Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial reporter


A female stands on a rooftop listening to the noises of the city listed below. There is just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how easily that can alter. It is generally the pet dogs who see the sound very first and start to bark intensely. The sound of airplane. Then the ominous percussion of explosions. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar area.


The BBC has actually obtained video and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of strained nerves, of continuous waiting for 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 terrified 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 remains in consistent communication with her friends. "My pals and I message each other continuously asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no noise the silence itself is scary. I am doing whatever I can to stay alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of change devastated in recent months. Countless individuals were eliminated in a crackdown by program forces in January after extensive demonstrations demanding change.


"I can not even remember how I utilized to live in the past without being reminded of the loved one I lost throughout the demonstrations," she states. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I endure somehow, but how will I make it 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 programs routine supporters driving through the city in the evening, flags flying from their automobiles - a message to any who may be lured to demonstration.


The official story is the just one enabled. State television broadcasts video of presentations and funerals. Interviews with pro-regime authorities and protestors offer duplicated of America and Israel. In government propaganda the Iranian people are proclaimed as willing to suffer martyrdom.


Independent journalists still try to collect testimony that provides a reputable alternative view, however they run the danger of arrest, abuse and possibly even worse. As one of them informed me: "In wartime conditions you actually don't understand what they can doing."