Tehran, Iran – The mental stress of living under daily bombardment has partially eased in Tehran and much of Iran after a ceasefire was announced with the United States and Israel all sides in the war claiming victory.
Some traffic returned to the streets of the Iranian capital during daylight on Wednesday, the first day of a two-week ceasefire agreed between Iran and the US brokered by Pakistan. Talks aimed at reaching a long-term agreement are expected to begin in Islamabad on Friday.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
But Tehran, home to more than 10 million people, is still far from its usual bustle after several thousand were targeted by weapons since February 28. Air defense systems were activated several times for short periods after the overnight ceasefire was announced, but there were no reports of impact or any official explanation for the activation.
People across Tehran, from young men and women sitting in the city’s lively cafes to families sitting in parks, were debating whether the ceasefire would hold and what the future might hold for them.
“It looks like the ceasefire will hold. I heard the Israelis are opening up more of their airspace,” said a young man, referring to Israeli officials’ announcement of the resumption of flights from Ben Gurion Airport.
However, others were more pessimistic, especially after attacks on two key islands in southern Iran occurred early Wednesday morning, hitting oil facilities. It is unclear who was behind the attack. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it shot down a drone in the southern province of Fars.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain also reported attacks on their territories by missiles and drones from Iran and Iranian state television confirmed it was in retaliation for oil attacks after the ceasefire. Tehran said it was ready to resume military operations if there was another attack.
On Tuesday, Iranians were concerned about the targeting of critical civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges after US President Donald Trump threatened to end “civilization” in the country with one of the world’s oldest civilizations, dating back more than five millennia. The ceasefire was announced shortly before the midnight GMT deadline Trump had set for an agreement to stop the US military from carrying out its threat.
However, Israeli forces intensified their attacks in the hours before the ceasefire, targeting electricity posts, bridges and the railway network. Warplanes also attacked the Iranian Aluminum Company in Arak, damaging the country’s largest aluminum production facility.
Israeli forces carried out massive bombardments on Iran’s steel factories and petrochemical companies on Tuesday, putting them out of work in an effort to put more pressure on the already stressed Iranian economy and population of more than 90 million.
Even after the ceasefire, Israel continued to attack Lebanon, with more than 250 people killed in devastating attacks on Wednesday. Israel said it was targeting Iran’s ally Hezbollah, but civilian targets across Lebanon were attacked.
‘Victory celebration’ will continue
When announcing the ceasefire, Trump hailed it as a decisive victory against Iran, but his top general, Dan Kaine, stressed that the agreement merely marks a pause and that if no final agreement is reached, hostilities could once again resume. The US military said it struck 13,000 targets across Iran in less than six weeks of war.
In Iran, similar declarations of victory and celebration were broadcast from Iranian state television, and a statement from the Supreme National Security Council urged the government’s most ardent supporters to trust the system and refrain from making “divisive remarks”.
The council also stressed that matters were being overseen by Mojtaba Khamenei, who was declared supreme leader of Iran after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on February 28, the first day of the war. The younger Khamenei and IRGC commander-in-chief Ahmed Vahidi have not been seen or heard from in public since the beginning of the war.
A large number of events were organized by the religious and military establishment throughout Wednesday, and more events were planned on Thursday to mark 40 days since the assassination of the former supreme leader. These included marches on foot and in vehicles, public religious praise sessions and banners put up across the country.
On Wednesday, state-affiliated media rebroadcast a video of Khamenei’s earlier speech in which he tells supporters to insist on “resistance.”
Despite the ceasefire, pro-government Iranians have been told to continue driving around in motorcycles chanting religious chants and taking their children to join checkpoints and security patrols.
However, some government supporters said they were surprised by the ceasefire announcement as the establishment had repeatedly stressed that it would never agree to a temporary ceasefire and would continue launching missiles and drones as long as it had the “upper hand”.
Majid Nouri, the son of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official who was given a life sentence in Sweden for his role in the deaths of political prisoners but was replaced in a 2024 swap, recorded a video from among government supporters in Tehran and said he was “shocked and saddened”.
“There have been many good debates and some disagreements among people since the ceasefire was announced. We came out on the streets for 40 nights,” he says. ”We didn’t expect this,” he said.
A week earlier, a senior correspondent on Iranian state television was forcefully explaining how the government would not agree to a temporary cessation of hostilities because that would allow the US and Israel to rearm and resume attacks at a more opportune time for them. But state television’s English-language Press TV claimed on Wednesday that Iran had become a “new superpower” since the ceasefire.
Meanwhile, most Iranians are suffering from state-imposed internet outages that have reduced traffic to 1 percent of pre-war levels, according to monitors.
After the ceasefire, some people who were able to go online from time to time through virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy connections took to social media to call for the state to lift the almost complete block, which has contributed to the weakening of the already ailing economy. But the state has indicated the shutdown will remain in place as long as it is deemed necessary.
The Iranian judiciary, which has been announcing death sentences for people found guilty of crimes such as “armed rebellion” on an almost daily basis, is also insisting it will crack down harshly on anyone who dissents against the government.
Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezei advised top officials under his authority to issue more death sentences and asset confiscations in connection with acts committed to aid the US and Israel.
