PARIS: Shirin, a Tehran resident, was one of many who celebrated the death of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. She drank wine and danced with friends. But as the war drags on, she’s begun to question its logic.
A woman in her thirties, whose identity AFP is protecting for her safety, Shirin agreed to share her feelings about the 11-day conflict as part of an attempt to gauge the feelings of critics of the Islamic republic.
Before the war, huge crowds of protesters took to the streets in January for some of the biggest anti-government demonstrations in recent history. Thousands were killed in the subsequent crackdown by the country’s Islamic authorities, rights groups say.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have advanced various justifications for their war on Iran, which they launched on February 28.
One of them was that it would help Iranians realise their dream of a different nation, with Trump telling them the “hour of your freedom is at hand”.
“At the beginning I was in favour of the war,” Shirin explained. “After the death of Khamenei (on February 28), I celebrated that with my friends.”
But when air strikes struck fuel storage facilities in Tehran on Sunday, causing thick, oil-filled smoke that blotted out the sun, Shirin felt her sympathies shift.
“This isn’t what we wanted. We didn’t want them to bomb our national assets to make us even poorer than we already are,” she explained.
Others fret about the country descending into civil war, which could spur support for the status quo.
“A lot of people are worried about the post-Islamic period.
Like my father, he thinks it might get worse after they are gone,” a shopkeeper in the southern city of Shiraz told AFP, referring to the current clerical leadership.
