Arash Ghadri cannot forget when his wife awakened her with tears to tell her that the war had just begun.
35 -year -old student, Ghadri, and his wife traveled last month at Alberta University Iran To meet their family members. The couple was still present when the conflict between Israel and Iran began on June 13.
He said in an interview, “(On the first day of the war), we carried out some bombings and we heard the jets flying to the ground. It was terrible.”
About his experience in Zanjan, about 300 300 km northwest of Tehran, about 300 km northwest of Tehran, he said, “The family members of my wife, his niece and nephew, were there and they were crying … the noise was terrifying.”
“I just tried my best to control myself and try to calm my wife, but in my heart I was very surprised and I was feeling bad. I really wanted to vomit.”
Ghadri is one of the many Iranians living in Canada who have been affected by the war when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and senior military leaders, and Iran responded to its own strikes. A ceasefire was announced on Tuesday following the launch of strikes on the United States nuclear facilities in Iran.
Earlier this week, Tehran said 606 people were killed in the conflict, injuring 5,332 people. According to the country's officials, at least 28 people were killed and more than a thousand injured in Israel.
Ottawa has urged Canadian residents in Iran that if they can do so safely, saying that the ability to provide consular services in the country is “very limited”.
Ghadri said that after canceling all flights at the beginning of the conflict, he and his wife decided to leave Iran by crossing the land border. He traveled in a van seven hours before crossing Turkey. All domestic flights to Turkey were fully booked for days, so they had to carry several buses between the Turkish cities to reach Istanbul.
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He said about the long journey, “I could no longer feel my legs.”
Ghadri and his wife eventually landed on June 23, and flew from Istanbul to Edmonton via Paris and Toronto.
He said, “I was happy on the one hand, at least my wife and I am now safe.” “On the other hand, I was feeling bad because my younger brother is still in Iran, and my parents are there.”
Sarah Shani, president of the Iranian Students Association at Alberta University, said she was familiar with around 15 students at the school who were trapped in Iran while visiting her native country.
“They are trapped back home and … since the ceasefire, flights have resumed technically, but they are still very limited,” he said.
Shani said about 500 500 Iranian students at the university are already facing financial difficulties because their home returning home is unable to help them – either because they have lost income and assets during the dispute or because they are unable to transfer money to Canada.
“When the internet closure in Iran was one way … it made it extremely difficult to send money to the family, and in addition, many businesses were closed during the war,” he said.
“And some were destroyed even by Israeli air strikes … the economy in Iran is now weaker than ever.”
Shani said he had difficulty contacting his own family in Iran during the war.
“Many of us did not know whether our families were safe,” he said.
Iran is a notable source of international students in Canada, which official data shows that more than 8,000 study permits were approved for students in the country in 2023.
“Most Iranian students in Canada have recently left home to study here, so our relations with Iran are still very strong,” Shani said, who came to Canada in 2023 to get a master's degree in computer science.
“Our families have returned there and I think we are still emotionally in Iran.”
Ali Najti, president of the Iranian Student Association at Toronto's Hambar College, said that the community also has mixed feelings about strikes against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leadership, which has led to persecution for both Iranians inside and outside Iran.
He wrote in a statement, “Many of us have felt a sense of relief to weaken such violent arm of the government. We hoped that justice should be presented to the courtroom, so that the entire limit of their crimes could be exposed and they could be held accountable by international legal channels.”
“We also acknowledge that war is never the desired way. Many of our members feel anxious about the results of the addition.”
And copy 2025 Press of Canada