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 just the dull hum of traffic tonight. But she understands how easily that can change. It is normally the dogs who notice the noise very first and start to bark intensely. The sound of airplane. Then the threatening percussion of explosions. A ball of orange increasing from an airstrike in a familiar area.


The BBC has actually acquired video and interviews from Tehran which stimulate a city of stretched nerves, of constant awaiting the next blast and ruthless fear of the state security device.


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


She lives alone however is in consistent communication with her friends. "My friends and I message each other continuously asking where everyone is ... and even when there is no sound the silence itself is frightening. I am doing everything I can to remain alive and witness whatever lies ahead."


Thus numerous young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of modification devastated in current months. Thousands of people were killed in a crackdown by program forces in January after prevalent demonstrations demanding change.


"I can not even keep in mind how I utilized to live in the past without being reminded of the enjoyed one I lost throughout the protests," she says. "I fear tomorrow. I fear the individual I will be tomorrow. Today, I make it through 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 overall. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are all over. we got shows regime supporters driving through the city during the night, flags flying from their vehicles - a message to any who may be lured to demonstration.


The official story is the just one permitted. State television broadcasts footage of demonstrations and funeral services. Interviews with pro-regime officials and protestors use repeated denunciations of America and Israel. In government propaganda the Iranian people are extolled as ready to suffer martyrdom.


Independent journalists still try to collect testimony that provides a reputable alternative view, but they risk of arrest, abuse and possibly even worse. As one of them told me: "In wartime conditions you really do not know what they are capable of doing."