Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.

Iranians are waking up from what feels like a nightmare.

For 12 days, Israel bombarded their country with missiles, air strikes, and drone attacks. It hit homes, hospitals, and offices, killing around 1,000 people. Thousands more were injured, and tens of thousands lost their homes. Parents have been left without children, and children without parents. One family lost 12 members in an Israeli airstrike.

Tehran, the nation’s sprawling capital city of 10 million, was hit the hardest.

Get reliable, independent news and commentary delivered to your inbox every day.

Bombed-out buildings and debris-filled playgrounds bear testament to the damage caused by Israel’s unprovoked surprise attack. Dozens, if not hundreds of bodies, remain buried under the rubble.

Funerals take place constantly in Behesht-e-Zahra, the vast graveyard in the desert plains south of Tehran. In stifling heat, families gather to mourn loved ones. Among the dead are students, janitors, nurses, scientists, housewives, soldiers, doctors, and others.

Every part of Tehran was touched by the war. Bombs hit posh neighborhoods and working-class ones alike. They struck airports and gas depots, military bases and government ministries.

But now, as they clear the wreckage, Iranians can breathe a sigh of relief. They are finally able to wake up without having to check if their loved ones had been killed the night before.

Maryam, a sociologist in her 60s who asked for anonymity to protect her from potential government retaliation for speaking to U.S. media, watched the war from her apartment atop a hill in north Tehran. She saw explosions pound the city from her window, plumes of smoke signalling the location of strikes. When I talked to her a few days after the ceasefire was announced, she had trouble believing the war was really over.

“It feels like we are stuck in barzakh [purgatory],” she told me over the phone. “We’re afraid that at any moment, the bombs could start falling again.”

She described the war as a collective national trauma that has left lasting effects on Iranians’ psyche and sense of well-being.

“Everyone in Iran is wounded,” she told me.

The fear was amplified by the terror Iranians experienced during the last 24 hours of the conflict, when the United States directly entered the war by launching strikes on nuclear sites outside Qom and Isfahan, provoking widespread fears of radioactive contamination.

After the bombing, Trump promptly declared that he had negotiated a ceasefire. But Israel took advantage of the final hours of the war to pound Iran on a scale not seen over the 12-day conflict. At least 100 people were killed in those final hours, and more than 1,000 wounded.

79 people were killed in the attack, including incarcerated people, prison social workers, neighbors out for a walk, soldiers guarding the prison, and family members of prisoners who had come to post bail.

Reyhaneh, an architect in her 30s, spent the bombardment in the basement of the house where she lives with her mother in east Tehran. They were unable to leave the city during the war. Her mother is in recovery from cancer. She needed to be driven to follow-up doctor’s appointments related to her brain surgery, even as bombs rained down across the city.

Reyhaneh had been living in the apartment above her mother’s, but when the war started, she began spending nights at her mother’s home.

“I thought it was better so that we could be in touch if something happened,” she told me over the phone. What she meant was that if a bomb fell on their home, at least they would be close to each other: in life, injury, or death. They were afraid not only of a direct attack, but also of a nearby explosion showering them with shrapnel or broken glass.

Buildings in their neighborhood were bombed repeatedly, and hundreds of homes were damaged. By the end, the bombing had become so heavy — and so close — that they moved to the basement. On the last night before the ceasefire, Reyhaneh wrote in her diary:

It’s my birthday today. The bombing is so heavy I’m sure we’re going to die in this basement tonight. On my gravestone, they’ll write the same date for my birthday and for the day I died.

A few hours later, the........

© Truthout