Community members and students gathered at the Visions Veterans Memorial Arena on Saturday to protest the ongoing conflict in Iran.

The “No War With Iran Anti-Imperialist March” comes weeks after the United States and Israel began air strikes on Iran at the end of February. The campaign, called “Epic Fury,” was launched to topple the Iranian regime led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the strikes. U.S. officials have said that preventing Iran from producing nuclear weapons remains a “core mission” for its campaign.

Protesters began with chants such as “brick by brick, wall by wall! Imperialism’s got to fall” before speakers took the stage. Jack Gilroy, a member of Veterans for Peace, spoke about the role of the military in the conflict, urging attendees to “speak the truth” about U.S. intervention in the region.

The next speaker, Sam Wright, a sophomore at SUNY Broome Community College, discussed the impact of U.S. taxpayer funding on the ongoing conflict. The first six days of the war cost taxpayers at least $11.3 billion just in munitions, according to Pentagon estimates.

“There is no money you can pay me, no propaganda pushed upon me to make me think that a man in Iran is not my brother,” Wright said. “That a child in Gaza has apparently less value than an American child, that these people who I have never met deserve the death penalty simply because geographic luck put me here and them there.”

Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 1,200 Iranian civilians have been killed as of March 13, with over 10,000 injured and millions temporarily displaced, according to Iranian health officials.

The United States has also launched a formal investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed approximately 165 civilians. A preliminary assessment determined that the United States was at fault and if confirmed, it will be one of the military’s deadliest incidents involving civilians in decades.

According to U.S. officials, 2,200 Marines and three Navy amphibious ships have been deployed to Iran. As of March 15, 13 American soldiers have been killed and 140 to 150 have been injured in Iran.

“The dark thought I had was this — that the reason that they’re sending those 2,500 over is that I think, I hope not, but I think, they want a lot of body bags coming back so they can fire up the country for war,” Dennis McMahon, a veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, said.

Following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah, as the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic. Mojtaba Khamenei has not made a public statement since taking power as of March 8, but President Donald Trump said that the new leader was “unacceptable” and will not “last long.”

At a press conference on Friday, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed that Mojtaba Khamenei had been “wounded and likely disfigured” during the most recent attacks The Iranian ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that Mojtaba Khamenei was injured in the same strike that killed his father. Mojtaba Khamenei’s condition remains unknown.

“I am a Jew,” said Joshua Fishkin, the vice president of Binghamton University’s Yiddish Bund and a sophomore majoring in psychology. “I am Iranian. I’m no friend to the Iranian regime, but I will say this. Solidarity with the Iranian people does not come in the form of bombs. Solidarity with Iranian women does not come in the form of a war.”

A dummy with a picture of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was then brought out and placed in the middle of the protest. Some participants kicked and hit the dummy.

Israel has increased its airstrikes in Lebanon as Hezbollah, a paramilitary group in Lebanon that the United States and 25 other countries consider a terrorist organization, has launched rockets in the country in support of Iran. According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, over 770 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 have been injured in Lebanon as a result of the conflict.

Participants then marched from the Veterans Memorial Arena to Riverside Drive, carrying signs and chanting. Cars honked horns in support as they passed.

The president of the Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine delivered a speech about the importance of mobilizing and fighting back against those who use conflicts for their own gain.

“We always have money for destruction and death to enrich the billionaires as the upward mobilization of wealth is at a more extreme rate than ever before in history — they are richer than ever before,” he said. “We are getting poorer than ever before. The gap is increasing and we still have some people that don’t get it. They don’t see who the real enemy is.”