she no longer has the motivation to work or start anything new. Even speaking freely in society feels difficult. In the city where she grew up in, she said, she now feels a sense of estrangement from some of the people around her.
That sense of paralysis appears to go well beyond individual frustration, affecting basic decisions about work, family and the future.
Combined with economic instability and the constant fear that violence could return at any moment, the result has been a wider mood of fatigue and social stagnation.
“We are completely hopeless,” a resident of Isfahan city told DW. “This instability between peace and war has turned our mental state into a game, and we have no clear outlook for our future, or for our psychological and financial security.”
The same person said the entire experience had become deeply corrosive, with trust in either side of the war, or in the possibility of a durable agreement, having largely collapsed.
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Generation without a template for war
The current uncertainty may weigh especially heavily on younger Iranians, many of whom have no direct memory of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war or of life under prolonged military threat. For them, this is the first experience of living under the shadow of an open-ended regional conflict.
A nurse in western Iran told DW that when a society enters this kind of situation, trust in the future weakens and people begin postponing long-term decisions. “People start living as if the only goal is just to get through today,” she said on condition of anonymity.
For a generation without direct experience of prolonged war, she added, the situation is more disorienting, not necessarily because they are weaker, but because they have no mental model for how to live through such a period.
What many people are experiencing now is less fear of war in the narrow sense than exhaustion produced by uncertainty, she said.
The nurse said the change is visible in hospitals and clinics, with patients being increasingly angry, dissatisfied and easily provoked. Even when services are good, she said, many remain upset. In her view, that anger is inseparable from the wider social climate.
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Anger, despair and emotional burnout
Saeed Paivandi, a professor at the University of Lorraine in France, told DW that available data and field research point to two overlapping tendencies in Iran today: widespread despair about the future, and intense anger at the government’s inability to deal with ordinary life and govern effectively.
Referring to a survey conducted by Iran’s Interior Ministry in May 2026, he said it found that around 60% of the population felt hopeless about the future. He also cited more recent survey findings published by IranWire, which he said showed anger in 64% of respondents, despair in around 50%, depression in 48% and fear and anxiety in about 45%.
According to Paivandi, these figures show a clear deterioration compared with the last available survey before the mass anti-government protests and the authorities’ harsh clampdown earlier this year.
He believes anger, depression and anxiety have all risen by roughly 10 to 12 percentage points. That suggests that the state crackdown, followed by the US and Israeli attack on Iran, has left a serious mark on how people feel about life, politics and the future.
Paivandi also said the data point to another striking trend: around one-third of Iranians now express a desire to emigrate, with that figure rising among younger and more educated groups.
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Outside deal unlikely to resolve an inside crisis
Against this backdrop, experts argue that Iran’s current psychological crisis extends beyond ceasefires, diplomacy and military escalation.
While the external conflict matters, it has landed on top of a society already worn down by high inflation, repression, mistrust and a long-running sense of blocked opportunity.
What makes the current moment especially difficult is that no side has offered people a clear and credible horizon.
Instead, they are confronted with contradictory messages every day, making uncertainty a fact of daily life.
And the longer that limbo continues, the more difficult it becomes to restore confidence — or sustain people’s energy needed to imagine any future at all.
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru
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