A bereaved Iranian mother whose seven-year-old son was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on a school in Minab has written a devastating letter to FIFA president Gianni Infantino as the 2026 FIFA World Cup gets underway in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

More than 100 days after the bombing that killed at least 168 school children, the mother of Makan Nasiri, the only victim whose body has never been recovered, has broken her silence.

On behalf of all the grieving mothers of Minab, she has written a letter to Infantino about the true meaning of peace.

“Which peace have you chosen,” she asks the FIFA president in the letter. Her son Makan loved football above all else.

The mother described the morning of February 28, when Makan put on his checkered school uniform, wore his cream-colored sneakers, and placed his blue sports pullover in his school bag so he would not catch a cold after playing. He left happily for school but never returned.

Saturdays were his favorite, she writes in the letter, because he had football class.

“Today, all that remains of my son is one shoe, that blue pullover, and the sound of his laughter in the hearts of those who loved him and believed in peace,” she wrote.

“Mr. President, can you hear the laughter of my missing little boy too,” she writes.

The distraught mother, who didn’t even get to bury her child, said she does not write with anger. She described herself as a mother whose child’s whole world was a ball, a playground, and the simple dreams of living, laughing, and growing up.

Describing football as the common language of humanity and the fact that FIFA speaks of peace through football, she said football has become a wound that will never heal.

The mothers of Minab, she writes, now raise their children only in imagination.

“In our dreams, they grow up, become football players like Mehdi Taremi, score goals for our country, and wear blue sports shirts with doves of peace upon them,” reads the letter.

“Mr. President, can you see those birds of peace?”

The mother invoked a tradition from her culture, which includes pouring water behind travelers before a journey so they return home safely, adding that her son left for school and never returned home “because of American bombs and war.”

She noted that today, the mothers of Iran send their national football players into the world with the hope that this time, their sons will return safely.

Addressing Infantino directly, the grief-stricken mother acknowledged his power to choose who receives football’s peace awards and who plays on the world stage, obliquely referring to the so-called “peace prize” he handed to US President Donald Trump.

“You cannot change the meaning of ‘peace’ for a mother,” she stated. “For me, peace means a child who stays alive and walks to a football field on his own feet.”

The bombing, carried out by the US and the Israeli regime on February 28, targeted a school in the southern Iranian city of Minab, marking one of the biggest tragedies of the imposed war.

While many other children were killed, including his friends and classmates, Makan remains the only victim whose body has not been recovered.