Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial reporter


A lady stands on a rooftop listening to the noises of the city below. There is only the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how easily that can alter. It is usually the pets who see the noise first and start to bark intensely. The sound of airplane. Then the ominous percussion of surges. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar area.


The BBC has obtained footage and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of strained nerves, of continuous waiting on the next blast and relentless 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 march, it resembles gambling with my life."


She lives alone but is in consistent communication with her pals. "My good friends and I message each other constantly asking where everybody 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 many young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification ravaged in current months. Thousands of people were eliminated in a crackdown by program forces in January after widespread presentations requiring 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 says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the person I will be tomorrow. Today, I endure in some way, however how will I make it through tomorrow? That is the genuine concern. Will I even endure tomorrow?"


Now repression is overall. Open dissent is impossible as the state's watchers are all over. Footage we acquired programs regime advocates driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their cars - a message to any who may be tempted to protest.


The main story is the just one allowed. State tv broadcasts video of presentations and funerals. Interviews with and protestors offer duplicated denunciations of America and Israel. In federal government propaganda the Iranian individuals are proclaimed as happy to suffer martyrdom.


Independent journalists still attempt to gather testament that provides a reliable alternative view, however they run the danger of arrest, abuse and possibly even worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you actually don't know what they are capable of doing."