Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent


A woman stands on a rooftop listening to the sounds of the city listed below. There is just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she knows how easily that can change. It is normally the dogs who notice the noise very first and start to bark intensely. The noise of airplane. Then the ominous percussion of explosions. A ball of orange increasing from an airstrike in a familiar neighbourhood.


The BBC has actually obtained video and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of strained nerves, of constant waiting for the next blast and unrelenting fear of the state security apparatus.


Baran - not her real name - is a businesswoman in her thirties. She is now too terrified to go to work. "With the start of the drone attacks, no one dares to go outside. If I open my door and step out, it is like betting with my life."


She lives alone but is in consistent communication with her buddies. "My good friends and I message each other constantly asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no noise the silence itself is terrifying. I am doing everything I can to remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Like so lots of young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of change devastated in recent months. Countless people were eliminated in a crackdown by regime forces in January after widespread demonstrations demanding modification.


"I can not even remember how I used to live in the past without being reminded of the enjoyed one I lost during the demonstrations," she states. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I make it through somehow, but how will I survive tomorrow? That is the real concern. Will I even endure tomorrow?"


Now repression is overall. Open dissent is impossible as the state's watchers are everywhere. Footage we got programs routine supporters driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their vehicles - a message to any who may be tempted to demonstration.


The is the just one permitted. State television broadcasts footage of demonstrations and funerals. Interviews with pro-regime authorities and protestors provide repeated denunciations of America and Israel. In government propaganda the Iranian people are proclaimed as happy to suffer martyrdom.


Independent reporters still attempt to collect testament that provides a trustworthy alternative view, but they run the threat of arrest, abuse and perhaps worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you really do not understand what they can doing."