A total telecommunications blackout in Iran means most internet and phone lines remain cut, ever since mass anti-government demonstrations broke out last December.
Yet NPR has continued to receive some messages from inside Iran. In them, Iranians describe their fear but also defiance, more than two weeks into a joint U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran.
"The Islamic Republic, which killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and Syria, killed and tortured hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the most brutal way after all these years, and which now wants to have nuclear weapons: we, the Iranian people, who have lived with them for half a century, know how ridiculous their claim to be peaceful was," said one woman in a series of voice notes to NPR on March 16, explaining why she was angered by images of some Iranians in the diaspora protesting against the joint U.S. and Israeli shelling of her country.
She, like all the Iranians in this story, declined to give her name, because those speaking to foreign journalists can be arrested by Iranian security forces.
Other Iranians sent text messages to NPR describing how they have become expert at identifying the roar of fighter jets flying overhead, practiced in enduring the constant peal of sirens and accustomed to the eerie silence following an airstrike.
They also describe a network of new security checkpoints across major cities — manned by Iran's Basij militia, a paramilitary volunteer group — designed to intimidate residents and keep them confined to their homes.
Tehran residents describe largely deserted streets, roamed mostly by the Basij as well as vigilantes, who are sometimes masked.
"I do not leave the house nearly at all and I know most people, especially women, are like this," wrote one woman, a 49-year-old fashion designer, on March 17. "Here in my neighborhood, [the Basij] are everywhere. There are multiple teenage kids with guns in my alley."
President Trump has exhorted Iranians to rise up against the remaining segments of Iran's theocratic, authoritarian rulers, but Iranians say this heavy security presence on the streets has been effective in quashing popular dissent.
"I do not know how some talk about protests again. I mean for example, from my own alley, if anyone wants to join a protest, they will not make it even outside this alley," wrote the fashion designer.
Preparations for Nowruz, the Persian new year, would normally be well underway this week, but Iranians say security forces are banning gatherings for the holiday.
"I think it is really dangerous. My wife really wanted us to go to a friend who has a garden in the suburbs and celebrate but I do not think it is wise," a 35 year-old Tehran shopkeeper wrote on March 17. His family had wanted to go out to mark Chaharshanbe Suri, or the festival of fire, celebrated on the last Tuesday before the new year this week.
Israel says it has been targeting dozens of Basij checkpoints, as well as temporary tents that Iranian security forces have been using. On Tuesday, Iran confirmed that Israel had killed Gen. Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij paramilitary forces, in an airstrike on a tent he was in.
"I am happy [the Basij] are being hit," wrote the Tehran shopkeeper. "They looked scared and kept looking up [at the sky], which I found very entertaining to watch."
The U.S.-based group Human Rights Activist News Agency has reported at least 1,300 civilians killed since the U.S. and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28.
Yet in the midst of war, Iranians have been trying to maintain some of the regular contours of their lives.
"Many are fleeing and many buildings are empty. I still plan to stay in Tehran and continue my daily life," wrote one woman last week, on March 10, from Iran's capital, in a daily chronicle she has been sharing with NPR. "At dusk, after the explosions, silence falls on the streets, and then the cawing of crows reminds me that the sound of life is louder than any other sound."
She says she and her friends still try to go out despite the risk of detention by the Basij. She bemoaned the closure of a café, which played live rock music, this month due to shelling. For Nowruz, she said she bought firecrackers despite the paramilitary's ban on celebrations.
"I will celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri and in the final battle, I will burn every single one of these psychopathic murderers," she wrote on March 16.
At the start of the third week of war, as strikes continue and Iran's leadership digs in against calls for diplomatic negotiation to end the conflict, she writes that she has prepared herself for more suffering and more death, including, possibly, her own.
"The war was not supposed to be very clean from the first day. That was why we did all we could to avoid it for decades. We voted, asked for our votes, organized, try to talk, negotiate, bring them to reason," she wrote. "But they failed us; they failed the world. And now finally the world has accepted they had to fight them. I might get killed too."
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