Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial reporter


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 change. It is usually the pets who discover the noise very first and begin to bark intensely. The sound of aircraft. Then the ominous percussion of surges. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar area.


The BBC has gotten footage and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of strained nerves, of continuous awaiting the next blast and unrelenting fear of the state security device.


Baran - not her real name - is a businesswoman in her thirties. She is now too afraid 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 constantly asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no sound the silence itself is frightening. I am doing whatever I can to survive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus many young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of change ravaged in recent months. Countless people were eliminated in a crackdown by program forces in January after extensive presentations demanding change.


"I can not even remember how I utilized to live in the past without being reminded of the enjoyed one I lost during the protests," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the person I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive somehow, however how will I get through tomorrow? That is the real question. Will I even endure tomorrow?"


Now repression is overall. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are all over. Footage we got programs regime supporters driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their vehicles - a message to any who may be lured to protest.


The official story is the just one enabled. State video of presentations and funerals. Interviews with pro-regime officials and protestors offer repeated denunciations of America and Israel. In government propaganda the Iranian individuals are extolled as ready to suffer martyrdom.


Independent reporters still try to collect testament that uses a credible alternative view, but they run the threat of arrest, abuse and possibly worse. As one of them informed me: "In wartime conditions you really do not understand what they are capable of doing."