Hundreds of anti-war protesters gathered in Union Square on Saturday to oppose the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran and escalating war. Thousands have already been killed, including Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This was one of many similar demonstrations that were happening nationwide on Saturday.  

At least 1,332 Iranians have died from the strikes so far, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani. As of Friday, 180 were children, the United Nations Children’s Fund reported. In Lebanon, 394 people have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Public Health Emergency Operations Center of the Lebanese Ministry of Health. 

The U.S. claims six American service members were killed on Sunday after an Iranian strike; however, according to Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, more than 500 American soldiers have been killed.  

Hwajung Koh, a second-year fine arts major at Parsons School of Design and demonstration attendee, said they first became aware of the strikes after waking up and hearing from a friend in Dubai. 

“She was talking about [how] there was missile debris, like, 10 minutes away from where she was,” Koh said. “I was like, what’s going on? And then I found out what was going on, because Israel and the U.S. launched the attacks in Iran.”

“We’ve seen this too many times throughout history, and it just keeps repeating itself over and over again, and it leads to destabilization in the Middle East,” attendee Alan Gami told the New School Free Press. “We did the same thing in Libya. We did the same thing in Syria. We did the same thing in Iraq. And it’s just … another extension of it, and we want justice.”

Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have reported incoming Iranian missiles and drones since the war started on Feb. 28.  

Attendee Garrett Turner said the U.S.’s involvement in other countries is impacting its actions within the country. 

“The tactics that they are using in Iran, in Venezuela, in concert with Netanyahu, that we’ve been using in Gaza, those tactics are coming back home on the home front, you see it with ICE, you see it with federal officers gunning down people in the streets,” Turner said. 

On Jan. 3, President Trump kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who are now being held in NYC. The kidnapping sent shockwaves across the globe, with uncertainty and upheaval in Venezuela. 

“We haven’t learned at all from our failures,” Turner said. “We have to speak out to push this administration to let them know the American people are against this war.” 

The U.S. and Israel are carrying out what the Trump administration calls “Operation Epic Fury” to target Iran’s missile infrastructure and military sites. This comes in the wake of weeks of threats of attack from President Donald Trump unless leadership agreed to U.S. demands revolving around its nuclear program.

President Trump’s reason for the bombing of Iran was that he believed Iran was building nuclear weapons that threaten U.S. allies and could “soon” reach the U.S. This was fact-checked by PBS News, explaining that according to a 2025 federal government assessment, Iran is years away from the ability to produce long-range missiles. 

On Feb. 28, an Israeli airstrike hit a girls’ elementary school in Minab, a city in the Hormozgan province of southern Iran. 165 people were killed, and 96 others were injured, according to Al Jazeera. Neither U.S. nor Israeli officials have taken responsibility for the strike yet. Four Iranian schools have been struck since Feb. 28. 

Anonymous officials told the Associated Press that Russia has been supplying Iran with intel on where U.S. military assets are, including warships and aircraft. 

The protest began at Union Square at 2 p.m. with a rally that included speakers addressing the crowd and call-and-response chants, such as “We want justice, you say how? Hands off Iran now” and “We want justice, you say, how? Arms embargo right now.” 

Union Square was packed with demonstrators holding yellow signs that read “Money for people’s needs, not war with Iran” and “Hands off Iran.” 

One group present at Saturday’s protest was Neturei Karta, an Orthodox Jewish organization that has opposed Zionism since 1938.

“We are here to say that after 77 years, the world should wake up and realize Zionism is the cancer of the world,” attendee Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch of Neturei Karta told the Free Press, “Zionism is not Judaism and Judaism is not Zionism.” 

​At 2:30 p.m., the speakers finished and protesters began marching on 14th Street with New York Police Department (NYPD) officers following behind. Protesters then turned onto Sixth Avenue, where they continued marching to West 34th Street and Broadway. The protest concluded at 3:30 p.m.

The protest was organized by groups including the ANSWER Coalition, the New York City branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, The People’s Forum NYC, and the New York City chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

One protester held a sign that featured an image of President Trump sleeping with the words, “I’d rather be woke than comatose.”

“With Trump, we’ve seen the ascendance of, really the mafia controlling state power … the fascistic methods of Trump in alliance with Israel. Now, as Trump said, he knows no morality but what’s in his own mind,” Dan De Vries of the Socialist Equality Party said. 

Carolyn Yao, a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and an attendee, said, “We know that we do not want to be dragged into another endless war in the Middle East. I’m 31, my whole life has been seeing the U.S. invade Iraq, millions die in Iraq.”

Demonstrators leading the march held large banners that read “Stop the war on Iran … Trump is a war criminal” and “Lebanon and Palestine, hand in hand until victory” and “USA: stop arming Israel ceasefire now.”

As the demonstrators marched, they chanted, “Down, down with occupation! Up, up with liberation!”

The Maoist Communist Union was another group attending the protest. One member held a sign that read “How I learned to stop worrying and love Israel,” depicting President Trump and Netanyahu wearing cowboy hats and riding a bomb, with a mushroom cloud in the back. 

Luke Thompson, a member of the Maoist Communist Union, believes the U.S. is in a far worse position than it is saying. 

“I think especially with what analysis we can provide as communists, hopefully cutting through a lot of the bullshit in the news propaganda, we can show people that actually, this is a pivotal moment in global politics, in history,” Thompson said. “Really, we’re seeing the U.S. suffer a defeat that they have not suffered or seen, I think, maybe ever.” 

Rüya Hazeyen, a second-year masters student in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia, said they were not surprised to hear about the strikes last Saturday but wanted the violence to stop.

“I hope for the war to fucking stop, and for children and women and men to stop being killed, wherever it is in the world,” Hazeyen said, “and for the U.S. to stop meddling in countries that are not theirs, and to focus on the million issues happening in their own country.”