1,200 miles apart, two cities quake as missiles rain down

Times

9 hours ago

When the first Israeli missiles hit Tehran at 3.30am on Friday, Shahram woke to find he had nowhere to hide. As explosions ripped through his home, shaking the walls and rattling the windows, the journalist and his wife could only take shelter under the dining room table and pray.
It was the second time, Shahram said, that he had felt that kind of terror. The first was when he was a child, during the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1980s, when Iraqi forces fired on the Iranian capital.
'Back then, at least, we had sirens and shelters,' he said in a telephone interview. 'Now, we don't even have that. There is no good in war.'
On Saturday morning residents of another city 1,200 miles away ventured out into a landscape that was suddenly different from the one they had always known, one now marked with empty streets, mangled cars and the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Gone was the illusion of impenetrable immunity from the troubles on Israel's borders. Gone, too — for some hours, at least — was the carefree, liberal energy that sets Tel Aviv apart.
Iran's missiles had arrived hours earlier with a severity that Yael Weinreb, who works in the city's start up scene, had never heard before.
'The booms were different to usual,' she said. 'We have reception in our bomb shelter downstairs, so it means that we saw the video of Tel Aviv at the moment of impact — and I just turned to my husband and said, 'What the f**k?''
Deadly new reality
After years of proxy conflict waged in battlefields from Sanaa to Beirut, this weekend the shadow war between Israel and Iran has burst open in the hearts of Tehran and Tel Aviv, as tit-for-tat missile strikes put the two enemies on the brink of a devastating regional war.
Among the most haunting images to emerge from the devastation was that of a woman's long black hair splayed across a crushed pink mattress, trapped between collapsed slabs of concrete. The blood trails from her scalp continued along the mattress.
Her name was Parnia Abbasi, 23, a poet and English teacher who was killed alongside three members of her family when an Israeli missile hit their block of flats in the Shahrara neighbourhood of Tehran, causing it to collapse. Her friends told the Hammihan newspaper that she was sensitive and artistic.
Parnia Abbasi
Yaran Ghasemi, a two-month-old boy, was the youngest victim of the strikes. Mehdi Pouladvand, a talented rider and member of the Alborz provincial equestrian team, was killed along with his father, mother, and sister. Parsa Mansour, a padel player, was also among those killed in Tehran.
These casualties occurred after Israeli missile strikes targeted more than 200 locations across Iran, including the homes of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, scientists and regime officials, hitting neighbouring residential buildings occupied by civilians as well as nuclear and defence sites across the country.
Iranian officials said 78 people were killed and more than 320 injured in the attacks, which a Middle Eastern official who opposes Iran said he believed was the biggest blow to the country since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Mourning dead generals in Tehran
ABEDIN TAHERKENAREH/EPA
Israel itself is a nation well versed in the threat of conflict with Iran and steeped in warnings of attacks from Tehran's regional proxies.
Yet the sense of dread that met Binyamin Netanyahu's announcement of the attack on Iran's nuclear facilities was palpable.
'I'm once again asking you to strictly follow the guidelines of the home front command,' the prime minister told the nation in the early hours of Friday. 'It's very possible that you will need to stay in protected spaces for an extended period of time, much longer than we've been used to until now.
'Please make sure to stock up, as I'm sure you're already doing — with supplies, food, clothing and more. But above all, stock up on patience, on faith in the justice of our cause and in confidence in our victory.'
Confidence was in short supply at 3.03am on Friday, when the country woke up with a jarring new phone notification sound.
Ask a local in Tel Aviv what they do when they hear sirens in the middle of the night and they may admit they sleepily close their phones and roll over, going back to sleep. This time, given the direct threat from Iran, lights went on in apartments across the boulevards of the city and parents woke their children after turning on their televisions.
Many of the old Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv do not have safe rooms in their homes or fortified basements in their buildings. Doors of new-builds are usually left open for those in need to find shelter at the time of an attack. But timing is key.
