The poignancy of the anonymous author’s article describing life in Tehran is almost too much to bear (‘Don’t die’: the two words that sum up our lives in Tehran now, 7 March). I would like to say to them and their friends who simply want to stay alive that there are many here among us, in the UK at least, who agree with you. In particular, your words on the oxymoronic dictatorial democratic narrative on the justification for yet another confected, misguided and maniacal war in the Middle East.

The Alice Through the Looking Glass prism that the government of the world’s so-called largest democracy uses as its justification for the bombing of your country is sickening. Sickening because that country has stood by while the atrocities they claim to abhor take place elsewhere in the world.

One could cite Ukraine, but the US’s active support for Israel militarily and diplomatically in the wholesale destruction of Gaza and its people perfectly underscore your point on the hypocritical, meaningless cliches employed to justify their latest atrocity; no longer are they just complicit, as they were in Gaza, but transparent now in their very own murderous mission. I hope you do stay alive.
Desmond Hewitt
Marlborough, Wiltshire