Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
I am writing this from Tehran after three days of trying to find a way to send it: things may get a lot worse before they get any better.
There is no internet. Only a few people still have access to Starlink, and even that works only in patches. Messages fail. Calls fail. Most of the time, there is nothing.
The killing has been unprecedented. I know that word is used too easily, so let me explain what I mean. Almost everyone you see or speak to knows a victim. I personally know five. One is dead. Two are injured. Two have been missing for three days.
The only time that comes close, in terms of scale and fear, was during Covid.
During the day, Tehran is mostly quiet. By around three in the afternoon, people start heading home. Some do it to prepare to go out again later. Others do it to stay out of everything entirely.
Mobile phones work during the day, but even then, they are limited. Text messages do not exist. The only messages that arrive are state “alerts,” which are really threats—warnings not to go out.
We are taken hostage. Literally. And without internet, our loved ones outside the country are taken hostage in a different way.
None of this was a surprise. They have done it before. Everyone knew there was a kill switch.
Which makes me ask something I cannot stop thinking about: how did the opposition outside, the activists, never think seriously about this? How do you call on people to risk their lives without even a rough plan for what happens once the security apparatus starts moving?
I am angry. At everything. At those who rule Iran. I have nothing but expletives for them. I wish them unimaginable suffering.
But I am also angry at the keyboard warriors abroad. “We will not rest until the regime is gone, no matter the cost,” one prominent figure said last week from a European capital. “F**k you, I say. With whose blood?"
Everyone I see is angry and helpless. Often both at once. People are conflicted. You want the butchers to be beaten. You want pressure from outside. But you do not want your country attacked. You do not want war.
Most people I speak to believe Trump will do something. No one knows what. There is hope, but there is more fear.
What if the blow only bruises the beast and makes it more savage, many ask. What if parts of the system refuse to give in and keep fighting and killing? We have seen this before. After the revolution 1979, there were years of power struggles and bloodshed.
And another thing, which some people outside may not want to hear.
Those who think that a change in leadership would mean none of this could happen again are either deeply mistaken or lying. No leader has universal support. Even Khomeini faced armed opposition after the revolution, both ideological and ethnic.
But then you say all of this, and immediately another question comes: what if nothing happens? What if there is no intervention, no turning point? How much longer can we go on like this?
All I can say—and I hope people read this—is that I don’t know. Like most people here, I don’t know.
And I don’t trust those who say they do. Those who declare from their chaise longues in London or Washington that the days or even the years ahead will be easy, clean and bright.
They won’t be.
