A little after dawn near Azadi Square in central Tehran and a queue has already formed outside a bakery.
Fighter jets roar overhead, bombs explode in the distance but, save for a screaming ambulance, the streets of this normally bustling neighbourhood are empty and will remain so all day. Dread and paranoia cloak the city like smog.
Darkness emboldens some protesters, but those chanting anti-regime slogans risk on-the-spot execution by the feared Basij, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s militia who roam the streets of the capital crushing any trace of dissent.
On state TV, a bearded IRGC commander openly threatens Iranian children, warning that ‘anyone who speaks today in a way that echoes the enemy’ risks being shot.
He adds: ‘The order to shoot has been issued. We don’t want your child killed because your child is ignorant.’
Barely a week has passed since Donald Trump exhorted the ‘great, proud people of Iran‘ to rise up and bring about a new democratic dawn but so far few are displaying much revolutionary zeal – and little wonder.
They buy their bread, scuttle straight home and keep in touch with neighbours, family and friends via messaging groups, just as they did during Covid.
Launching Operation Epic Fury from his Palm Beach mansion, the US president had spoken of how the people’s hour of freedom was at hand, of America backing them with overwhelming strength.
On state TV, a bearded commander (pictured) from the the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) openly threatens Iranian children, warning that ‘anyone who speaks today in a way that echoes the enemy’ risks being shot
He adds: ‘The order to shoot has been issued. We don’t want your child killed because your child is ignorant’
Those chanting anti-regime slogans risk on-the-spot execution by the feared Basij (pictured, file photo), the IRGC’s militia who roam the streets of the capital crushing any trace of dissent
‘Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach,’ he said.
If he blazed with righteous fervour, no-one could tell. His war room was dimly lit and a shadow cast from his baseball cap obscured his eyes.
Still, his words were unequivocal. As the world knows, Mr Trump shoots from the hip but on this occasion he read from an autocue to avoid any ambiguity.
‘This is the moment for action,’ he told the Iranian people. ‘Do not let it pass.’
On Thursday, he called for the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the regime, and were they to do so he promised to ‘Make Iran Great Again’.
‘Now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country,’ he urged.
To many, his words must have conjured romantic images of Azadi (or ‘Freedom’) Square filled with rejoicing, singing and flag waving, of demonstrators storming government buildings, of soldiers laying down their arms and happily joining the good fight. But so far we have yet to see even the first green shoots of rebellion in Tehran.
Easier said than done, Mr President, is the message coming back from dissidents in Tehran.
Defence analysts believe that behind the scenes Americans are trying to foment unrest in the capital. The CIA has a long history of engaging with Iranian opposition elements.
But just as Tehran’s dissidents seem disinclined to take up arms, so the 650,000-strong IRGC refuses to lay down theirs or loosen their iron grip.
Never far from the minds of even the bravest protesters are memories of the suppression of the January uprising in which 30,000 Iranians are believed to have been killed.
Now, alongside the brutality on the ground, a concerted propaganda campaign is being waged by the regime.
Tehran is trying to turn this war into a choice between the Islamic Republic and national catastrophe.
State media and IRGC push a coordinated line to ordinary Iranians. It runs thus: If citizens don’t unite around the regime the country will become a bloodbath like Iraq, and the war will last for years.
Deliberately terrifying narratives accompany the warnings: cities reduced to rubble, foreign troops on Iranian soil, the country’s wealth looted by outsiders.
Yet the chaos theory isn’t a wild one, as Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, warned on Saturday.
Barely a week has passed since Donald Trump exhorted the ‘great, proud people of Iran’ to rise up and bring about a new democratic dawn but so far few are displaying much revolutionary zeal – and little wonder. Pictured: Smoke rises after a strike in Tehran, Iran, on Thursday amid ongoing US-Israeli attacks on the country
If the US president blazed with righteous fervour as he launched Operation Epic Fury, no-one could tell. His war room was dimly lit and a shadow cast from his baseball cap (pictured) obscured his eyes. Still, his words to the Iranian people were unequivocal
A worst-case scenario would be regime collapse that would resemble Iraq in 2003, he said, in which ‘central authority disappears, the country breaks up into different fragments, there’ll be violent groups around, there’ll be millions of refugees who seek to leave the country and it becomes a hotbed for terrorism’.
Everywhere, the clerical leadership is trying to foster paranoia. Mass text messages are now being sent to Iranian phones.
One calls on anyone observing ‘any suspicious or security-related activity [to] please report it to the IRGC Intelligence Organization through the 114 telephone system’.
Another text threatens: ‘Any movement that disrupts security will be considered direct cooperation with the enemy, and will be dealt with firmly by your sons in the IRGC Intelligence Organization.’
