After 40 days of fighting, the war in Iran has reached a peaceful lull.
On April 8, Iran and the US announced a two-week truce intended to allow negotiations to end the war. There is no shortage of ongoing problems – the Strait of Hormuz remains largely blocked, while Israel continues to bomb Iran’s Hezbollah ally in Lebanon. But the pace of conflict has slowed significantly since the announcement.
Those in Iran itself, however, have seen little change. The rate of strikes may have decreased but the iron hand of the state remains, with little sign of wavering.
Leila is a 40-year-old doctor from a small village in northern Iran, near the Caspian Sea. Speaking to the CBC about VPN-enabled voice messages, he said the country’s communications breakdown is so bad that few risk texting with their closest friends.
“There are almost no means of communication except SMS messages and phone calls, and that is closely monitored by the state,” said Leila. “There is almost no Internet connection except Starlink, and access is very expensive. I didn’t see any of my friends until about three weeks into the war, because we were too afraid to send messages to each other under this surveillance.”
The CBC has withheld Leila’s last name and exact location out of concern for her safety, as a result threats by the Iranian government against citizens speaking to foreign media.
Iranian authorities introduced a complete shutdown of the Internet amid protests in January and a brutal crackdown that put them down. This was raised somewhat in the following weeks, and was fully reinstated following the outbreak of war in Feb. 28. Internet traffic in Iran decreased by 98 percent as a result, destroying income for many web dependent businesses and entrepreneurs.
What little internet access is available these days mostly comes through Starlink terminals, which may exist as as many as 100,000 in the country. Locals who find someone with a terminal purchase data at exorbitant prices: one gigabyte will reportedly buy 10 million Iranian rials (about $10.50 Cdn), in a country where the monthly minimum wage is 166 million rials ($175).
The Iranian government has criminalized access to Starlink terminals and is actively hunting them.
The result was an almost complete erasure of information. A lack of information meant that many Iranians did not learn of the scale of the January carnage until weeks later – in a country roughly the size of Western Europe, there is little way for word of mouth to spread.
Fierce images of anti-government protests are emerging in Iran as the government cuts phone and internet services. American President Donald Trump has threatened that he will take drastic measures against the regime if it starts killing people, and human rights organizations say that many have already died.
The course of events during the current war has been similarly obscured. The Islamic Republic has filled this void with propaganda, telling many people about the great “victory” of the enemies of the US and Israel – claims that are taken seriously.
“The regime sends SMS messages to the people every day, announcing that they are defeating the American people and destroying the Zionist movement,” said Leila, using a term common to the Iranian government in Israel.
“All the TV channels are talking about this, and it doesn’t stop there. There are always checkpoints on the street, where Basij. [paramilitaries] play patriotic music about the brave resistance of Muslims. I don’t know anyone who pays attention to this.”
Talking to foreign media is a crime
Government efforts to control communications and messaging are not limited to national borders.
Yasmin, a dentist in Tehran, has seen her work come to a standstill since the war began, with almost all non-emergency health care facilities closed. On March 18, he decided to cross over to Turkey to escape the war for a while. The authorities took notice.
“I [Iranian] the border guards told us that any discussion with foreign media organizations will be considered a crime,” said Yasmin, referring to the WhatsApp message. “When we crossed the border, there were foreign journalists waiting, but I didn’t dare to talk to them.”
Iran’s leadership has been decimated by war, which began with the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other key security figures, such as former parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Islamic Guards Revolutionary Corps (IRGC) intelligence chief Majed Khademi, were also killed in airstrikes targeting them.
Despite this, the regime has not fallen, as US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped. Its grip on the country remains as strong as ever – a surprise to Leila and others.
“When America and Israel attacked [on Feb. 28]some people thought that the regime would change quickly,” said Leila. “But this did not happen. We have seen that the state has many layers, many different leaders: one is killed, another takes his place. I myself was surprised by the stubbornness, the persistence of this regime. “
Dissatisfaction with the regime has grown slowly in recent years, rising with the January protests, which were suppressed only when the military killed them. about 20,000 people. Many Iranians hope that the decapitation strikes at the start of the war will bring down the government.
Six weeks on, the power of the regime continues to dispel the belief that it will fall anytime soon.
“As the war continues, many people are disappointed and lose hope that the regime will ever end,” said Leila. “Right from the start, there were those who said that there is no government in the world that has ever been shot down by airplanes, others are now talking about it. [the] Vietnam [War]where the United States was forced to stop fighting a government like the Islamic Republic.”
Meanwhile, every day of war brings a real risk of death, both to civilians and state figures. Leila was lucky to avoid the direct impact of the war, because she lives in a small, provincial town that has never been targeted.
Little escape
Yasmin had a very different experience.
In late March, he crossed the Turkish border back into Iran. He reached the train station and sent a message to a friend abroad, sharing his location. Minutes later, Israel announced a wave of airstrikes against Iran’s rail network, warning people to evacuate – a warning few inside the country, amid the internet blackout, could see.
Luckily, Yasmin’s friend saw the notice and was able to text her to get out of the station. He takes his bags and runs away. A few minutes later, the station was bombed.
The January protests and the current war have caused a wave of confidence among senior Iranians that the regime will soon be overthrown. As one of the few Iranians in the country with access to international affairs, Leila says she was surprised by this, calling those hopes “vain.”
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“I was able to watch some of the Persian-language news channels outside of Iran, and I was very surprised,” he said. “They have this sense of optimism that conflicts with the reality here. This is especially true for those who have been outside the country for a long time: they obviously have little contact with Iranian society and their view of Iran seems to have been frozen by whatever time they left.”
“They don’t understand what this government will do to continue ruling,” he said.
US and Iranian negotiators met in Pakistan over the weekend for the highest-level direct talks between the two sides in decades, but the 24-hour marathon discussion session failed to produce results. On Sunday, Trump announced that the US would initiate a full ban of the Strait of Hormuz, greatly increasing the chances of a renewed war.
For Leila, this was the expected result.
“In my opinion, this war has just begun,” he said. “All three sides – the Islamic Republic, Israel and the United States – have all lost. No one has gotten what they wanted. The Islamic Republic has spent 47 years working under this fanatical Islamic foundation and preparing to resist America in this kind of war. They will never give the US what they want, so the war will continue.”
