The war in Iran will enter its fourth week on Saturday, with no real end in sight. The Pentagon is reported asking for $200 billion to fund an ongoing military operation, as it is destabilize the world economy. At the same time, the Iranians say that airstrikes are increasing louder and stronger with the US and Israel going after high-ranking officials, infrastructure and other targets in populous cities.
Today, I want to focus on that last perspective – the perspective from inside Iran. The country has been under near-total network outage since the attacks began, making it difficult for the Western media to fully capture the situation inside the country or the extent of the damage.
This story was first featured in Today’s Magazine, Explained
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But Roy Rastegar – producer, writer and co-founder of Iranian Diaspora Collectionpro-democracy group – is in contact with the people’s network in Iran. In a Vox piece this week, shared their experiences of the ongoing wartogether with their hopes for the country’s democratic change.
Today, Roya and I discuss internet outages, the political climate in Iran and daily life in a war zone. (This conversation has been edited for length and flow.)
In a Vox piece earlier this week – “This war puts the Iranians in an impossible moral dilemma” — you share the stories of several Iranians who lived through the war. How is communication and internet connection in Iran now? How do people get messages to you?
Communications within Iran are currently fragmented, unstable, and politically controlled by the regime. This blackout is not a technical, wartime issue – it is a deliberate political choice cut off 90 million Iranians from international negotiations.
Power outages make it difficult to hear about ground conditions in real time. Messages come out in bursts, not in any consistent or reliable way. A friend gets access for a few minutes through a friend-of-a-friend’s VPN, sends a voice message, or Voice Chat – something before going offline again. There is also a distinct feeling that the calls are being monitored. So even when you can talk to people, the conversation is blocked by fear.
People aren’t just dealing with the constant fear and anxiety of bombs being dropped – they’re also dealing with an information siege. They do not know what has been hit or where, who is dead or alive, or which government propaganda is true and which is true.
So the message we keep getting from people on the ground is: Turn the internet back on. Power outages isolate people psychologically as well as physically.
What is daily life like for the people you interact with? I was definitely stunned a collection of translated publications which the Iranian Diaspora Community shared on Instagram: Iranians talking about how they entertain their children while they sleep indoors, or how they try to concentrate on reading even when they can see smoke outside their windows.
Are people still going to work and school? Do they have access to food and other necessities? How is normal life under this type of bombs?
People are still trying to work, study, parent, shop, clean their homes, and prepare for the new year, but they are doing so under bombs, under surveillance and under martial law.
Access to basic necessities is not the same, as prices have risen further. Gasoline is estimated. More businesses are closing – I hear that many businesses are closed for more than two weeks. Even people who used to be middle class are struggling to afford basic things.
“I am increasingly aware of the psychological effects that this moral calculus has on us as a people.”
Night time is very difficult – people can’t sleep. They are awakened by explosions, planes flying in the sky, and anticipating what will happen next. People go to their windows or roofs with little noise to determine if it was an attack.
The streets are empty in Tehran. Bakeries are open but have no customers. People are staying inside not only because of the strikes, but also because the government security forces are everywhere. I’ve heard over and over again – from my friends and sources, and from other friends talking to their friends and family in the country – that people in Iran are more afraid right now of being killed or captured by government security forces than they are of bombs hitting them. Plainclothes officers, called Basij, are stopping people on the streets more aggressively: checking their phones, questioning them, arresting them.
I’m glad you brought that up. My assumption – and I think the assumption of many people outside of Iran following the war – is that the airstrikes have been very disruptive to civilians. And they have, to be clear. But you say that people were already living under siege.
Yes. The regime has been waging a one-sided war against the citizens of Iran for 47 years. Women, religious and ethnic minorities, the poor and working class people are the most targeted by the regime.
Some people have told me they get worried when the bombs stop for more than six hours. For these people, the sound of airstrikes is a “wonderful comfort,” because their greatest fear is not the strike itself but the possibility that the Islamic Republic continues and becomes worse than before. I am increasingly aware of the psychological effects that this moral calculus plays on us as a people.
Although we may strongly disagree about how, almost all Iranians agree that the regime must go. The murder in January were the point of no return. The Islamic Republic cannot claim power while disowning the Iranian people. The regime lost its legitimacy when it killed tens of thousands of people.
