Chief worldwide correspondent
Within the coronary heart of the Iranian capital, the Boof cafe serves up refreshing chilly drinks on a sizzling summer season’s day.
They should be probably the most distinctive iced Americano coffees on this metropolis – the cafe sits in a leafy nook of the long-shuttered US embassy.
Its excessive cement partitions have been plastered with anti-American murals ever since Washington severed relations with Tehran within the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution and the hostage disaster – which nonetheless forged a protracted shadow over this tortuous relationship.
Contained in the charming Boof cafe, Amir the barista says he’d like relations to enhance between America and Iran.
“US sanctions harm our companies and make it exhausting for us to journey all over the world,” he displays as he pours one other iced espresso behind a jaunty wood signal – “Hold calm and drink espresso.”
Solely two tables are occupied – one by a girl lined up in a protracted black veil, one other by a girl in blue denims with lengthy flowing hair, flouting the principles on what ladies ought to put on as she cuddles together with her boyfriend.
It is a small snapshot of this capital because it confronts its deeply unsure future.
“The Individuals have been opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran from the very starting”, declared Iran’s Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his recorded speech broadcast on Thursday from the IRIB state TV compound a brief drive away.
“At its core, it has at all times been about one factor: they need us to give up,” went on the 86-year Ayatollah, stated to have taken shelter in a bunker aer Israel unleashed its unprecedented wave of strikes concentrating on Iran’s nuclear and missile websites and assassinating senior commanders and scientists.
We watched his speech, his first since President Donald Trump abruptly introduced a ceasefire on Tuesday, on a small TV in the one office nonetheless intact in an enormous part of the IRIB compound – all that is le is a charred skeleton of metal.
When an Israeli bomb slammed into this advanced on 16 June, a raging hearth swept by way of the principle studio which might have aired the supreme chief’s deal with. Now it is simply ash.
You possibly can nonetheless style its acrid scent; all of the TV gear – cameras, lights, tripods – are tangles of twisted metallic. A crunching glass carpet covers the bottom.
Israel stated it focused the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic, accusing it of concealing a navy operation inside – a cost its journalists rejected.
Its gaping shell appears to symbolise this darkest of occasions for Iran.
You can even see it within the metropolis’s hospitals, that are nonetheless treating Iranians injured in Israel’s 12-day warfare.
“I’m scared they could assault once more, ” Ashraf Barghi tells me once we meet within the emergency division of the Taleghani Normal hospital the place she works as head nurse.
“We do not belief this warfare has ended” she says, in a comment reflecting the palpable fear we have heard from so many individuals on this metropolis.
When Israel bombed the edge of the close by Evin jail on 23 June, the casualties, each troopers and civilians, had been rushed into Nurse Barghi’s emergency ward.
“The accidents had been the worst I’ve handled in my 32 years as nurse, even worse than what I noticed within the Iran-Iraq warfare within the 80s,” she recounts, nonetheless visibly distressed.
The strike on the infamous jail the place Iran detains most of its political prisoners was described by Israel as “symbolic”.
It appeared to strengthen Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s repeated message to Iranians to “arise for his or her freedom”.
“Israel says it solely hit navy and nuclear jail however it’s all lies,” insists Morteza from his hospital mattress. He had been at work within the jail’s transport division when the missile slammed into the constructing. He exhibits us his accidents in each arms and his bottom.
Within the ward subsequent door, troopers are being cared for, however we’re not allowed to enter there.
Throughout this sprawling metropolis, Iranians are counting the price of this confrontation. In its newest tally, the federal government’s well being ministry recorded 627 folks killed and practically 5,000 injured.
Tehran is slowly returning to life and resuming its previous rhythms, not less than on the floor. Its notorious traffic is beginning to fill its hovering highways and fairly tree-lined aspect streets.
Retailers in its stunning bazaars are opening once more as folks return to a metropolis they fled to flee the bombs. Israel’s intense 12-day navy operation, coupled with the US’s assaults on Iran’s major nuclear websites, has le so many shaken.
“They weren’t good days, ” says Mina, a younger lady who instantly breaks down as she tries to elucidate her unhappiness. “It is so heart-breaking, ” she tells me by way of her tears. “We tried so exhausting to have a greater life however we will not see any future today.”
We met on the grounds of the hovering white marble Azadi tower, certainly one of Tehran’s most iconic landmarks. A big crowd milling on a heat summer season’s night swayed to the strains of much-loved patriotic songs in an open air live performance of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. It was meant to deliver some calm to a metropolis nonetheless on edge.
Supporters and critics of Iran’s clerical rulers mingled, drawn collectively by shared fear about their nation’s future.
“They’ve to listen to what folks say,” insists Ali Reza once I ask him what recommendation he would give to his authorities. “We would like higher freedoms, that is all I’ll say.”
Regardless of guidelines and restrictions which have lengthy ruled their lives, Iranians do communicate their minds as they await the following steps by their rulers, and leaders in Washington and past, which carry such penalties for his or her lives.
Lyse Doucet is being allowed to report in Iran provided that none of her stories are used on the BBC’s Persian service. This regulation from Iranian authorities applies to all worldwide media companies working in Iran.