Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent


A female stands on a rooftop listening to the sounds of the city below. There is only the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how easily that can change. It is typically the dogs who notice the sound first and start to bark intensely. The sound of airplane. Then the threatening percussion of surges. A ball of orange increasing from an airstrike in a familiar neighbourhood.


The BBC has actually obtained footage and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of stretched nerves, of continuous waiting on the next blast and relentless fear of the state security device.


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


She lives alone however is in consistent interaction 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 remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Like so lots of young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification ravaged in recent months. Thousands of individuals were killed in a crackdown by regime forces in January after extensive demonstrations requiring change.


"I can not even keep in mind how I used to live in the past without being advised of the liked one I lost during the demonstrations," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive in some way, but how will I get through 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 acquired programs regime fans driving through the city at night, flags flying from their cars and trucks - a message to any who may be lured to protest.


The official story is the just one permitted. State tv broadcasts video footage of presentations and funeral services. Interviews with pro-regime authorities and protestors offer repeated denunciations of America and Israel. In government propaganda the Iranian individuals are extolled as happy to suffer martyrdom.


Independent reporters still attempt to collect statement that uses a credible alternative view, but they risk of arrest, abuse and potentially worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you truly do not understand what they can doing."