“We feel like we want to scream, but something is blocking our throats,” wrote the man – one part of a series of staccato messages sent from Tehran as internet connections in Iran came back into service.
In the aftermath of the most brutal crackdown on protests in their country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iranians are caught in a sense of despair, hopelessness and confusion about what they endured, and what their futures hold.
“I don’t know how to explain what happened, or what it has done to us,” one journalist from Iran told The National. “Life goes on? That depends on what you mean by life.”
Amid grieving for loved ones killed in the protests, rage at their government’s seemingly limitless ability to use violence to quash dissent, fear over the prospect of another conflict with the US, and continuing struggles with sky-high inflation, many Iranians feel hopeless and angry.
“The city has basically returned to its normal rhythm. But everyone is angry and upset,” said Ahmed, a protestor who was injured and lost a friend during demonstrations in the city of Isfahan last month. “It’s impossible to turn a blind eye to this massacre.”
The Iranian government has published the names of nearly 3,000 people killed in the unrest, which it blames on a US and Israeli-backed plot against the country. Many who took part in the protests dispute those claims, and activists outside the country say the death toll is at least 6,800, most of them protesters.
Iranians report increased surveillance of mobile devices by security forces, and 50,000 people, including medical staff accused by the state of assisting injured protesters, have been arrested, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists’ News Agency, and the reformist Iranian newspaper, Shargh.
Ahmed, who spoke to The National at length using a pseudonym to protect his identity, also said medical personnel faced threats of their qualifications being erased from computer systems if they treated injured protesters.
At the same time, Iranians are living in the shadow of the prospect of renewed military conflict. US President Donald Trump ordered a naval strike force to the Middle East and officials in Tehran and Washington have traded threats of their readiness for war in recent days. Both sides have said a new conflict could dwarf the scale of a war last June, when Israel carried out military strikes and the US hit three nuclear sites in Iran.
Regional powers, including Turkey and Qatar, have been shuttling back and forth in talks with both sides in recent days in an attempt to avert another potentially devastating conflict that could have region-wide effects. Sources told The National on Tuesday that Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is due to meet US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Friday in an attempt to restart negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme as an off-ramp to military confrontation.
But for Iranians, the outlook remains bleak.
“These days everything is uncertain here,” the man in Tehran said.
The man, who lived through the June conflict last year, was pessimistic about the planned talks in Istanbul and thought conflict was more likely.
“Of course, I don’t think this is the situation for negotiations. There will be war, but I don't know if the war will be just a show, or a full-scale war. Unfortunately, people's mood is not good.”
Most Iranians would like an agreement “because they are angry”, he said, but the conditions that the US has laid down mean it is unlikely to happen, he believed.
The US wants an end to all uranium enrichment and limitations on the scope and number of ballistic missiles in Iran's arsenal, which officials in Tehran have ruled out. It is also seeking an end to Tehran's support for regional armed groups, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Tehran has always denied seeking nuclear armament but wants to maintain the ability to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful civilian purposes.
Grieving for loved ones
Many Iranians describe knowing at least one person who was killed or injured in the protests.
In Isfahan, Iran's third largest city, Ahmed described how he took his friend to a hospital after he was shot in the head during a protest on January 8, outside the state broadcaster building. The National is not naming the friend because Ahmed said his family did not want his name to be publicised.
a protester in Isfahan
The protest started peacefully, he said.
“There were so many people that all the streets were completely chock-a-block. People had come out with their families into the streets, they were chanting against the first person in the government,” he said, a reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Many Iranians hold Mr Khamenei, who has been in power since 1989, responsible for widespread economic, social and political grievances.
Riot police then tried to scatter the crowds by “ambushing” the entrances to streets where people had gathered, and fired ball bearings at people’s faces, Ahmed said. “People used the sheer size of the crowd to take their motorbikes and set them on fire. They [the riot police] got really angry, and the way they were firing changed. A sort of tear gas was used and we found it even harder to breathe.”
The crowds moved towards the state broadcaster building, where some of the demonstrators set fire to the entrance, Ahmed said.
“There was shooting in the direction of the people. We got separated from the others. Then, I saw that he [my friend] took a hit. I took him to the hospital and he was admitted.”
In the hospital, plain clothes forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence units came to take the friend’s dead body, Ahmed said. No funeral was held and Ahmed was only able to visit the grave later, he said. The account of security forces' presence in hospitals and restrictions on mourning aligns with accounts given to human rights observers and previous reporting by The National.
“The really painful part is that he was shot in the head,” Ahmed said.
He also described how medical staff in the hospital told him that they were threatened with “all their documents and papers being deleted from the system and having to give over all the paper versions too” because they treated injured protesters.
By the next morning, security forces had cleaned up the evidence of what happened, Ahmed said.
“They had wiped all the blood stains from the city streets. I passed through in the morning,” he said. “There were no traces left, just burn marks.”
Ahmed was injured in a protest the following night, after he was hit in the head by a ball-bearing. He treated himself at home, wary of being confronted by security forces in hospitals.
Widespread discontent
Other Iranians interviewed by The National described a sense of atomisation in society, between those who want wholesale change from the system of theocratic rule that has lasted nearly 50 years and those who are waiting for reform from within.
“One section of society seriously says that the current rulers cannot solve the country's problems and must leave. There is also a group who are waiting, which is much larger in size,” another resident of Tehran said. “This group is waiting for changes to take place, most of all in the economy. But they are disappointed because they don't see any specific changes right now.”
Even those who support the current regime, who make up between 10 and 30 per cent of the population, according to estimates given by interviewees and figures from the last election cycle in 2024, are not happy with the status quo.
“To be honest, right now, everyone is unhappy. Whether it's the government’s supporters, who are perhaps now afraid of losing power, or the opposition to the government who came out to protest and have been killed,” a fifth Iranian said. “They have come out so many times and been killed. Their disappointment is only growing.”
Supporters of a return of Iran’s former crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, whose father was ousted in the 1979 revolution, are also “unhappy, because they failed to get him into power,” the man said.
“Even those people who are apathetic, who don't pay much attention to politics, even they are unhappy now. Living conditions have become so hard for them: the internet blackout, cost of living problems. Even if someone in Iran has no interest in politics whatsoever, they are forced to deal with it.”
Small-scale social reforms, such as recent cabinet approval of legislation allowing women to ride motorcycles, have not been received as positively as they might once have been, with people expecting more wide-ranging changes to improve their lives.
“It did not have the good effect it could have had before because of the delay,” one of the men told The National. All the while, hardliners are attempting to oppose social reforms, he added.
Despair under 'normality'
Internet services, blocked for nearly three weeks amid the protests and the crackdown on them, have slowly returned, although they remain intermittent. Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi said at the end of January that each day of internet blackout cost the Iranian economy five trillion tomans (nearly $36 million). The impact could have “social and security consequences”, he said, and added that the state should use available means to help businesses weather the fallout.
“Support should begin with smaller companies as a priority, although the effects of the crisis are also spreading to large companies,” he added.
Businesses reopening and life appearing to be getting back to some sort of normality hides the widespread mental effects of last month’s violence, some interviewees said.
“The depression rate among our people is very high,” one of the residents of Tehran said. “A few years ago, statistics were published showing that over 70-something per cent of the population suffer from depression. As I said, this disillusionment is felt throughout society.”
The government is less concerned with people’s well-being and more concerned with “advancing its own ideological ambitions and preserving the regime,” he added. “A large section of society has been forgotten.”
