Around 20 students and faculty members rallied in Washington Square Park on Tuesday afternoon to protest the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in Iran, calling on the Trump administration to end the military operations that began Saturday. 

NYU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and three other pro-Palestinian groups on campus organized the rally, which began in Garibaldi Plaza at 12:30 p.m. Protesters chanted “No boots on the ground, no bombs in the air, U.S. out of everywhere” and “From the belly of the beast, hands off the Middle East,” while two organizers held up a banner that read “MONEY FOR JOBS & EDUCATION NOT FOR BOMBS & OCCUPATION.” 

Several organizers, including Middle Eastern studies professor Arang Keshavarzian — an Iranian American member of NYU’s chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine — addressed the crowd. Keshavarzian emphasized showing solidarity with Iranians amid U.S and Israeli missile attacks on the Middle East, which have killed around 900 civilians, including over 780 people in Iran alone.

“What’s really tragic is that the U.S. administration is claiming that this war effort is somehow there to protect and liberate Iranians by raining bombs on civilians in large metropolitan areas,” Keshavarzian told WSN. “Tehran is a city of 10 million people, and it’s being basically carpet bombed.”

Protesters demanded that NYU disclose and divest from investments in Israel and shut down its Tel Aviv campus, where classes were held virtually on Tuesday following missile strikes roughly two miles away. Earlier this week, students at NYU Abu Dhabi sheltered in their dorms following the nearby U.S.-Israeli strikes, and the site has since moved to remote instruction “for the foreseeable future.”

At the rally, demonstrators also criticized the university’s decision to cancel affinity group graduation ceremonies and the U.S. military operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their home in January. 

Saturday morning, the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran’s capital, Tehran, after President Donald Trump said ongoing nuclear negotiations did not meet his expectations. That day, Iran’s decadeslong leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks — followed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes targeting several U.S. bases in the Middle East, including in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Trump also said that the U.S. military could continue launching airstrikes on Iran for “four to five weeks.”

“It’s not just our moral duty — it’s our objective duty to oppose this criminal war,” said Tandon junior and SDS member Ebtesham Ahmed. “Our futures are being put at risk for the sake of oil and corporate interests. Let’s do everything that we can to get organized and take action to oppose it.”

In a Sunday Instagram post announcing the rally, multiple commenters expressed disapproval of the organizing groups’ stance on the issue. Users wrote “no Iranian supports this,” urged organizers not to “speak on our behalf” and noted that Iranian organizations were not involved in the demonstration. 

Ahmed said that SDS did not contact Iranian activist groups to seek collaboration in organizing the Tuesday protest. Iranian LS professor Omid Mehrgan, who attended the rally, told WSN that many Iranians in the United States are “very torn apart” over the war.

“A big majority of Iranians are rooting for this war and are siding with the aggressor, and it’s quite disturbing,” Mehrgan said. “Many have become politicized by participating in these pro-war, pro-Israeli demonstrations. But, there’s also many other voices in academia, in workplaces, who oppose this war — just as they oppose the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”

Contact Brishti Sarkar at [email protected].