Your unit is monitoring the changing tone in the messages you hear from Iranians, both at home and abroad. In the beginning, you write, there was a sense of calm that America and Israel were intervening in Iran – the hope that the government would fall. But that relief turned into something else, especially after the United States attacked a girls’ school and killed 168 people, most of them children. That was over two weeks ago. Has something changed? Where do things stand now?
People are struggling. It is sad to see the damage done to the country, to your neighbor.
The “pro-war vs. anti-war” binary approach is too simplistic for this situation – especially for the Iranians. Perhaps to the whole world it seemed that Iran was previously in a time of peace, but it was not. This administration does not rule; it tortures, compels, cripples, frightens, and kills. The violence peaked two months ago January 8 and 9. Governance is what brings the heat. At any moment, this government can surrender. How psychotic is this administration that they would see the whole country burning before giving up?
Of course, Iran is a country of 95 million people and then the Iranian diaspora is estimated to include another 5 million. So of course there are also those who oppose the regime and also do not believe that this war will bring freedom. Those voices are real and deserve to be heard too. Everyone is shocked by the cost to civilians, including the destruction of cities, psychological trauma, lack of shelter and alert systems, and the fact that children and vulnerable people are forced to bear the brunt of this terrorism.
People are waiting, barely. People are sad. They are tired. They are afraid, but also hopeful, but also hungry, but also overwhelmed, but also in the dark.
And one more thing has not changed: People continue to have serious concerns about political prisoners. The prisoners include athletes, journalists, activists, teachers, lawyers, artists – some of the people who would help build a democratic Iran. They are trapped in terrible conditions, with little food, water, hygiene, or communication.
And the government is still executing prisoners. Just yesterday, Iran hanged three young people for participating in the January protests. This is why Iranians are so desperate that they see outside intervention as the only option left.
You write that the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be allowed to “continue its nearly half-century reign of terror.” That represents, in some ways, the worst case for Iran. I’m curious what you, and the Iranians you communicate with, think the best thing is. If the government falls, what or who would you like to replace it?
There is no consensus on who or what changes it. There are several options, though – there is a transitional council of 35 anonymous leaders inside Iran who have identified themselves to the United Nations. Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi has just been named head of the Transitional Justice Committee by Reza Pahlavi (political activist and eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah deposed in the 1979 Iranian revolution). We are all just waiting to see if the government can fall. When it does, Iranians will fill that void with democratic change.
One thing to do in preparation is to develop a democratic culture and educate yourself about the political environment. Political education has been outlawed in Iran under the Islamic Republic and the former shah.
Political education will be important in this next phase of our country’s future. And the main thing in it will be to develop a democratic culture that holds different views without polluting or threatening people.
On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official and the man believed to have led the country since the death of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader. What was the reaction like in Iran?
It was like Christmas morning. Some people were more relieved than they were when Khamenei was killed, because Larijani is considered one of the architects of repression, propaganda, and the hardening of the regime.
The news also came the morning after Chaharshanbe Suri, the ancient Zoroastrian fire ritual that immediately precedes Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. People jump over the fire as an act of purification. I was stunned to see so many people in Iran taking to the streets to celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri – jumping on fire, singing, dancing. The risks were high because the government had told people to stay at home. And yet, people came out. Of course, the regime’s thugs chased them into the streets, shooting at them and threatening to arrest them.
You – in addition to your writing and your work with the Iranian Diaspora Society – are working on a documentary about six young dancers in Iran. Where are they now? What are they doing? How does this war play into their story and the story you were telling about them?
We had it only closed production in December in Iran. When we were in the development of our film, we had to do a lot of trust building with them. It took many, many months before I felt comfortable participating in any kind of film. Over time, their interest grew.
When the killings happened in January, I thought they would be very worried about contacting us – especially during a government-imposed blackout, which always comes with strict surveillance. But when we finally got in touch with them we learned something amazing – even after the massacre, literally when the streets were still covered in blood, our filmmaker told us that some of the players were insisting on filming. Even now, they want to continue filming.
As a director, this is difficult for me to deal with, because of course my first instinct is safety. I want them in their homes. I want them protected until this war is over. But they are young and brave, and they refuse to live according to the conditions that the government imposes on them. At this point, our film has become a claim to their existence: that they exist, that they matter, and that they demand to be seen.
And that just tells you a lot about these players – and their generation. They just don’t want to live. They want to claim life, beauty, agency, and existence in the face of constant threat of annihilation.
