"Anonymous author" can say a few things ... it could be an actual person as it just as easily could be western-led propoganda. I tend to believe it's a person.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/co...t/news-story/af6072abe39584bd4e3c701ed19c0606 (Paywall.)
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Everyday life inside Tehran: A fine line between hope and abandonment
The streets are covered with checkpoints. Movement is restricted. Young people are stopped and searched. Ordinary people have been turned into human shields.
Three explosions in rapid succession: thatās how I remember the start of this war. When I first heard them I was at work in Tehran and dashed to the windows overlooking the city streets.
I was afraid, of course, but I also recall a quiet, inner sense of joy, as my colleagues turned to one another to acknowledge that, yes, the attacks had finally begun.
I gathered my things and went straight to my daughterās school to bring her home. āThey say theyāve hit the leaderās residence,ā she told me.
āAll the children were screaming and cheering ⦠even our teacher was quietly snapping their fingers and dancing.ā
That night, when the news of the dictatorās death was confirmed, Tehranās streets filled with cries and chants of ādeath to the dictatorā. I called my loved ones and the families of those we knew who had been killed during the January protests. Perhaps for the first time, we allowed ourselves to believe our long-held dream was beginning to take shape.
For a moment, fear receded. I now realise the experience of the 12-day war had produced an overconfidence in the precision capabilities of Israel and the US. Beneath that overconfidence lay a profound anxiety about the destruction of civilian infrastructure and power plants, a possibility that remains deeply unsettling.
Each night, we wake to the sound of
explosions and fighter jets. The internet, like many other aspects of our lives, has been taken from us by the regime. Even so, through some internal messaging platforms, and layers of coded communication, we have created small spaces of connection. Every day, we check on one another. We ask: Whatās happening in your neighbourhood? Are you safe?
So far, none of those close to us have suffered physical harm, but no night is calm.
What weighs most heavily is not only the war itself, but the possibility that it may end leaving behind a regime even more authoritarian, more repressive, and more violent.
A small minority of regime supporters take to the streets every night with loudspeakers. They project a power and influence that does not correspond to their numbers. On the first day of the war, as they chanted āHeydar, Heydarā, we responded with āLong live the shahā and ādeath to the dictatorā.
Yet even this small moment of self-expression and release was quickly suppressed.
We have been threatened by the visible targeting of our homes with weapon-mounted lights. Most days resemble the period of the January massacres, when grief and exhaustion had overtaken society. Then, people were withdrawn, subdued. I would cry in private, away from my daughter. Yet even then, we tried to hold ourselves together. Nearly everyone I know had lost someone.
This time, however, something has shifted. We decided not to step back. For the daughters and sons of this land, we would continue, for as long as we are alive, to insist on the return of freedom and dignity.
It is difficult not to reflect on the complicity Iāve witnessed. This is a painful reflection, but it must be acknowledged. People like me, in different ways, enabled the conditions that allowed this regime to consolidate itself. Within the structures imposed upon us, our knowledge and capacities were redirected toward sustaining its objectives, while its ideological foundations remained unchanged. Those who continue to support it are heavily protected, escorted by armed vehicles, yet their numbers remain marginal. Without amplification, without force, they would not match the scale of public dissent.
The streets are now covered with checkpoints. Under bridges and along main roads, movement is restricted. Long traffic lines form. Young people are stopped, their phones inspected under the pretext of routine checks. At the same time, fighter jets remain overhead, and the risk of these sites being targeted is evident. In effect, ordinary people have been turned into human shields within a vast militarised landscape.
A pervasive sense of anger, paranoia and exhaustion has taken hold. The governing apparatus relies on intimidation: restricting communication, disrupting information flows, executing young people and exerting pressure on a population that has begun to articulate its demands with clarity.
And then there is the word that circulates more frequently: ceasefire. Elsewhere, it may suggest relief. But here, in Tehran, it breeds unease.
Last night, before the announced ceasefire, we went to sleep in a state of deep anxiety, constantly checking the news. There was concern civilian infrastructure might be targeted, which would render our situation even worse. Yet weāre also deeply afraid of a ceasefire and being left alone with this criminal regime.
A ceasefire that stabilises the current order, without addressing the demands that have brought Iranians into the streets for years, risks being experienced not as peace, but as abandonment.
Current negotiations are framed in terms of security, deterrence and geopolitical balance. The people themselves are absent from these terms.
Their losses, their demands, their insistence on dignity seem to be irrelevant.
This absence is frightening as it signals the possibility that the outcome may preserve the very conditions that made this moment inevitable. So we live in suspension. Between fear and anticipation. Between
violence and the possibility of change. Between a future that might open, and one that might close again, more tightly than ever before.
Still, despite everything, hope remains a force of endurance. A quiet, persistent refusal to accept that this is permanent.
We wait and we continue, in whatever ways possible, to insist that light will eventually overcome this darkness.