‘The streets are empty, the windows are gone’: Iranians describe life under bombardment as war enters second week
As U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran approach the end of their first week, residents in Tehran describe a capital of shattered glass, shuttered storefronts and competing emotions — fear, exhaustion and, for some, a fragile hope that the Islamic Republic’s grip may finally loosen after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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In a series of interviews with Axadle Times, Iranians living inside the country spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Their accounts, shared amid ongoing air and missile attacks targeting security installations, sketch a city holding its breath and a society split between quiet celebration and hardening repression.
“We all went through the windows and we were all shouting ‘thank God’ for giving us such an experience,” said one woman in Tehran, recalling the moment word spread of Khamenei’s death. “I was really happy that I’m alive to see this moment, to see this day. There was a woman, she was old, but we could actually hear her voice, and she said ‘thank God, he finally heard the voices of all the mothers, all the sad mothers of this land’ and I was crying with her voice.”
Her elation was met almost immediately, she said, by the force of a state that moved to remind people who still holds power. “I want to say that the level of repression is so intense that even right now, the regime’s supporters are holding carnival-like celebrations every night, making loud noise and disturbing people,” said another woman from Tehran, who fled the capital with her family in the days after the conflict escalated. “I don’t understand how someone whose leader has died is holding carnivals, I really don’t understand it. They are repressing people very intensely in a structured way. And when I see things like this, I get scared.”
The conflict has raged for six days, with residents reporting intense bombardment largely directed at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Basij militia and other security nodes. The blasts, they say, rarely confine their damage to military property.
“We see, mostly they are targeting military areas, IRGC bases, security zones, headquarters, and Basij bases,” said a man in Tehran. “Now, the houses around them, due to the blast waves, sometimes their windows and doors, or even walls, have collapsed. People are warned not to pass near them, and they take these warnings seriously.”
He described a capital stilled by fear and emptied by closures. “Tehran’s situation is still closed down, and I think less than 2%, like these shops we see open, often have no customers, no one coming in to buy anything,” he said. “Most cities, including Tehran, look empty and quiet.”
Hospitals under suspicion
Even as missiles fall and air-raid warnings ripple across neighborhoods, several residents said they believe the greatest danger sometimes comes from the decisions of Iran’s own security establishment. One woman, her voice tight with anger and worry, accused officials of hiding high-ranking figures among civilians to complicate targeting.
“Israel told us to evacuate some regions that are related to military services,” she said. “And we see that even after one day, after bombing or airstrikes, that Israel attacked some region that is really important to the military forces. Unfortunately, they (the Iranian regime) use people to protect their own forces.”
She said friends working as doctors and nurses have reported that senior figures are being sheltered inside medical facilities. “I’m really worried about them when they have to go to that hospital, because they (the regime) hide the people that they want to keep safe, all the important generals and military commanders, in hospitals,” she said.
The Axadle Times could not independently verify these specific claims. Under international humanitarian law, hospitals are protected sites and must not be used for military purposes.
Life suspended, choices narrowed
For many in Tehran and other cities, the rhythm of daily life — the morning commute, the market stalls, the hum of cafés — has been replaced by contingency plans. Families debate whether to stay or go. Parents ration fuel and food staples. Neighbors check on the elderly and the sick when cell service flickers back on after an outage. There is, residents said, a temporary clarity about what matters most and a gnawing uncertainty about what comes next.
A woman who fled Tehran described a city that felt both familiar and alien. The buildings were the same, but the soundscape had changed: the distant thud of strikes, the abrupt silence that followed, the occasional surge of voices in the street that might be grief, relief or something in between. “When I see things like this, I get scared,” she said again, as if repeating the phrase could steady the ground beneath her feet.
Inside the city limits, the practicalities of survival have taken precedence. People avoid roads near military compounds; shopkeepers who dare to open find few customers; families tape plastic sheeting over blown-out panes. In some districts, residents said, municipal workers move in quickly after strikes to clear debris and restore power — a performance of normalcy that convinces few.
Hope and fear in the same breath
The testimonies suggest a population living with contradictory emotions. The death of Khamenei — for many the unyielding symbol of the system — has stirred the idea that change could finally be possible. Yet there is also an awareness, etched into decades of crackdowns, that the state’s capacity for coercion remains vast.
“Most cities, including Tehran, look empty and quiet,” the man said, describing the hush as both protective and oppressive. It keeps people safe from flying glass, he noted — and from the gaze of security forces. It also amplifies the words that do slip out: the whispered calls from a neighbor, the shared rumor that a base was struck, the momentary cheer that bursts through a window before it is swallowed again by the night.
As the war nears its second week, the people who spoke to Axadle Times said they are bracing for more: more strikes, more arrests, more choices that feel like traps. They do not know if the outcome will be a weakened security state or a fiercer one. They only know that, for now, the city sounds different — and that each bang, each pause, each hurried footstep writes another line in a story still being fought over in the skies above and the streets below.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
