A woman stands on a rooftop listening to the city below. Tonight there is only the dull hum of traffic, but she knows how quickly that can change. Usually the dogs notice first, then the distant thrum of aircraft, the percussion of explosions and a ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar neighbourhood.
The BBC has obtained footage and interviews from Tehran that paint a picture of a city on edge — constantly waiting for the next blast and living in fear of the state’s security apparatus.
Baran — not her real name — is a businesswoman in her thirties who is now too frightened 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 gambling with my life,” she says. She lives alone but messages friends constantly, checking where everyone is. “Even when there is no sound the silence itself is terrifying. I am doing everything I can to stay alive and witness whatever lies ahead.”
Like many young Iranians, Baran’s hopes for change were crushed this year. Thousands died in a brutal regime crackdown after widespread demonstrations demanding reform. “I cannot even remember how I used to live before being reminded of the loved 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 get through tomorrow? Will I even live through tomorrow?”
Repression is now total. Open dissent is nearly impossible as watchers are everywhere. Footage shows regime supporters driving through the city at night with flags from their cars — a warning to anyone thinking of protesting. The official narrative dominates: state television broadcasts rehearsed coverage of demonstrations and funerals, interviews with pro-regime figures and denunciations of America and Israel. In government propaganda, the Iranian people are portrayed as ready to suffer martyrdom.
Independent journalists still try to document alternative accounts, but they face serious risks of arrest, torture or worse. “In wartime conditions you really don’t know what they are capable of doing,” one reporter told the BBC.
Only inside their homes do some residents feel able to speak openly. Ali, a middle-class, educated man in his forties, had hoped the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei at the start of the war would bring change. Now he finds the streets around his house filled with security forces and masked, armed men manning checkpoints. “It is painful when I go into the streets. The city looks like the city of the dead,” he says, adding that he takes anti‑depressants “to keep myself normal.”
He sees groups in the streets who are clearly pro-government and who have, in effect, taken the city away from ordinary residents. Many people describe conflicted feelings: they want the regime gone but also feel the country is under attack. “The situation is frightening,” Ali says. “The skies of your country are controlled by enemy forces. But at the same time there is always a hope in people’s hearts. It’s not that we are supporting America or Israel. But hoping simply that for one moment, something might happen that ends the current Iranian regime, and that the people will be able to create change.”
In her flat Baran listens for explosions and messages friends across neighbourhoods. “Do you know what the difference is between our sky and the sky of the rest of the world?” she asks. “They sleep under the stars at night, and we sleep under rockets. Both skies give light, but different kinds of light.”
Baran thinks the war may drag on for years and that its psychological scars will last even longer. “This war will not end soon, because this war is inside our homes, inside the families…The war has entered our blood and has entered our lives.”
The citizens of this 6,000‑year‑old city live in dread — of American and Israeli bombs, of the regime and its torturers — a daily, unrelenting fear from which there seems no escape.
With additional reporting by Alice Doyard.
