Israeli strikes on Iran stoke fury, uncertainty in Tehran: ‘it feels like a real war'
It started with her neighbour frantically knocking on her front door, panicking at the sound of explosions. Then she taped her windows to prevent them from shattering and packed an emergency backpack.
By Tuesday, Neda was on a gridlocked highway, joining thousands of other Tehranis trying to flee the Iranian capital. Their aim was to find somewhere more remote where they would not be near any of the hundreds of sites that Israel might target.
'My biggest fear is the uncertainty and the ambiguity of it all,' Neda, 35, said by social media chat from a suburb on the outskirts of northern Tehran. 'Will this go on for a week or for eight years? Will we have to keep on improvising life one day at a time?'
For the past five days, Israel has subjected Iran to its worst military attack since the Islamic republic was invaded by neighbouring Iraq in 1980. What is clear in the metropolis of 10 million people is that people do not expect things to be the same again in a country whose leadership is hobbled and its economy shattered.
A snapshot of the mood among people contacted in Tehran suggests they expect the regime will be weakened further, but it will not be toppled. Neda, for one, said she is no supporter of the Iranian leadership, but right now her ire is directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Whenever the conflict ends, though, major reforms will be inevitable, said Cyrus Razzaghi, president and CEO of Tehran-based consultancy Ara Enterprise.
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