A Young Life Ends After 4 Steps on Video, and Afghans Can’t Stop Watching

Akbar Fazelyar’s photo outside the mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, where his funeral services were held on Sept. 7. He was buried in his home village in Parwan Province.
Credit
Credit
Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Akbar Fazelyar’s photo outside the mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, where his funeral services were held on Sept. 7. He was buried in his home village in Parwan Province. Credit Credit Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
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A Young Life Ends After 4 Steps on Video, and Afghans Can’t Stop Watching

Akbar Fazelyar’s photo outside the mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, where his funeral services were held on Sept. 7. He was buried in his home village in Parwan Province.
Credit
Credit
Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Akbar Fazelyar’s photo outside the mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, where his funeral services were held on Sept. 7. He was buried in his home village in Parwan Province. Credit Credit Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

At first, the man was just walking across the street. Then he was running for his life. He managed four steps before the blast from the car bomb caught him.

Since then, the last few seconds of Akbar Fazelyar’s life, captured on video during a Taliban attack on Sept. 5, have become one of the most scrutinized moments in Afghanistan, slowed down and watched frame by frame on countless mobile phones and computer screens.

Though violent deaths are appallingly common in this country, Afghans have been seized with fascination and dread by the clip’s reminder of how little separates life from death.

In the United States, the Taliban attack in Kabul, the Afghan capital, was noted because President Trump cited it, along with the death of American and NATO soldiers in the blast, as the reason for calling off negotiations with the insurgents.

In Kabul, it was another painful example of how any corner of the capital — wedding halls, mosques, tuition centers — could suddenly become a battlefield, and of how seemingly everyday decisions could have momentous consequences, bringing disparate lives together at their end.

Alongside the 11 others who lost their lives in the attack that day, what had brought Mr. Fazelyar to his death? A kindness to one of his employees, and the time between one and two cups of tea.

Mr. Fazelyar owned a small shop selling and installing computer and networking equipment. He took life slowly and simply, devout in his religious observances. Single in his mid-30s, his main hobbies were watching cricket and going for a weekly swim in an indoor pool a short walk from his store, his friends say.

Mr. Fazelyar had clients across Kabul, and on the Thursday that he died he had brought an invoice for about $200 to one of them. Usually his assistant, Muhammad Atif, would deliver the invoices. But Mr. Fazelyar decided to take this one himself; the client was a friend he had not seen for awhile.

After presenting the invoice to his friend and client, Ahmadshah Meraj, the two men caught up over a cup of green tea. Mr. Meraj recalled offering Mr. Fazelyar another cup of tea and a car ride to his next stop. Mr. Fazelyar, feeling pressed, apologized for refusing the second cup but accepted the ride — though just to a nearby junction where he could catch a taxi.

Here, security cameras recorded the arrival of more of those whose lives were about to intertwine for a few seconds before their deaths.

At the junction, inside a white S.U.V. waiting to pass through a security checkpoint leading toward the coalition military headquarters, was an American soldier, Sgt. First Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, along with a Romanian corporal, Ciprian-Stefan Polschi.

The soldiers were stuck in traffic just as Mr. Fazelyar walked up to the junction after being dropped off there by his friend.

A nondescript van was there, too, inching along near the S.U.V. It looked like any of the gray, private Toyota Town Ace vans that shuttle residents around Kabul in the absence of proper public transport. But this van had no passengers, just a driver who was ready to kill and die, and a payload of explosives.

Suddenly the van swerved to the right through a plastic lane divider. As seen in the video, Mr. Fazelyar seemed to intuit the danger. He took one, two rushed steps, then veered to break into a run. Two steps later, the van struck the white S.U.V., engulfing everything in a ball of fire.

When the smoke cleared, surveillance camera footage — from the American blimps in the sky and Afghan security cameras across the road — showed little left intact at the site of the blast.

The explosion was powerful enough that passengers in vehicles many yards away were seriously injured. Cameras captured the rescue of one of them: Sulaiman Layeq, an 89-year-old poet and former cabinet minister.
The blast nearly brought it all to an end, leaving him deeply dazed and bleeding badly.

The videos show soldiers trying to pry open the door to Mr. Layeq’s car. One emergency worker in a white coat reached in through a window to help stanch his bleeding until he was freed from the car. A soldier lifted the poet onto his back, rushing him to an ambulance.

Days later in the hospital, Mr. Layeq would tell his son over and over that he was proud to have miraculously survived another act of violence by his enemies. Before his brush with death, his morning had started like any other: a breakfast of milk tea and toast in his lonely third-floor apartment.

And Mr. Fazelyar, who did not survive?

“It was as if God was inviting him to himself,” Mr. Atif, the assistant who survived because Mr. Fazelyar took the invoice himself, said outside the shop two days after the bombing.

The store was closed, with a notice in the window showing information about Mr. Fazelyar’s funeral services and his picture. Salesmen gathered outside the shop and consoled each other.

Often the most difficult task after a bombing is figuring out whether someone is dead or alive, and trying to identify a loved one among bodies that are unidentifiable, looking for a hint of cloth, a ring, a watch.

Immediately after the explosion, Mr. Fazelyar’s assistant and fellow salesmen began calling his phone repeatedly to see if was safe. Eventually, it was answered by an intelligence officer who had helped clear the blast site. He broke the news. Mr. Fazelyar’s friends found his body in the morgue, recognizable because in sprinting away from the attack his back had borne the brunt of the damage.

Mr. Fazelyar was buried in his home village in Parwan Province, north of Kabul. Funeral services were held for him in Kabul two days after, at a crowded mosque that hosted nine funerals at the same time, at least two of them victims of the war.

“The whole of Afghanistan saw the video,” said one man, Ezatullah, who was at the mosque for one of the other funerals.

