As night fell on Friday, a tense sense of dread settled over Iranians at home and abroad, with rumors of an imminent US military strike took hold across Iran.
“I kept waiting for it to hit. I couldn’t sleep until morning. I was waking up and straining to hear any sound of explosions. Let’s see what happens tonight,” Milad*, a 43-year-old engineer living in the capital Tehran, said about that night. Shohreh, a 68-year-old woman, goes to a park near her home in east Tehran every morning for group exercise. When she returned home on the morning of 31 January, she said, “Today, all my friends were saying that it would hit tonight.“
Shohreh, who opposes a foreign attack on Iran, said people seemed to be losing their minds. “They think that if the US strikes, everything will be fine,” she said. “Because of the killings committed by the Islamic Republic, people are becoming desperate. They no longer know what is in their interest and what is against them.”
For the past week, as Washington has once again beaten the drum of war against Iran, the prospect of conflict has become a real and present fear for Iranians. The movement of a large US military fleet to the Middle East has not only triggered a new multibillion-dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel; for Iranians, it has brought confusion, psychological pressure, and fear of a disastrous future.
Iranians are still in shock following the establishment’s bloody crackdown on protests that erupted on December 28 in Tehran’s bazaar over the economic crisis and quickly spread to cities across the country.
According to government sources, 3,117 people, mostly security forces, were killed in the crackdown. However, human rights groups outside Iran believe the number is much higher, with some putting it at more than 6,500 people, the majority of them civilians. No international fact-finding mission has yet been established to verify the figures.
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