Students across Diablo Valley College campus reacted with a mix of anxiety, frustration and political debate after the U.S. and Israel launched a coordinated strike on Iran in late February that quickly escalated into a wider regional war.
“I think this whole situation is absolutely horrible,” said Ashlyn Victa, a first-year biology student at UC Santa Cruz who was visiting the DVC campus at the time. She voiced skepticism about President Donald Trump’s motives for starting the war.
“Especially since midterm [elections] are around the corner, I believe this is just another way to sway votes and add delay and more distraction,” Victa said.
“It’s like Trump is making himself look like the hero by ‘protecting’ our country and bombing Iran first, since he believes he is ‘stopping’ Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Since the U.S. and Israel launched a coordinated strike known as “Epic Fury” a little over a month ago, 19 Israelis, 13 American servicemembers, and nearly 3,500 Iranians have been killed in the conflict.
The war has severely limited transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping lane for roughly 20 percent of the world’s crude oil, driving up global fuel costs and causing wide-ranging ripple effects across the U.S. economy.
On March 31, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline topped $4 in the U.S. for the first time since 2022, and Trump is seeing his approval ratings plunge as a result.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran date back to the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, when the U.S. and Britain helped overthrow Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized the country’s oil industry.
The coup restored the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the pro-Western shah of Iran, who brutally oppressed his people for decades prior to the Islamic Revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhola Khomeini to power in 1979.
The conflict deepened between the U.S. and Iran that year due to the hostage crisis, when Iranian students held 52 Americans captive at the U.S. Embassy in a standoff that lasted 444 days. Tensions rose again in 2020 when a U.S. drone strike killed the Iranian leader and commander of the elite paramilitary Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani.
For some DVC students, America’s involvement in another costly, damaging war in the Middle East makes little sense — even if there’s a rationale for taking on Iran’s brutal leadership.
“I do appreciate the U.S. helping out and being there, but I don’t think the U.S. should be getting involved because it is a situation on the other side of the world,” said Ido Levy-Meruk, a first year mechanical engineering student.
Nonetheless, he added, “I’m not against it.”
According to a first-year business management student who preferred to remain anonymous, the conflict initiated by Trump and Israel would have lasting consequences.
“Even if the war isn’t including us, it will change people and has changed people. All around me I see those who are growing anxious that this battle will come to their homes or come to them,” he said.
“Media coverage all over has also switched from general news to war and contributed to public anxiety across the globe.”
Long-term concerns about Iran’s nuclear program played a key role in bringing tensions to a boil. During the 12-day war last June, Israel launched “Operation Rising Lion,” a surprise airstrike against key Iranian nuclear and military facilities that aimed to dismantle the country’s warmaking capabilities and infrastructure.
U.S. and Israeli officials argued that the strikes last month were meant to prevent Iran’s missile capabilities and access to nuclear weapons.
The country’s funding of proxy militias throughout the region — from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Gaza, to the Houthis in Yemen — also made the regime a prime target.
“Iran is a country that needs some sort of reform. They have been a huge reason for the instability and constant violence in the Middle East,” said Levy-Meruk.
But for Victa, the U.S. never should have started the war on the undefined grounds that it did.
“To even claim that bombing Iran is an act of self defense displays how idiotic and messed up this [Trump] government is,” Victa said.
“They can’t even give us a straight answer on why they bombed Iran because they’re quite literally afraid and acting on pure fear.”