Total Repression And Air Strikes Bring Unrelenting Dread For Iranians

Fergal KeaneSpecial reporter


A female bases on a rooftop listening to the sounds 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 pets who see the noise very first and start to bark intensely. The sound of airplane. Then the ominous percussion of surges. A ball of orange rising from an airstrike in a familiar neighbourhood.


The BBC has actually obtained footage and interviews from Tehran which evoke a city of strained nerves, of consistent awaiting the next blast and relentless worry of the state security apparatus.


Baran - not her genuine name - is a businesswoman in her thirties. She is now too frightened 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 is like betting with my life."


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


Thus many young Iranians, Baran saw her hopes of change ravaged in current months. Thousands of individuals were killed in a crackdown by program forces in January after widespread presentations 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 person I will be tomorrow. Today, I survive in some way, but how will I get through tomorrow? That is the real question. Will I even live through tomorrow?"


Now repression is total. Open dissent is difficult as the state's watchers are all over. Footage we acquired programs routine fans driving through the city at night, flags flying from their vehicles - a message to any who may be lured to demonstration.


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


Independent journalists still attempt to collect testament that uses a view, but they risk of arrest, torture and perhaps worse. As one of them informed me: "In wartime conditions you truly do not understand what they are capable of doing."