The cost of missing off-ramps
Most of what we survive was decided in rooms we weren't in.
Seven days ago, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran. As of this morning, over 1,300 people are dead. Oil tankers are stalled behind the Strait of Hormuz. Flights across ten countries have been canceled. Hezbollah is firing on Tel Aviv. Iranian drones hit an Amazon data center in Bahrain. NATO intercepted a missile near Turkey. A UK base in Cyprus was struck. The war is spreading in the way that wars do when no one has a plan beyond taking the war group text IRL.
What is breaking my heart specifically, the thing I can't stop sitting with, is this:
Peace was within reach.
For months, Oman had been doing the quiet, painstaking work of diplomacy. Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi had been mediating indirect talks between the US and Iran — in Muscat, in Rome, in Geneva — with real progress accumulating. On February 25, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called a historic agreement "within reach." The Omani foreign minister said Iran had made concessions around its nuclear program that were, in his words, "completely new."
Then the bombs fell. On February 28, while negotiations were still ongoing, the US and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury. They killed Supreme Leader Khamenei, dozens of military figures, and whatever remained of the diplomatic window.
The UN Secretary-General said the strikes "squandered an opportunity for diplomacy." The Oman foreign minister refused to let go: "The door to diplomacy remains open," he said. "War should not mean that the hope of peace is extinguished." He's still saying it. This week he called for an immediate ceasefire, telling anyone who would listen that off-ramps exist and we just have to use them.
Off-ramps exist and we just have to use them.
There's a pattern I've spent my entire career studying. The gap between what is possible and what is chosen. In democracy work, we talk a lot about systems and structures, about the infrastructure that either enables or forecloses certain futures. But underneath all of that is something simpler and more devastating: power choosing not to use the off-ramp. Power deciding that "winning" matters more than stopping the bleeding.
Over 1,300 civilians killed in Iran in a week. Hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded. Oil prices surging 30%. Six US service members dead. The first 100 hours of military operations alone cost $3.7 billion.
These are not abstractions. These are the receipts.
And somewhere in Geneva, a diplomat who believed in peace is watching all of it and still saying the door is open. I want us to hold that. I want us to name the people who keep the door open when every instinct says to let it slam.
It's Women's History Month.
Each Women’s History Month is assigned a theme and this year's theme Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future, felt bold to me. The National Women's History Alliance chose a theme about sustainability that goes beyond environmentalism. It's about community resilience. Financial sustainability. Intergenerational equity. Building systems that hold.
I keep thinking about who does that work. Who tends the long arc. Who stays at the table when the bombs are falling.
I think about the women in Iran right now. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement has been fighting for bodily autonomy and political dignity for years, and now they have to survive a war on top of everything else. I think about the women in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the Gulf states, navigating evacuations and air raids and children who need to be fed regardless of what the news cycle is doing. I think about the recent assassination of Iraqi feminist leader, Yanar Mohammed. I think of the women farmers navigating the drought unfolding in Somalia right now putting the country on the brink of famine again. I think of Black women in the United States who suffered large employment losses in 2025.
I think about the fact that women, particularly from marginalized communities, bear the first and heaviest cost of every crisis while also being the ones most likely to build the structures that hold communities together when the state fails.
Leading the change, indeed.
History will record this week. And like most catastrophic weeks, it will be recorded with the names of generals and heads of state, presidents and supreme leaders.
But I want us to also record this: Oman's quiet ministry of peace. The diplomats who made genuine progress and watched it get bombed away. The civilians who are not asking for a war. The women continuing to carry on.
I want us to remember the cost of squandered peace. Not as a political argument. As a moral reckoning.
Diplomacy isn't weakness. It's what it looks like when power chooses the future over the moment.
We have to keep choosing it.
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Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.