For "Setareh," the reality of war felt distant—until the day the explosions rattled her Tehran office.
"I think it's a bomb," she yelled to her colleagues before they scrambled to the roof. Plumes of smoke marred the skyline, though the exact target remained a mystery. In the ensuing panic, her employer abruptly shuttered the business, leaving the entire staff jobless.
Due to severe state censorship, obtaining firsthand accounts from inside Iran is notoriously difficult. However, through trusted underground networks, ordinary citizens across six different cities have shared their grim reality as the conflict enters its second month. Their identities have been concealed to protect them from the regime's secret police.
Today, Setareh is plagued by unrelenting insomnia.
"I can honestly say I haven't slept for several nights and days in a row," she admits, relying on potent painkillers just to rest. "The anxiety is so intense that it has affected my body. When I think about the future... I truly don't know what to do."
Beyond the immediate terror of airstrikes, an economic catastrophe is quietly devastating Iranian households. With food prices skyrocketing and years of heavy sanctions depleting any potential savings, basic survival has become a daily battle. Setareh warns that this sudden wave of mass unemployment, coupled with a complete lack of government support, will inevitably spark a brutal internal conflict. Like many others, she holds onto a sliver of hope that the current crisis might ultimately lead to the collapse of the government.
The horrors of the conflict are vividly apparent in the medical sector. "Tina," a nurse working just outside the capital, is sounding the alarm over impending medicine shortages. Her days are now defined by unimaginable trauma, treating victims of the bombings whose bodies have been left utterly unrecognizable.
One memory stands out in its cruelty: a young woman, seven months pregnant, whose home was situated dangerously close to a military facility. The building was destroyed in an airstrike, claiming the lives of both the mother and her unborn child.
For Tina, the tragedy echoes a dark family history. Her mother spent her pregnancy huddled in bomb shelters as Iraqi missiles rained down during the devastating Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
"Hearing those stories always made me stop and think," Tina reflects. "Now, I find myself in the same kind of situation my mother once faced. I cannot believe how quickly history repeats itself."
Yet the external war is only half the threat. Inside the country, the regime's security forces aggressively patrol the streets, ready to violently suppress any signs of public dissent through arrests, torture, and executions.
"Behnam," a former political prisoner, knows this brutality intimately. Shot during recent anti-government demonstrations, he remains in hiding, his X-rays still revealing metal fragments embedded in his torso. Anticipating further violent crackdowns, he quietly hoards antibiotics and painkillers in his apartment.
"They ambushed us in one of the alleys... They fired bullets and tear gas," Behnam recalls. "Once you see how easily your life can be threatened—that a simple incident or a twist of fate can mean death or survival—after that, your life no longer holds the same value for you."