Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial reporter


A female bases on a rooftop listening to the noises of the city listed below. There is just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how quickly that can change. It is typically the who see the sound first and begin 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 acquired footage and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of stretched 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, 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 constant communication with her buddies. "My pals 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 stay alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification devastated in current months. Countless people were eliminated in a crackdown by routine forces in January after extensive demonstrations demanding change.


"I can not even remember how I utilized to live in the past without being reminded of the liked one I lost during the protests," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the person I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive somehow, but how will I make it through tomorrow? That is the genuine concern. Will I even live through tomorrow?"


Now repression is total. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are all over. Footage we got programs routine advocates driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their cars - a message to any who might be lured to demonstration.


The official story is the just one permitted. State tv broadcasts video of demonstrations and funerals. Interviews with pro-regime authorities and protestors offer duplicated denunciations of America and Israel. In federal government propaganda the Iranian people are proclaimed as happy to suffer martyrdom.


Independent journalists still try to gather testimony that offers a reputable alternative view, but they risk of arrest, abuse and potentially worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you really don't know what they can doing."