The government’s ongoing crackdown and arrests of dissidents, including prominent political figures in the reformist faction, contribute to the sense that the standoff is not yet over.
Teachers talk about slain students and cry during recess. College students are boycotting final exams in honor of fallen classmates. Young men and women say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt.
Mariam, a 54-year-old designer, said she panics whenever her teenage son leaves the house because he had friends and classmates who were shot and killed in the protests.
“The truth is that we are feeling extremely not well,” she said. “I have never experienced this kind of collective grief and instability. We don’t know what will happen in the next hour.” Like many people interviewed for this article, Mariam asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of retribution.
Protests demanding the ouster of Iran’s authoritarian clerical rulers have ended. But many Iranians say that feelings of rage against the government and anxiety about the future permeate all aspects of life, and that nothing feels normal anymore.
The government’s ongoing crackdown and arrests of dissidents, including prominent political figures in the reformist faction, contribute to the sense that the standoff is not yet over.
Iran’s economy, already in a dire state because of international sanctions and corruption, has taken more blows since the uprising began in late December with strikes in Tehran’s bazaar. The currency has been in free fall, and the government’s shutdown of the internet has impaired commerce.
Teachers say they and their students alike are traumatized. Nafiseh, a 35-year-old high school teacher in the capital, Tehran, said that during recess, she and other teachers discuss the uprising and cry.
“The students are extremely distracted and frightened,” she said, adding: “At the slightest sound of an ambulance siren or an airplane, they tremble with fear.”
Iran’s government has blamed the killings on terrorist cells linked to the United States and Israel. It claims that armed operators infiltrated the protests, necessitating the government’s militarized response, and that the terrorists killed many of the protesters.
But more than 100 videos and images, verified by The New York Times, show the breadth of the government’s violence, including videos of security forces in uniform and on motorcycles firing directly at unarmed protesters.
The government said that about 3,400 people were killed, among them 200 children and minors and 100 college students, and at least 500 security officers.
Rights groups like U.S.-based HRANA say at least 7,000 protesters were killed, and the numbers are expected to rise as more deaths are verified.
The large number of deaths, most over the span of three nights in early January — the deadliest unrest in Iran’s contemporary history, according to rights groups and a historian — has left many Iranians shocked.
Some therapists say they are offering free online workshops to help people cope.
Psychologists said their patients are displaying chronic anxiety, and deep anger and mistrust.
“In recent weeks, the emotional atmosphere in Iran has changed dramatically,” Dr. Bita Bavadi, a psychologist in Tehran, said in an email. “In my clinical work, I observe an intense mixture of anger, fear, helplessness, and unprocessed collective grief.”
The threat of war with the United States, which has deployed naval war ships near Iran’s territorial waters, is adding another layer of uncertainty.
President Donald Trump has said that if Iran does not agree to a deal that would suspend its nuclear program and limit the range of its missiles, he would consider strikes on the country. He has also said that regime change in Iran would be beneficial.
Iranians, both supporters and opponents of the government, openly ponder a war waged by the United States and whether the regime and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would survive.
“The priorities of the people are different from the priorities of their rulers,” Mohamad Renany, a cleric who has spoken out against the government’s crackdowns on protesters, said on social media.
“When the people’s priority is bread, and the regime’s priority is political ideologies and extreme interpretations of its own beliefs, a serious confrontation arises between the people and the regime,” he added.
Some Iranians say that they are so angry and hopeless about change from within that they favor U.S. military intervention to free them from this regime.
Others say they oppose war because it could lead to even more instability, displacement and violence, pointing to the fallout from previous U.S. military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Kamran, a 49-year-old businessperson, said the violence he had witnessed during the protests had altered his views on war.
“After the massacre many of us feel we are prey in the hands of a predator, not people living under a government’s rule,” he said. “So our eyes are to the sky, hoping bombs will kill them, and Iran will be free.”
Elaheh, a 52-year-old from Tehran, said in an interview that although she opposed the clerical rulers, she was against foreign military interference and did not believe democracy would come with bombs.
“We have enough problems,” she said. “We cannot endure a war that may destroy our infrastructure, divide our country and kill even more people.”
Reza Alefnasb, the head of the union for e-commerce workers, told Iranian media that those who make their living online had experienced an 80% drop in income. He also said that the combination of continued disruptions to the internet and uncertainty about the war was making Iranians spend less on nonessentials.
Sattar Hashemi, the telecommunications minister, told Iranian media last week that the losses from digital business amounted to $3 million a day and the country’s economy as a whole was losing $35 million per day since the uprising.
Many small-business owners who specialize in handicrafts, baking, fashion and music took to social media last week pleading with people to make purchases so they could stay afloat. Some of them said that they had suspended working out of respect of the protesters killed but added that this is also not sustainable.
Reza Badri works as an accountant at a furniture store. He said in an interview that sales had come to a near halt for the past month and the owners were laying off workers and downsizing production. In a post on social media, he asked whether anyone could put him in touch with exporters outside of Iran.
“The killing of so many of my countrymen, many of them my own age, and the sky-high prices are wearing us out mentally, emotionally and physically,” Badri said in the interview.
Sephideh, 35, an English teacher in Tehran, said in an interview that her virtual classes have been completely canceled because of internet disruptions and she has not had an income in more than a month.
“I cry almost every day and feel like I’m in the most vulnerable state possible,” she said. “At the same time, I also feel anger.”
(This article originally appeared in The New York Times.)
