By Bahareh Sahebi

In Iran today, while Israeli and U.S. missiles and airstrikes hit the country, daily life unfolds under a visible security presence. Since the protests that erupted last December 28, human rights groups have reported an increase in armed patrols and checkpoints along major roads and city intersections.

Soldiers and members of the Basij militia stand with military rifles, stopping cars, questioning pedestrians, and in some cases asking people to unlock their phones so messages, photos, and social media accounts can be inspected.

Many Iranians today live between two converging fires: From above comes the threat of indiscriminate bombs and missiles from the escalating war waged by Israel and the United States; from below, the constant pressure of a state that continues to arrest, execute, and tighten its control over the population.

What often disappears in geopolitical debates is the psychological environment created by these conditions. When civilians live under both war and authoritarian rule, behavior reorganizes around survival. People learn to calculate risk constantly. They consider what to say, where to go, whom to trust, and when to remain silent. What appears from the outside as passivity may instead be the quiet logic of living under conditions where a single message, conversation, or association can carry life-altering consequences.

Under such conditions, silence can spread through society in ways outsiders often misunderstand. When expressing dissent may bring punishment or isolation, many people remain quiet even when they privately disagree. Over time, this creates the appearance of public consensus where none actually exists.

Statements broadcast on state television by Iran’s judiciary chief warned: “Those who say or do anything in line with the will of America and the Zionist regime are on the enemy’s side and must be dealt with on revolutionary, Islamic principles and in accordance with the time of war.” Further warnings have been directed at the diaspora, suggesting Iranians abroad who “sympathise, support, or cooperate” with the US-Israeli war on the country could face seizure of property inside Iran and legal consequences if they return.

The lives behind geopolitics

Much of the international conversation about Iran focuses on geopolitics and regional power struggles. Inside the country, however, daily life is shaped by something far more immediate. People must navigate war and repression while living in a strained economy and facing growing difficulty obtaining basic necessities.

Moments like this are not only geopolitical crises. They are psychological ones. The decisions made by governments and militaries reshape the environment in which millions of ordinary people must think, speak, and survive, while their fate is being shaped by decisions far outside their control

Over time, environments like this reshape behavior. People learn to scan their surroundings for risk, avoid conversations that might attract attention, and measure their words carefully. Sociologists describe this as adaptive survival behavior. Individuals adjust their actions not because they agree with power but because the cost of defiance becomes too dangerous.

Despite the state’s efforts to project domestic unity during the ongoing war, large segments of the population continue to reject the Islamic Republic. Yet in a country where dissent can carry the risk of imprisonment or execution, silence cannot be mistaken for consent. Compounded fear by repression and war suppresses public expression.

Between two dangers

In most wars, civilians fear the battlefield. Under authoritarian rule, they fear their own government. In Iran today, both dangers exist at once.

The Iranian state has provided virtually no meaningful protection for civilians during the conflict. There are no widespread public shelters, no functioning national system of bomb shelters, and in many areas, no warning sirens to alert people when missiles are approaching. For many residents, the first indication of an incoming strike is seeing or hearing the explosion itself.

In some cities, residents describe gathering on rooftops at night to watch missiles cross the sky, believing open air may offer a greater chance of survival than being trapped inside collapsing buildings. These are the kinds of calculations civilians are forced to make when the U.S. and Israeli bombing is indiscriminate, and the state offers no protection.

The country is also still absorbing the shock of the killings that took place during the January and February protests, when security forces opened fire on demonstrators across multiple cities. Families are still mourning. Communities are still processing the violence. In that atmosphere, fear and grief shape how people respond to the new dangers of war.

For many Iranians, the bombs falling today may eventually stop. Wars end. Airstrikes cease. But the threat posed by the Islamic Republic has persisted for nearly half a century. The state has repeatedly responded to crises with arrests, executions, and intensified control. For those living inside the country, this history shapes how the present moment is experienced.

Outside the country, their silence is often misunderstood. Across global media and online commentary, the absence of visible opposition protests in Iran during wartime, while government-organized rallies are amplified by the state’s total control over domestic broadcasting, has been interpreted by some as evidence that Iranians are not seeking political change and are rallying behind the government in the face of an external enemy.

But public silence rarely signals agreement. When expressing dissent carries the risk of imprisonment, violence, or death, people often conceal their views in public while holding very different beliefs in private, especially in times of war. Political scientists describe this dynamic as preference falsification.

Danger and uncertainty

Since the beginning of the war, the government has repeatedly imposed communication blackouts and severe internet restrictions. Many people have little access to information beyond what is happening in their immediate neighborhoods. In this environment, even basic awareness becomes fragmented. Much of the information leaving Iran now travels in small pieces: a short video, a voice message sent quietly through a trusted contact, a brief text confirming that someone is safe.

The information environment surrounding the conflict has fractured. Public conversation has hardened into competing narrative camps shaped by different assumptions and loyalties. Commentators often interpret events through ideological frames, highlighting facts that reinforce their position while overlooking those that complicate it.

Complex events are reduced to simplified stories designed to mobilize audiences rather than inform them. In this process, the suffering of civilians can become secondary to the narratives built around it.

Debates unfolding abroad can feel distant from daily life. Inside Iran, people navigate blackouts, militarized streets, economic strain, and the constant uncertainty of what the next day might bring. Families worry about relatives in different cities they cannot reach. Messages fail to deliver. Rumors travel faster than reliable information.

Behind these debates are the lives of ordinary people, rarely visible in geopolitical discussions. A child in Bushehr going to school carries the quiet anxiety that her classroom could become the target of an Israeli or U.S. missile strike. A mother in Tehran moves from pharmacy to pharmacy searching for chemotherapy medication that once kept her child alive but has now become impossible to find or afford.

For many families, these are not abstract policy debates. They are the realities shaping each day.

The people living inside Iran today are not characters in a geopolitical argument. They are human beings navigating extraordinary danger and uncertainty.

For Iranians today, life is lived in exactly this psychological space.