Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians
Fergal KeaneSpecial correspondent
A woman bases on a rooftop listening to the noises of the city below. There is only the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how quickly that can alter. It is generally the pet dogs who the sound first and begin 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 actually gotten footage and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of stretched nerves, of consistent waiting on the next blast and ruthless 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, no one attempts to go outside. If I open my door and march, it resembles betting with my life."
She lives alone but is in constant interaction with her buddies. "My friends and I message each other constantly asking where everybody is ... and even when there is no noise the silence itself is scary. I am doing everything I can to remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."
Like so numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification ravaged in current months. Thousands of people were killed in a crackdown by program forces in January after widespread presentations requiring change.
"I can not even remember how I used to live in the past without being advised of the loved one I lost during the protests," she states. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I make it through in some way, but how will I get through tomorrow? That is the genuine question. Will I even endure tomorrow?"
Now repression is total. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are everywhere. Footage we acquired shows routine fans driving through the city at night, flags flying from their vehicles - a message to any who might be tempted to protest.
The main narrative is the only one enabled. State tv broadcasts video of demonstrations and funeral services. Interviews with pro-regime officials and protestors provide duplicated denunciations of America and Israel. In federal government propaganda the Iranian people are proclaimed as going to suffer martyrdom.
Independent journalists still try to collect testimony that provides a trustworthy alternative view, but they run the danger of arrest, torture and perhaps worse. As one of them informed me: "In wartime conditions you really do not understand what they can doing."