Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent


A woman bases on a roof 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 normally the canines who notice the sound very first and start 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 stimulate a city of stretched nerves, of consistent awaiting the next blast and relentless fear of the state security device.


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


She lives alone but remains in constant communication with her buddies. "My buddies and I message each other continuously asking where everybody is ... and even when there is no noise the silence itself is scary. I am doing whatever I can to survive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus many young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification devastated in current months. Countless individuals were killed in a crackdown by program forces in January after prevalent presentations requiring change.


"I can not even keep in mind how I utilized to live in the past without being advised of the loved one I lost throughout the protests," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I endure in some way, but how will I make it through tomorrow? That is the genuine question. Will I even live through tomorrow?"


Now repression is total. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are everywhere. Footage we obtained shows routine supporters driving through the city at night, flags flying from their cars and trucks - a message to any who may be lured to protest.


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


Independent reporters still try to gather testament that uses a reliable alternative view, but they run the threat of arrest, abuse and possibly worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you truly do not understand what they can doing."