“He even ran from it a few steps, but death sucked him right back in.”

The New York Times



Diplomacy or Defiance: Iran’s Rulers Face Existential Choice After US-Israeli Strikes

Pictures of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes are displayed in Behesht Zahra Cemetery in southern Tehran, Iran, July 11, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
Pictures of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes are displayed in Behesht Zahra Cemetery in southern Tehran, Iran, July 11, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
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Diplomacy or Defiance: Iran’s Rulers Face Existential Choice After US-Israeli Strikes

Pictures of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes are displayed in Behesht Zahra Cemetery in southern Tehran, Iran, July 11, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
Pictures of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes are displayed in Behesht Zahra Cemetery in southern Tehran, Iran, July 11, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters

Weakened by war and diplomatic deadlock, Iran’s clerical elite stands at a crossroads: defy pressure to halt its nuclear activity and risk further Israeli and US attack, or concede and risk a leadership fracture.

For now, the republic establishment is focusing on immediate survival over longer-term political strategy. A fragile ceasefire ended a 12-day war in June that began with Israeli air strikes, followed by US strikes on three Iranian nuclear installations.

Both sides declared victory but the war exposed the military vulnerabilities and punctured the image of deterrence maintained by a major Middle East power and Israel's arch regional foe. Three Iranian insiders told Reuters the political establishment now views negotiations with the US - aimed at resolving a decades-long dispute over its nuclear ambitions - as the only way to avoid further escalation and existential peril.

The strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, which included killings of top Revolutionary Guard commanders and nuclear scientists, shocked Tehran, kicking off just a day before a planned sixth round of talks with Washington.

While Tehran accused Washington of "betraying diplomacy", some hardline lawmakers and military commanders blamed officials who advocated diplomacy with Washington, arguing the dialogue proved a "strategic trap" that distracted the armed forces.

However, one political insider, who like others requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter, said the leadership now leaned towards talks as "they’ve seen the cost of military confrontation".

President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Sunday that resuming talks with the United States "does not mean we intend to surrender", addressing hardliners opposing further nuclear diplomacy after the war. He added: "You don’t want to talk? What do you want to do? ... Do you want to go (back) to war?"

His remarks were criticized by hardliners including Revolutionary Guards commander Aziz Ghazanfari, who warned that foreign policy demands discretion and that careless statements could have serious consequences.

Ultimately, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei holds the final say. Insiders said he and the clerical power structure had reached a consensus to resume nuclear negotiations, viewing them as vital to the republic’s survival.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said no decision has been made on the resumption of nuclear talks.

DYNAMICS AND EXTERNAL PRESSURE

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned they will not hesitate to hit Iran again if it resumes enrichment of uranium, a possible pathway to developing nuclear weapons.

Last week, Trump warned that if Iran restarted enrichment despite the June strikes on its key production plants, "we’ll be back". Tehran responded with a vow of forceful retaliation.

Still, Tehran fears future strikes could cripple political and military coordination, and so has formed a defense council to ensure command continuity even if the 86-year-old Khamenei must relocate to a remote hideaway to avoid assassination.

Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC, said that if Iran seeks to rapidly rebuild its nuclear capacity without securing diplomatic or security guarantees, "a US–Israeli strike won't just be possible - it will be all but inevitable".

"Re-entering talks could buy Tehran valuable breathing room and economic relief, but without swift US reciprocity it risks a hardline backlash, deepening elite divisions, and fresh accusations of surrender," Vatanka said.

Tehran insists on its right to uranium enrichment as part of what it maintains is a peaceful nuclear energy program, while the Trump administration demands a total halt - a core sticking point in the diplomatic standoff.

Renewed United Nations sanctions under the so-called "snapback" mechanism, pushed by three European powers, loom as a further threat if Tehran refuses to return to negotiations or if no verifiable deal to curb its nuclear activity results.

Tehran has threatened to quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But insiders say this is a pressure tactic, not a realistic plan - as exiting the NPT would telegraph an Iranian race for nuclear bombs and invite US and Israeli intervention.

A senior Western diplomat said Iran’s rulers were vulnerable as never before, and any defiance was a gamble liable to backfire at a time of rising domestic unrest, impaired deterrence power and Israel's disabling of Iran's militia proxies in wars around the Middle East since 2023.

MOUNTING ANXIETY

Among ordinary Iranians, weariness over war and international isolation runs deep, compounded by a growing sense of failed governance. The oil-based economy, already hobbled by sanctions and state mismanagement, is under worsening strain.

Daily blackouts afflict cities around the country of 87 million people, forcing many businesses to cut back. Reservoirs have receded to record lows, prompting warnings from the government of a looming "national water emergency."

Many Iranians - even those opposed to the Shiite theocracy - rallied behind the country during the June war, but now face lost incomes and intensified repression.

Alireza, 43, a furniture merchant in Tehran, said he is considering downsizing his business and relocating his family outside the capital amid fears of further air attack.

"This is the result of 40 years of failed policies," he said, alluding to Iran's 1979 revolution that toppled the Western-backed monarchy. "We are a resource-rich country and yet people don't have water and electricity. My customers have no money. My business is collapsing."

At least 20 people across Iran interviewed by phone echoed Alireza's sentiment - that while most Iranians do not want another war, they are also losing faith in the establishment's capacity to govern wisely.

Despite broad discontent, large-scale protests have not broken out. Instead, authorities have tightened security, ramped up pressure on pro-democracy activists, accelerated executions and cracked down on alleged Israeli-linked spy networks - fueling fears of widening surveillance and repression.

However, sidelined moderates have resurfaced in state media after years of exclusion. Some analysts see this as a move to ally public anxiety and signal the possibility of reform from within - without "regime change" that would shift core policies.