Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent


A lady stands on a roof listening to the noises of the city below. There is just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how quickly that can alter. It is normally the pets who notice the noise first and begin to bark furiously. The sound of aircraft. Then the threatening percussion of surges. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar area.


The BBC has actually gotten video and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of stretched nerves, of continuous waiting on the next blast and ruthless worry of the state security device.


Baran - not her genuine name - is a businesswoman in her thirties. She is now too terrified to go to work. "With the start of the drone attacks, nobody dares to go outside. If I open my door and march, it is like betting with my life."


She lives alone however is in constant communication with her pals. "My good friends and I message each other continuously asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no sound the silence itself is scary. I am doing everything I can to remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of change devastated in current months. Thousands of individuals were eliminated in a crackdown by routine forces in January after prevalent demonstrations demanding change.


"I can not even keep in mind how I used to live in the past without being advised of the liked one I lost throughout the demonstrations," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive somehow, but how will I get through tomorrow? That is the genuine question. Will I even live through tomorrow?"


Now repression is overall. Open dissent is impossible as the state's watchers are everywhere. Footage we obtained programs program advocates driving through the city at night, flags flying from their automobiles - a message to any who may be tempted to demonstration.


The official narrative is the just one allowed. State television broadcasts footage of demonstrations and funerals. Interviews with pro-regime authorities and protestors use repeated denunciations of America and Israel. In federal government propaganda the Iranian individuals are as prepared to suffer martyrdom.


Independent reporters still try to gather testament that uses a credible alternative view, but they run the risk of arrest, torture and possibly even worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you really do not understand what they can doing."