The message was short.
“The 5th Street of Naft Boulevard in Tehran has been hit.”
I saw it on a Telegram channel. That is my street. I lived there from the age of 13 until I left Iran in 2008 to move to London and join the BBC Persian Service as a reporter. My parents still live in that flat.
I stared at my phone for a long time, reading and re-reading that one line: 5th Street.
There is no reliable way to call into Iran from abroad. Since the war began, all contact with my family has been reduced to brief, sporadic calls from their landline. Each time, they say the same thing: “We are well. Don’t worry.”
Now their street had been targeted, and I had no way of knowing whether they were alive.
In desperation, I turned to social media. With little hope, I posted on Instagram asking if anyone inside Iran was online and could try to reach my parents.
A woman I did not know replied. She said she was in Iran and could send them a text message. I sent her my mother’s mobile number.
While we waited, she apologised for not being able to call them. It was 2am in Tehran. Then she said something that sent a chill through me: her husband is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a powerful branch of Iran’s security apparatus, and it would be too dangerous for her, and for my parents, if he found out she was helping me.
For a moment, I froze. I am a journalist in exile, and I had just passed my parents’ number to a stranger connected to the IRGC. But it was too late.
A banner in Tehran’s Fatemi Square, featuring Ali Reza Tangsiri, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy who was killed in a US-Israeli attack, and Iranian military leader Rais Ali Delvari on 15 April (Photo: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty)To my surprise, she added that she had been following my work for some time, a reminder that even within the households of power, people can think and feel very differently.
A few minutes later, she wrote back. My mother had replied.
They were alive.
The windows of our flat had shattered, their furniture was damaged and electricity was cut off, but they were unharmed. Because of the cold and the damage, they had left for the night to stay with my grandmother.
The strike was just two buildings down.
My parents’ flat is among more than 44,000 homes that have been damaged in the conflict, according to official figures. Estimates suggest between 1,500 and 2,000 people have been killed in Iran since the strikes began, though exact figures remain unclear.
With the internet still heavily restricted, it is difficult to form a complete picture of life inside Iran. But fragments of information, phone calls, voice notes and encrypted messages all point to a country living in a state of constant anxiety.
For ordinary Iranians, this war is not an abstract geopolitical contest. It is something intimate, immediate and deeply disorientating. Daily life continues, but under the shadow of unpredictability: queues for fuel, disrupted work, sleepless nights and the ever-present question of what might come next.
At the same time, fear of external attack is layered on top of a long-standing fear of the state itself. The Islamic Republic has spent decades tightening its control over society, responding to waves of protests, most recently in January 2026, with arrests, violence and executions.
Smoke rises in Tehran following airstrikes in the Iranian capital earlier this month (Photo: Tolga Akbaba/Anadolu via Getty Images)That tension has not disappeared during the war; if anything, it has intensified. Reports from inside the country suggest that security forces have increased their presence on the streets, while dissent has become even more dangerous.
This creates a profound sense of limbo. Many Iranians oppose the regime, but they are also deeply wary of what foreign military intervention might bring. The idea that external pressure could lead to meaningful political change is viewed with scepticism, if not outright fear.
The ceasefire has brought a fragile pause in the violence. But few people I speak to believe it represents a real turning point. It is seen less as a step towards peace than as a temporary suspension, a moment in which negotiations may or may not hold.
The US President, Donald Trump, has framed the conflict as a confrontation with the Iranian regime. But for those inside the country, the distinction between state and society collapses quickly when bombs fall on residential neighbourhoods.
For many Iranians, this war has not brought clarity but deepened uncertainty, especially about what any postwar settlement might look like. While some once believed that external pressure might weaken the regime, something Trump had promised, there is now a growing fear that the opposite could happen: that the state, having survived a direct confrontation with the US and Israel, could emerge more repressive, more militarised and less accountable.
Others worry about a far more dangerous outcome — not reform, but fragmentation, instability, or even prolonged internal conflict. The idea that war could deliver meaningful political change has lost much of its appeal. What remains instead is a quiet, persistent question: how much more can the country endure?”
On the eighth day of the ceasefire, I was finally able to speak to my parents on a brief video call. We all pretended to be calm, to be hopeful.
As we said goodbye, I found myself trying to memorise their voices and faces.
Will I see them again? I don’t know.
Rana Rahimpour is a journalist and broadcaster, formerly a lead presenter at BBC Persian. She now works across media and storytelling, and hosts the podcast Obsicast.
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