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People in Tehran awoke to a dark, inky rain on Sunday, according to witnesses, after Israeli-U.S. strikes reportedly hit oil storage depots in and around the Iranian capital overnight.
Some say large parts of the city opened as normal with stores and gas stations continuing to function. But they also describe Tehran as remaining heavily controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“I went out a few places [on Saturday],” a 47-year-old man living in Tehran told CBC News in a voice message.
Iran’s governing clerics have largely maintained an internet blackout inside the country, making it difficult to communicate with people in Iran directly.
We are protecting the man’s identity for his own security.
U.S.-Israel strikes hit four Iranian oil storage depots and refining facilities in Tehran overnight, killing four people. At least four people were also killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Ramada hotel building in central Beirut early Sunday. Tehran says it is closer to naming a new supreme leader after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The streets were full of security forces, some on motorcycles,” he said. “They were all armed. All the checkpoints had machine guns.
“They had placed riot-control vehicles and SWAT cars in the streets.”
Belligerents vow escalation
With the war now in its second week, both Israel and the United States have pledged to escalate their attacks on what they describe as regime targets, with U.S. President Donald Trump saying he will accept nothing less than Iran’s “complete surrender.”
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani called the fuel depots a “legal military target,” saying they were used to fuel Iran’s war effort by producing or storing propellant for ballistic missiles.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, accused Israel and the United States of poisoning civilians by releasing hazardous and toxic substances into the air.
On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said 1,332 Iranian civilians have been killed in the conflict so far.
The U.S.-based Human Rights News Agency (HRANA) has put the number at more than 1,000, including 181 children under the age of 10.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian denounced the attacks by Israel and the U.S. as “bullying.”
“It is not possible that our heroic nation will retreat easily in the face of threats that they make,” he told the Iran-based West Asia News Agency (WANA) on Sunday.
‘There is no other option’
Some opponents of Iran’s governing regime are conflicted by the U.S.-Israeli attacks on their country.
“I know many civilians are also dying and that makes me sad,” said the 47-year-old man whose identity we are protecting for his safety.
“But it feels like there is no other option. So we have to accept it, and endure it, so we can move on from the Islamic Republic.”
Chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton speaks with former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross about the war in Iran, and what it means for the relationship between countries in the region. Plus, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ret. U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen discusses the uncertainty for Iran, what could come next and how likely regime change actually is. And Amanda Williams, a Canadian in Qatar, shares her efforts to find a way to travel back to Canada.
Another resident of Tehran, also male and 47, described day-to-day life as feeling “very contradictory.”
“We don’t want our country to be attacked and destroyed,” he told CBC News in another voice note.
“But on the other hand we don’t want the Islamic Republic to stay in power.”
“This morning, March 7, we heard about 19 explosions close to us. Even now we still think it is OK.
“All this destruction is reversible. But what this regime might do if it stays in power, that is irreversible.”
‘What is the end result of this game?’
Whether it will manage to do so, of course, is the question no one yet has the answer to.
On Sunday, members of Iran’s so-called Assembly of Experts were quoted by Iran’s state news agency saying the body had selected a new supreme leader, just over a week after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a targeted assassination.
Among the most prominent candidates to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader is his son, Mojtaba. Here’s what we know about him.
If they have, his identity has yet to be revealed. And Israel has said any new supreme leader chosen would be considered a legitimate target.
Few analysts believe that full regime change in Iran is possible through airstrikes alone.
Oraib al-Rentawi, director general of the al-Quds Centre for Political Studies in Amman, Jordan, says the Trump administration has offered no plausible endgame scenario.
About That host Andrew Chang joins The National to break down the mixed messaging from President Donald Trump and his administration about why the U.S. and Israel chose this particular moment to launch an attack on Iran.
“I don’t suggest that it is a popular regime in Iran, with a great popularity in its own country,” he told CBC News in an interview.
“But there is a big portion of the Iranians still attached to this regime. That’s why any transition ignoring this basic solid fact will be oversimplifying the whole situation in Tehran.”
“What is the end result of this game? This is Iran, with more than 90 million people and 1.6 million square kilometres. It’s a continent, for God’s sake.”
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