Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent


A woman stands on a roof listening to the sounds of the city below. There is just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how quickly that can alter. It is usually the canines who see the noise very first and begin to bark intensely. The noise of aircraft. Then the threatening percussion of surges. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar neighbourhood.


The BBC has obtained video footage and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of stretched nerves, of continuous waiting on the next blast and relentless fear of the state security apparatus.


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


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


Like so numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification ravaged in recent months. Countless individuals were killed in a crackdown by regime forces in January after extensive presentations requiring modification.


"I can not even remember how I utilized to live in the past without being advised of the enjoyed one I lost throughout the demonstrations," she states. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the person I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive in some way, but how will I get through tomorrow? That is the genuine question. Will I even live through tomorrow?"


Now repression is total. Open dissent is impossible as the state's watchers are everywhere. Footage we acquired shows program advocates driving through the city at night, from their cars - a message to any who might be tempted to demonstration.


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


Independent journalists still try to collect testament that provides a trustworthy alternative view, but they risk of arrest, abuse and possibly even worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you actually don't know what they can doing."