On Tehran’s streets and elsewhere across the country, the IRGC has deployed convoys of its Basij foot soldiers, generally led by a pickup truck carrying a loudspeaker booming: ‘Iran is a superpower and we are winning the war.’
Meanwhile, the now deceased Ayatollah Khamenei’s X feed posted an image of Iran’s Khorramshahr missile with the headline: ‘Khorramshahr lies ahead.’
Its name refers to the 1982 recapture of the city of Khorramshahr from Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, one of the most mythologised victories in the Islamic Republic’s narrative. The AI-generated image is topped with a scene of the missile crashing into an Israeli city.
Charlie Gammell, a historian and former diplomat, who worked on the Iran desk at the Foreign Office, told The Spectator: ‘The IRGC is sending very menacing messages to people, saying that if you protest against the regime, that’s it, we are not taking any prisoners.
‘So, they have taken a step up from what happened in January. And that’s the question I had when Donald Trump said march out on to the streets and overthrow the regime. With what?’
He added that ‘even if there is a covert strategy to get guns to some opposition elements, these are ordinary students, 19-year-old kids. And what are they going to do with a gun against the IRGC?
‘It is a big ask to say to these people “using your bare hands, go and overthrow a brutal regime that will stop at nothing to stay in power”. It is difficult to see how the mechanics of a revolution will play out.’
War brings privations and Tehran residents speak of shortages of electricity, water, food and medicine.
On closed messaging groups they swap information about where to find bread and water and where medicine is being distributed.
Schools have closed and at night children study by candlelight, their labours punctuated by wailing air raid sirens.
Wounded IRGC members fill hospital wards while civilians report that they are often denied care as a result.
Many are convinced that only if the Iranian military suddenly switches sides might they see signs of change.
Never far from the minds of even the bravest protesters are memories of the suppression of the January uprising in which 30,000 Iranians are believed to have been killed. Pictured: Families at a coroner’s office in Tehran in January search rows of body bags for relatives killed during the crackdown
On Tehran’s streets and elsewhere across the country, the IRGC (pictured on a military drill in 2006) has deployed convoys of its Basij foot soldiers, generally led by a pickup truck carrying a loudspeaker booming: ‘Iran is a superpower and we are winning the war’
For a brief while last weekend, rapid change had seemed possible. News of Khamenei’s death brought a blast of euphoria. But not everywhere. Many (pictured) remain loyal to the regime, or at least loathe the prospect of any Israeli or American-backed alternative. Pictured: Iranians mourn Khamenei’s death in Valiasr Square in Tehran last Sunday
Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in exile in northern Iraq are reportedly planning to cross the border. Pictured: Fighters from the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) on a training session near Erbil, Iraq, in February
‘What we saw in the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt was a calculated decision by the military to abandon the civilian leadership because it was to its advantage to do so,’ said Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar.
‘If there are commanders within the Revolutionary Guards or within the army that think to themselves it will be in their corporate interest to abandon the clerical leadership and to declare neutrality then we will see… signs of change.
‘As of now we are not seeing any of those signs.’
For a brief while last weekend, rapid change had seemed possible. News of Khamenei’s death brought a blast of euphoria.
But not everywhere. Many remain loyal to the regime, or at least loathe the prospect of any Israeli or American-backed alternative.
Attention has now switched to the country’s border provinces amid hope that if the regime won’t collapse in the middle, its edges might fracture.
Iran is a Persian majority nation. But it is also a multi-ethnic country with sizeable Azeri and Kurdish populations, along with Lurs, Arabs, Baluchis and Turkmen.
Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in exile in northern Iraq are reportedly planning to cross the border.
‘We have been preparing for this for the past 47 years, since the age of the Islamic Republic,’ said Hana Yazdanpana, of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, which claims to have the biggest armed force.
She told the BBC that six opposition groups – which recently formed a coalition – were co-ordinating with each other politically and militarily.
‘No-one moves alone,’ she said. ‘We will know if our brothers are going to move.
‘We can’t move if the air above us is not cleaned. And we need the regime’s weapons depots to be destroyed. Otherwise, it would be suicidal.
‘The regime is very brutal, and the most advanced weapon we have is a Kalashnikov.’
Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute said: ‘There is no organised opposition inside Iran, but there is a history of reformist movement in Iran.
‘It could be that Iranian political figures could emerge, or alternatively the figures from the conventional army take up a greater role in a military coup scenario.
‘It may not go that way, but it might. It all depends on how long the Iranian regime can hold on to the monopoly of violence.’
Additional reporting by Abul Taher