Name: US-Israel war with Iran: What's life like in Iran? | The Global Story
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T16:47:35.000Z
Duration: 23 min 14 s
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Imam Hammenei drank the sweet, pure draught of martyrdom.

Adverbs of manner

When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, some Iranians took to the streets to publicly mourn him.

But others took to the streets to celebrate the Supreme Leader's demise.

In the days following the Ayatollah's death, there's been a barrage of American and Israeli strikes that have continued to rain down on Iran.

We want to understand what's happening to Iranians inside Iran.

So coming up, we'll be talking to our colleague Parham gabadi of the BBC's Persian Language Service.

Now, despite the Internet blackout, he and his colleagues have figured out ways to reach Iranians in Iran to help us get a clearer picture of the situation on the ground.

From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, dc.

I'm a senior reporter with BBC Persian presenter Parham.

I just want to make a note of that because it's plausible that by the time this goes to air, things might have changed slightly.

Iranians have been under fire now for three, four days.

Over at the BBC Persian Language Service, where you work, you've been talking to Iranians inside Iran in spite of the communications blackout.

Some of the people there, they welcome an attack on Iranian, especially commanders and the leadership.

So we received so many videos after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed that people were celebrating, people were cheering.

Some in other, smaller towns, people were dancing on the street, honking their horns.

So there was a sense of happiness when they realized that he was dead.

Some Iranians, obviously, however, as the war goes on, you know, sentiments can change because the bombs are dropping.

So I hear more and more people are becoming concerned, you know, when they try to, for example, target a police station, but

also the building next to it collapses, and

So things like that, scenes like that can make people doubt if this is only about military leadership and there are going to be civilian casualties anyway in wars.

But Iranians overall, to answer your questions, are divided.

They say that we've had enough under this brutal regime.

They are going to kill us anyway, so it's better to see their end even if we get killed.

Some Others, they do not see it like that.

They say that a foreign invasion has never led to democracy.

So it's unlikely that this one will lead to a democracy.

Have you been hearing from your own family and friends?

So my father just gave me a call yesterday and it was a relief after a few days.

Was that the first time you heard from him?

Because I realized one of our relatives died a day before the attack.

And so they were on the way to the cemetery that the attack started.

So through a friend of a friend we managed to call them and we realized that they got stuck in a traffic jam.

And I was extremely worried that they're gonna, you know, be somewhere and you know, mistakenly that that place is bombed.

So it took them six hours to just get back home because of the traffic jam.

And during that six hour, it was a to six hours.

in the United States, we've heard very little about what this war looks like inside Iran.

Can you give us a sense of the conversations you've had or your colleagues have had?

We have to keep in mind that this is happening right after that brutal crackdown of Iranian protesters that left a huge scar on Iranians minds.

Like it was a sense of national trauma that I've never seen seen before.

I mean, I've seen brutal crackdowns by the Iranian regime, but this one was totally different.

Thousands were killed, everybody knew somebody who was killed.

So many people have this unprecedented anger towards this.

But like I said, this, you cannot generalize that.

Yeah, I've heard that sentence a lot, but that's not everyone.

There are some people inside the country that they are extremely, you know, unhappy to see the bombs are dropping, you know, on their hometown.

For me personally when I see it, I lived in that city for 29 years of my life.

And you know, for example, yesterday I was seeing this video that the window was open and there was an explosion nearby.

And there's just this wave of explosion, you know, moving the curtains and blowing the curtains away.

It's surreal to see things like that happening in a huge city with millions of population like Tehran.

So what we hear, and my colleagues are hearing, those who can afford it, they're leaving Tehran.

Those who can afford not doing their day job, they're leaving Tehran, they're going to other, especially north of Iran is usually safer by the Caspian Sea is usually safer place to be in.

However, there are many people who can't do it.

They were struggling to make the ends meet, especially because right before this war there was this protest.

And during the protest, many people just stopped working.

They were not, you know, that they were not able to go to work.

So some of the Iranians just have lost their most of their income since January.

And even before that, they were having a difficult time making the ends meet.

So they have to go to work, they have to show up.

And you see, that's one of the most bizarre things.

I was looking at the video today and I saw this highway that is full of taxis.

The taxis in Iran are yellow and some of them are green.

And then it was a clear sky and there was this huge plume of smoke rising.

I was like, what you, what are you people doing outside?

You see people on the street and the first day, so, and, and

You see that somewhere is bombed and people are just going about their business or it's clear that they were doing their business, they were doing their shopping, they were like.

But apart from that, you see very long queues for petrols.

So people are worried and that's one of the reactions.

They want to have enough petrol in their car to be able to escape if things become more dire and more serious.

And the other thing is that people are trying to save up some cash at home if ATM machines, you know, cash machines stop working.

But, yeah, so people, some of the people who cannot leave the city, they still have to go about their business and try to make some money for their families.

However, we need to keep that in mind that we had the same problem during the 12 Day War with Persian parents.

So that's the problem I had with my own parents.

And I wrote an article on BBC as well, that my parents wouldn't leave.

So he told me that if we get killed, we'd rather get killed together here in my own home rather than, you know, be, you know, in someone else's flat or be a refugee or be.

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US-Israel war with Iran: What's life like in Iran? | The Global Story

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