Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians
Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent
A female stands on a roof listening to the sounds of the city listed below. There is only the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how quickly that can alter. It is usually the canines who notice the noise very first and begin to bark intensely. The noise of aircraft. Then the threatening percussion of explosions. A ball of orange increasing from an airstrike in a familiar area.
The BBC has gotten video and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of strained nerves, of consistent waiting for the next blast and relentless fear of the state security device.
Baran - not her real name - is a businesswoman in her thirties. She is now too scared 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 resembles gambling with my life."
She lives alone but is in continuous communication with her friends. "My good friends and I message each other continuously asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no sound the silence itself is terrifying. I am doing whatever I can to remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."
Thus lots of young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification ravaged in recent months. Thousands of people were killed in a crackdown by routine forces in January after widespread demonstrations requiring change.
"I can not even keep in mind how I utilized to live in the past without being reminded of the liked one I lost throughout the protests," she states. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the person I will be tomorrow. Today, I make it through somehow, however how will I survive tomorrow? That is the real concern. Will I even live through tomorrow?"
Now repression is overall. Open dissent is impossible as the state's watchers are all over. Footage we obtained programs routine advocates driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their automobiles - a to any who may be lured to demonstration.
The main narrative is the only one permitted. State tv broadcasts video footage of presentations and funeral services. Interviews with pro-regime officials and protestors offer duplicated denunciations of America and Israel. In federal government propaganda the Iranian people are proclaimed as ready to suffer martyrdom.
Independent journalists still attempt to collect statement that uses a trustworthy alternative view, but they risk of arrest, abuse and possibly worse. As one of them informed me: "In wartime conditions you truly do not know what they can doing."