Living under the threat of bombardment is terrifying. Barely an hour passes in Tehran without the sound of an explosion. Nowhere feels safe.
We moved quickly and didn’t stay in one place long. Police stations and checkpoints were being targeted, it seemed. We passed through those as quickly as we could. At night we watched explosions light up the sky, air defence fire opening up in reply.
That is what Iranians are coping with day by day, night by night.
We were only the second international news team allowed into Iran since the start of the war, for a week joining a few others already based there.
It was difficult to get into the country and to reach Tehran, and once there, it was hard to operate and dangerous.
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We took the risk so we could ask two questions that can’t be answered outside the country: How is Israel and America’s air war on Iran affecting its people? And what does its government, battered but not beaten, plan to do next?
At the sites of one airstrike after another, the answer to the first question was tragically clear.
Innocent civilians are bearing the brunt of the Israeli-American campaign, and increasingly so.
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Like the pensioner whose daughter was at home in their block of flats when it was hit by missiles. They blew the block apart, and the one opposite, as well as whatever their attackers were targeting. Her body was found in the rubble three days later, he told us through furious tears.
The term precision targeting loses much of its meaning up close. In this case, a centre belonging to the Basij paramilitary volunteer force seemed to have been destroyed – but a lot else besides, an entire city block to be precise.
In a hospital, we were confronted with heart-wrenching tragedy. Four-year-old Anita lay dying in intensive care. She has severe head injuries after her home was caught in an airstrike. Her mother Zeebar cried over her comatose child, telling her: “We are waiting for you, we are waiting for you.” Doctors say Anita is not likely to wake up.
Downstairs, Fatima stood over her grown son, who had received a chunk of shrapnel in his arm, sent flying three blocks, he said, from another airstrike as he had left for work.
“This war must stop,” she told us. “It is innocent civilians being hurt.”
Regardless of what is being targeted, and however precise, the bombs being dropped on a densely populated city will cause civilian casualties.
In January, in Tehran and across the country, people were being shot at by their own security forces when weeks of protests were suppressed.
Thousands were killed, shot dead by the security forces, say activists and human rights groups.
Whenever I mentioned this to government supporters or officials, they blamed foreign agents for stoking the unrest.
The tension we felt in the city goes back to that crackdown too. We were able to operate freely in the places where we were given permission to film, but few people were prepared to go on camera. Off-camera though, people were more open.
One man talked with contempt for the “extreme” nature of the authorities and hoped it would change after the war.
Which brings us to the second question we had come here to ask. What of the government and what it does next? We were not there long, and only in one city, but for now at least, Iran’s leadership appears confidently in control.
Suppressing unrest is, of course, easier in a time of war.
But the air campaign may be helping the government too. Many Iranians see it as an attack on them and their country as much as the state. When you are living in mortal fear of your family and home being obliterated from the skies, it is hard not to take it personally.
Israel’s attack on Iran’s major South Pars gas field, for instance, was condemned by one Iranian we spoke to. Why attack that, he asked. For many, an attack on the gas field is an attack on everyone in Iran, regardless of their political affiliation.
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The government has fervent supporters too, lots of them. They were out in force in the street for the funeral of Ali Larijani, a top government figure buried with others. Tens of thousands attended.
As we stood among them, the limitations of Israel and America’s ambitions became more glaring.
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If you assassinate the leaders of people whose religion embraces martyrdom, this is what to expect.
Iran has a long tradition of honouring the virtues of resistance and no surrender. Iranians are reared on stories of foreign treachery. Their government is drawing on all that to reinforce its support.
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Iran seems to have been waiting for this war for years. Its leadership is hydra-headed, programmed to replace itself. It has so far proven surprisingly capable of responding to attacks with speed and strategy despite its enemies’ claims it has been decapitated.
We left with a sense they are bracing themselves now for a long war. For the ordinary people, that means weeks, if not months, more terrifying uncertainty and the risk of death and injury. For their leaders, it means projecting defiance, digging in and outlasting the enemy.
