Qualla: Chemical Bombing of Sardasht

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the Book of Esther, Hamadan appears as the ancient capital of a Persian empire. Sardasht, 300 kilometers to the northwest, is a city the ancient texts never mentioned. It earned its place in history on a single summer afternoon. On June 28, 1987, during the grinding seventh year of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi warplanes appeared over this small Kurdish city nestled in the mountains of West Azerbaijan province and dropped mustard gas bombs on four residential neighborhoods. The attack killed 130 people and injured 8,000 of the city's 20,000 residents. Iran would later call Sardasht the first city targeted with chemical weapons since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: The Day the Sky Burned

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The bombs fell in two separate runs across four residential areas. Mustard gas, a blistering agent that attacks the skin, eyes, and respiratory system, settled over homes and streets like an invisible tide. First responders who rushed in to help became casualties themselves. Thou...

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: A World That Looked Away

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Sardasht bombing did not happen in a vacuum. A year before the attack, the UN Security Council had issued a statement expressing its members' profound concern over Iraq's repeated use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops, condemning the practice as a clear violation of ...

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: Counting the Cost

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The toll emerged slowly. By 2007, 130 people had died from the attack's effects -- 109 civilians and 21 military personnel. Among the civilian dead, 39 were children under 18. Eleven were under 5 years old. Thirty-four were women and girls. These numbers continued to climb as lon...

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: Sister Cities of Suffering

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On June 28, 2004, the seventeenth anniversary of the bombing, Sardasht renamed one of its streets Hiroshima. A Japanese delegation from Nagasaki and Hiroshima attended the ceremony, and 111 white doves were released at the memorial site. The gesture was reciprocated: in Hiroshima...

Chemical Bombing of Sardasht: Memory as Resistance

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In April 2004, a Tehran court ruled the United States government liable for the attacks, citing its support for Saddam Hussein's regime, and ordered $600 million in compensation to victims. The ruling carried no enforcement mechanism, but it served as a formal act of documentatio...