The Associated Press published the most detailed dispatch from inside Tehran since the war began on 28 February. Fourteen million people in Tehran province are living under sustained aerial bombardment with no air raid sirens, no warning systems, no bomb shelters, and no functioning internet. Bombs arrive without notice. Families rely on phone calls where mobile networks still function, word of mouth otherwise. An athlete in northern Tehran told The AP: "The psychological pressure is real." Streets built for 9 million daily occupants are empty.
The physical toll on the city is visible in its monuments. The Azadi Square archway — the 45-metre tower built in 1971 to mark 2,500 years of the Persian Empire, renamed after the 1979 revolution, and Tehran's most internationally recognised structure — was photographed enveloped in smoke after nearby strikes. The Golestan Palace, a Qajar-era royal complex and UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013, had its windows blasted out from a strike on adjacent Arag Square. Residents report persistent sore throats and burning eyes — symptoms consistent with Iranian Red Crescent warnings last week that acidic black rain from 30 Israeli-struck fuel depots carried toxic hydrocarbon compounds, sulphur, and nitrogen oxides, posing risks of chemical burns and lung damage across the metropolitan area. The strikes that created those fires produced an environmental health emergency layered on top of the kinetic one.
The last time Tehran endured sustained aerial bombardment was during the Iran-Iraq War's "War of the Cities" between 1985 and 1988, when Iraqi Al-Hussein missiles — modified Scuds with extended range — struck the capital in intermittent barrages. A generation of Tehranis learned to sleep in basements when sirens sounded. Today there are no sirens. Iraq's missile capacity in the 1980s was limited to dozens of launches per campaign phase; the ordnance now falling on Tehran includes precision-guided munitions from fifth-generation aircraft striking around the clock.
UNHCR reported this week that up to 3.2 million Iranians have been internally displaced since 28 February — but for the millions who remain in Tehran, leaving requires transport, fuel, money, and a destination. The city sits at the base of the Alborz Mountains with limited northward road capacity; primary exit routes run south and west, toward the areas under heaviest strike activity. During the War of the Cities, Baghdad and Tehran exchanged barrages with pauses of days or weeks between them. Residents had time to adapt, stockpile, relocate. Fourteen days into this campaign, no such rhythm has formed. The bombardment has been continuous, and the population has fewer means to endure it than their parents did forty years ago.
