Live updates: Follow the latest news on US-Iran war
The holidays marking Eid Al Fitr and the Persian new year Nowruz are over. But the war is not. Iranians have welcomed in their new year, which begins in late March, at the heart of a regional conflict that has no clear end.
“We have a proverb that says, ‘An unfruitful year is evident from its spring,’” a businessman from Tehran told The National. “If good things happen at the beginning of the year, these good things will continue until the end of the year. If bad and unfortunate things happen at the beginning, they will continue.”
For the man, who opposes Iran’s hardline clerical leaders, the year has started badly.
“To be honest, I'm experiencing fear, despair and humiliation,” he said. “I’m really down, and I know many others feel the same. It's a very deep depression. Most people are unhappy with the situation that's arisen.” Like most others reached by The National, he spoke on condition of anonymity over security fears.
One month into the war, some Iranians believe that the 47-year old regime has been weakened. Some supported the idea of foreign military intervention as a radical last option to oust the country's leadership, which imposes strict curbs on political and social freedoms.
But some who wanted to see the regime hit militarily after its brutal January crackdown on protestors feel the war has only left them more terrified.
"I must admit that during the peak of the January massacre, I sometimes wished that America would attack and destroy them, but that was only out of anger, sadness, and extreme despair," Arash, a 36-year-old resident of Tehran told The National, using a pseudonym. He was referring to the country's leadership who directed the January crackdown on protests, in which at least 7,000 people were killed. Some media reports put the death toll far higher, at over 30,000. "I never thought that war would bring us freedom and happiness, but my sense of fear and terror about war has become much stronger over the past month."
Indeed, many see no weakening of a regime that is still standing, and adapting. They believe Iran's leaders, bent on survival and flexing their newfound ability to control key trade routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, are becoming more extreme.
With much of Iran’s political and military leadership dead, and new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei absent from public life since his appointment three weeks ago, power appears to be coalescing around the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the country’s most powerful military force. Associated political figures have also risen in prominence, including speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard himself, and the national security council is now lead by Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, also a former Guards commander.
"What change has actually taken place? The system is the same system, the individuals have changed, and even the appointment of Mr Zolghadr as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council indicates that the regime could adopt a more radical agenda," Javad Heirannia, a Tehran-based analyst, told The National. "Mr Zolghadr has close ties with Mojtaba Khamenei, who is present in the new leadership role, and Mr Qalibaf is also effectively controlling and guiding affairs."
Sporadic statements from President Trump about regime change were "an attempt to escape from the original idea he had proposed, and in a way to make the people of Iran believe that his attacks were in the people's interests and had changed the regime," he said. "This is an incorrect statement, and such an event has not occurred."
Beyond the killing of Iranian leaders and the destruction of missile stockpiles and factories, nearly 1,500 civilians have been killed in the US and Israeli air strikes, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. Among them are 221 children. The Iranian Health Ministry puts the overall death toll at 1,937. More than 70,000 homes, 290 health facilities, and 600 schools have been damaged, according to the Iranian Red Crescent.
US President Donald Trump says he will delay strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure until April 6, pending talks on a negotiated solution to the conflict. The two countries are not talking directly but passing messages with their demands through mediator Pakistan.
One 60-year-old man from Tehran, interviewed by Farsi news platform Balatarin, said he supported the idea of a negotiated deal, “a final agreement with international oversight” by the UN. It should contain guarantees that Iran would not be attacked again, especially during negotiations, he said. Both the current war and last year's 12-day war started while the US and Iran were negotiating a return to a nuclear deal.
The man, a veteran of the 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war, does not support the Islamic Republic in its current form and described how it had “never stood by its word” of the ideals it promised in the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. But he also vehemently opposed the idea of allowing Iran to be controlled by the US or Israel. “I will never give up my land,” he said. “Not even an inch to Israel or America.”
There is not a great deal of belief among Iranians that a deal will succeed, partly because both sides’ demands are so distant from each other, and partly because some Iranians believe a deal with the US could be torpedoed by renewed Israeli military action.
“I’m not optimistic that they can reach a deal,” a third resident of Tehran told The National. “Because of the Israel issue – it won’t allow it. Their targeting of figures like Larijani shows that they don’t really want to move towards an agreement.” He was referring to Ali Larijani, a former senior official killed in a strike 10 days ago, who had been seen by some analysts as a figure capable of negotiating with the US.
In private, some Iranians believe that the regime is keener on a negotiated solution than it is letting on publicly. It could be an off-ramp that would allow Iran's leaders to retain power instead of being further weakened by US and Israeli action.
Arash said he thought an agreement between Iran's current leaders and Trump was the only way to end the war - something he would be happy to see happen. But he does not see that benefiting the Iranian people.
"If I want to be realistic, this agreement will never be in the interests and wishes of the Iranian people. This war is between the Revolutionary Guards, the United States, and Israel, and its end will be decided by these three," he said. "These are three powers that do not care about the people and freedom, and all three only care about their own interests and profits."
For Iranians caught between a hardening regime and US threats, the idea of Mr Trump following through on threats to attack power stations is something they don’t want to think about. The country has already been suffering from water and power shortages, which Arash blamed on "the incompetence of the ruling system in society."
Targeting energy facilities would make these worse, the businessman said.
“The idea of Iran's energy infrastructure being bombed is truly terrifying because it's connected to people's daily lives; it makes ordinary life difficult,” he said. “Whether it's electricity, energy, or water, these have all, in a sense, been built over the years with taxpayers' money.” With double-digit inflation in Iran, the cost of rebuilding them would only take away further from normal people’s lives, he added.
“To be honest, I've always been a very hopeful person, always very optimistic,” he added. “But in the last two or three weeks, I've really lost all hope.”
Throughout the war, many people have been trying to keep a sense of normality, even as bombs that have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses rain down.
State television has been promoting images of bustling streets, people going about their business, and nightly pro-government rallies. These also serve to deter from a return to the sort of anti-government protests that shook the state in January and which were put down with lethal force.
Authorities have made hundreds of arrests over the past month of people they accuse of sending material to foreign media outlets and spying for the US and Israel. Others have been detained for possession of Starlink devices or otherwise trying to circumvent a government-imposed internet shutdown. That in itself has brought great anxiety for Iranians who have to pay inflated prices for internet access to contact their loved ones, or who cannot do so at all.
Some who are able to get online are not overtly posting their political views but are documenting their wartime lives. Some post videos about group runs around Tehran’s parks, or finding solace in exercise routines; others are posting diary-style content about their lives under fire.
“It’s 6pm, the sounds are coming frequently, but there are no pictures,” one woman wrote in an Instagram post from Tehran on Thursday. “We are still playing [the card game] rummy. And from time to time we jump out of our seats from the sounds of the explosions.”
Others express their fears more openly.
"Hope? I have no hope for the future, at least in the short term, we are not going to see a happy life in Iran," Arash said. "No matter which way the path goes, the people are going to lose this war and I don't see any scenario where people feel like they are winning."
