{"id":58009,"date":"2025-06-16T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/i-dont-want-tehran-to-turn-into-gaza-iranians-on-israeli-strikes\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T19:04:00","slug":"i-dont-want-tehran-to-turn-into-gaza-iranians-on-israeli-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=58009","title":{"rendered":"‘I don’t want Tehran to turn into Gaza’: Iranians on Israeli strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Israel continued to strike Iran’s capital Tehran on Sunday night<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Long queues at petrol stations and bakeries. Long lines of cars trying to escape the capital. And long, frightening nights.<\/p>\n
Residents of Tehran – still shocked by Israel’s sudden attack on Iran in the early hours of Friday morning – speak of fear and confusion, a feeling of helplessness and conflicting emotions.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t slept for nights,” a 21-year-old music student told me over an encrypted social media app. <\/p>\n
“Everyone is leaving but I’m not. My dad says it’s more honourable to die in your own house than to run away.”<\/p>\n
‘Donya’ – she doesn’t want to reveal her real name – is one of many Iranians now caught in a war between a regime she loathes and Israel, whose destructive power in Gaza she has witnessed on screen from afar.<\/p>\n
“I really don’t want my beautiful Tehran to turn into Gaza,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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As for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call on Iranians to rise up against their clerical leadership, she has a firm response.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want Israel to save us. No foreign country ever cared for Iran,” she said. “We also don’t want the Islamic Republic.”<\/p>\n
Another woman said that at first she had felt a “strange excitement” to see Israel kill Iranian military officials so powerful that she thought they would live for ever.<\/p>\n
“Suddenly that image of power was shattered,” she told BBC Persian. <\/p>\n
“But from the second day, when I heard that regular people – people I didn’t know, people like me – had also been killed, I started to feel sorrow, fear and sadness.”<\/p>\n
And she said her sadness turned to anger when she heard that the South Pars gas field had been hit, fearing that Israel was trying to turn Iran “into ruins”.<\/p>\n
For the first time in her life, she said, she has started to prepare for the idea of dying.<\/p>\n
More than 220 people – many of them women and children – have been killed since Friday, according to the Iranian authorities.<\/p>\n
Israeli authorities say Iranian missiles have killed at least 24 people in Israel over the same period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Long queues of traffic stretched along Tehran’s roads as people tried to leave the city<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Unlike in Israel, there are no warnings of imminent attacks in Iran, and no shelters to run to. <\/p>\n
Missiles fall from the sky but a campaign of car bombs in Tehran – as reported by both Israeli and Iranian media – has sewn further panic and confusion.<\/p>\n
Even some supporters of the regime are reported to be upset that its much-vaunted defences have been so thoroughly exposed.<\/p>\n
And, among many Iranians, distrust in the authorities runs deep.<\/p>\n
Donya used to defy the regime and its strict dress code by going out with her hair uncovered.<\/p>\n
Now, with her university exams postponed until next week, she’s staying at home.<\/p>\n
“I get so terrified at night,” she said. “I take some pills to help me relax and try to sleep.”<\/p>\n
The Iranian government has suggested that people shelter in mosques and metro stations. <\/p>\n
But that is hard, when the explosions seem to come out of nowhere.<\/p>\n
“Tehran is a big city and yet every neighbourhood has been somehow affected by the damage,” another young woman told BBC Persian.<\/p>\n
“For now, all we do is check the news every hour and call the friends and relatives whose neighbourhood has been hit to make sure they are still alive.”<\/p>\n
She and her family have now left their home to stay in an area where there are no known government buildings.<\/p>\n
But you never know, in a country like Iran, who may be living next to you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The Israeli assault has divided Iranians, she said, with some celebrating the regime’s losses, while others are angry at those cheering Israel on.<\/p>\n
Many Iranians keep changing their minds about what they think. Divisions are bitter, even among some families.<\/p>\n
“The situation feels like the first hours after the Titanic hit the iceberg,” the woman said. <\/p>\n
“Some people were trying to escape, some were saying it wasn’t a big deal, and others kept dancing.”<\/p>\n
She has always protested against Iran’s clerical rulers, she told the BBC, but sees what Netanyahu is doing to her country as “inexcusable”.<\/p>\n
“Everyone’s life, whether they supported the attacks or not, has been changed forever. <\/p>\n
“Most Iranians, even those who oppose the government, have now realised that freedom and human rights don’t come from Israeli bombs falling on cities where defenceless civilians live.”<\/p>\n
She added: “Most of us are scared and worried about what’s coming next. We’ve packed bags with first aid supplies, food, and water, just in case things get worse.”<\/p>\n
Israel says the Iranian armed forces have deliberately placed their command centres and weapons inside civilian buildings and areas.<\/p>\n
Members of Iran’s large diaspora are also worried.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to convey what it’s like to be an Iranian right now,” says Dorreh Khatibi-Hill, a Leeds-based women’s rights activist and researcher who is in touch with family, friends and other anti-regime activists. <\/p>\n
“You’re happy that members of the regime – who have been torturing and murdering people – are being taken out.<\/p>\n
“But we know that civilians are dying. This is a devastating humanitarian disaster.”<\/p>\n
And Iranians are not being given accurate information on what is happening, she says.<\/p>\n
“The main person in Iran – the supreme leader – is still alive while Iranians are fleeing for their lives,” she adds.<\/p>\n
“No one wants Iran to turn into another Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan. None of us wants this war. We don’t want the regime either.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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