The U.S. and Israel’s ongoing conflict with Iran has now surpassed the two-week mark, and its effects are rippling throughout the Middle East and beyond. The situation is most urgent in Iran, where cities continue to be bombarded and in Lebanon, where evacuation notices for several areas have created an internal displacement crisis.
This comes amid Ramadan, the holy month of communal prayer, fasting and spiritual devotion for Muslims around the world.
After a Feb. 28 U.S. strike on Iran killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini and several Iranian senior officials, the country retaliated with strikes on U.S. military bases stationed throughout the Arabian Gulf, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Oman.
Lebanon, for a second time since a conflict in 2024, became a battleground between Israel and Iran, which backs the paramilitary and U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah. This forced many to cross the border into neighboring Syria or relocate to government-run shelters.
On Monday, March 9, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for the joint US-Israeli airstrikes that were first deployed a week earlier. In response, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for the capital city of Beirut and municipalities in Southern Lebanon before carrying out routine strikes.
These areas primarily lie on Israel’s border with Lebanon to the south of the country, driving northward migration to Syria among many Lebanese. Some of them are Syrian citizens who fled to Lebanon during the Syrian Civil War, now displaced for the second time. Others, who were forced from their homes, stay in shelters and government-designated sites located in “safe zones” where humanitarian workers deliver essential supplies, provide psychosocial support services and cook meals for iftar — the light, customary meal consumed after breaking fast.
Familiar routines have disappeared, and here and throughout the Middle East, rituals of communal prayer, evening walks and scouting the marketplace for goods have been disrupted by the upheaval. Ramadan is experienced as a time of serenity, where Muslims draw inward to find spirituality, but the threat of a strike or evacuation order has created acute stress.
Maha, a resident of the Khraytem neighborhood, spoke of the changed atmosphere in an interview with The Beiruiter.
“Watching people be happy, seeing Hamra [a historic district] become the hub of everyone going out, this has totally disappeared,” she said of the communal spirit that is a defining characteristic of the month.
Despite this, Lebanese people are finding community and familial bonding within the walls of shelters while trying to hold on to routines — reciting the Qur’an, performing prayers inside where mosques are inaccessible and observing the fast amid rations.
Other reports reveal another, lesser-realized perspective.
Just 100,000 of those displaced have been admitted to government shelters, Reuters reports. Operations coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in these federally run facilities are only 14% funded, making it difficult to provide accommodations as the rate of displacement escalates daily. Some Lebanese who cannot gain admittance to official shelters instead stay with relatives in other parts of the country, while others are left sleeping on the streets.
Many migrants and refugees in the country, who report being turned away by government-run shelters during a previous conflict between Iran and Hezbollah in 2024, are prompted to seek less conventional forms of shelter, like that of the St. Joseph Church in Beirut.
The church is currently working in conjunction with the Jesuit Refugee Service to accommodate those who don’t have a place to go. One of these is Radina Muhammad and her family. Originally from Sudan, Muhammad told Reuters that they had registered under the UNHCR but did not receive adequate support. The family is one of many who were welcomed at the St. Joseph Tabaris Parish, which seeks to expand shelter capacity.
Across the Gulf, in Iran, strikes continue across more than 170 cities. Although the Trump Administration alleged that these targeted Iranian intelligence and military bases, reports reveal that civilian infrastructure — carparks, residential buildings and petrol stations have been hit.
The strikes destabilizing the country are only compounded by fear, inflation and thousands across the country mourning the loss of a legacy. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, who was appointed to leadership in 1989 after supporting the overthrow of former Shah Reza Pahlavi, was killed along with other senior Iranian officials by US-Israeli airstrikes on Feb.28.
In the week after his death, Iranians gathered after Friday prayers outside the Grand Mosque of Imam Khomeini to protest the attacks, carrying photographs of the late leader in public mourning.
According to multiple interviews with France24, the effects of the conflict can be felt everywhere in Iran. It is observed in the form of drone strikes and government billboards and sinks into the pockets, as war inflation makes it difficult to access goods that would normally be purchased during the season: dates, oil and other cooking staples.
President Donald Trump, who has both claimed that the conflict’s duration could last for a few weeks and until Iran “unconditionally surrenders,” hasn’t made clear when it is expected to end. This is despite the deaths of American soldiers and people across the Middle East, attacks on U.S. military bases and spiking gasoline prices at the consumer level.
Now, after more than two weeks into the conflict, at least two thousand individuals have been killed, including members of the U.S. military and those on board an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast, Reuters reports.
People throughout the Middle East of all nationalities are struggling to adapt familiar routines to the atypical conditions created by such violence while holding onto devotion and spirit. What is more urgent than market-calculated losses, though, are lesser-known narratives—behind the wall of a makeshift shelter — of loss, resilience and protest against only being seen as a statistic.