'The amount of time from the warning to the siren isn't enough to get up, get ready and go,' said Irit, a documentary film-maker. She lives with her husband and two children and dog in Tel Aviv, with no shelter near by. They sought safety in an underground car park.
'By the third attack, we didn't get a warning, we just heard the siren. By the time we got ourselves together, we found ourselves on the street outside for the duration of the attack,' she said. At that point, where the missile falls is a matter of luck.
The Israel Defence Forces said three Iranian military commanders, including the head of the IRGC, were among those killed in the first day of strikes.
Attacks carried on into the weekend as Netanyahu pledged to continue for days or weeks in an attempt to 'eliminate' Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.
In Tehran too there was a deadly new reality to reckon with.
Through years of war with militias in Lebanon and Gaza, many in the Iranian capital have lived relatively insulated from the battles fought by the Iranian regime in the region. Friday's attacks changed that.
Amin, who works at a pastry shop in central Tehran and lives near the home of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, was half asleep when he heard the first explosions.
'I didn't think it was serious. I assumed, like previous times, they were targeting military sites around Tehran. But suddenly, a massive blast shook my entire house — not just the windows but the walls, like an earthquake. I quickly got dressed and sat in the doorway. Then I realised they were striking all over Iran,' he said over the phone, as the boom of another explosion sounded in the background.
'I was having a panic attack. My whole body was shaking. I grabbed my backpack and threw in my documents, hard drive and laptop. My brain had shut down, I didn't know what to do.'
Hypocrisy exposed
Amin sat in the doorway until 9am, when he went to work. In the streets, he could see a large number of security force personnel gathering across the city on motorcycles. It felt extremely tense, he said, yet cafés, shops and restaurants stayed open. Petrol station queues were longer than usual but people were going about their lives.
For many in Iran, the strikes brought the hypocrisy of their leaders into the spotlight. Islamic Republic officials publicly maintain that they live humble lifestyles as devout revolutionaries. Iran's supreme leader holds speeches and meetings in a modest hall without chairs or furniture to project a simple way of living. But Israel's targeting of luxury penthouses in parts of northern and northeastern Tehran laid bare the opulent lives of the regime and IRGC elites in the city's most expensive districts.
These are neighbourhoods where morality police patrols rarely appear, where Tehran's elite and regime officials live untouched by inflation, sanctions, or danger. Luxury shops sell Louis Vuitton and Chopard, and it is common to see the children of regime officials cruising the streets in BMWs and Porsches.
Now they have been faced with the reality of war. Maryam, a housewife in northeast Tehran, said: 'A building near us was destroyed. The explosion was so powerful it shook all the windows … I still can't believe a missile hit our neighbouring alley and that I saw bodies on the street. We could have died.'
Elsewhere in the country, the fallout from the attacks was becoming clear. In the city of Natanz, the centre of Iran's uranium enrichment programme, Israeli strikes were confirmed to have hit an underground nuclear facility. All roads in and out of Natanz have been blocked, and the 50,000 people living in the area were essentially trapped. No public guidance has been issued for dealing with chemical or radioactive exposure. One woman whose family is from Natanz said that she was afraid it would become Iran's Chernobyl.
The second night
By Friday evening, Iran's air defence systems were responding to the Israeli attacks, raising questions about why they failed to activate during the previous night's bombardments. Throughout the night the deafening sounds of missile strikes, drones and anti-aircraft fire filled the skies. Sleep, said the people we interviewed, was impossible.
On Saturday morning, Tehran was a city cloaked in death. Dust hung in the air as police urged shopkeepers and business owners to shut their doors. The city, gripped by explosions and aerial attacks, found itself in a de facto lockdown — under siege, with few shelters and nowhere to hide.
In Israel the losses were much smaller: three people were killed and 76 injured from Iranian missile strikes on Friday night.
The military warned citizens to be ready for continued attacks that could continue for days. They said Israeli airspace might be closed for weeks.
One British family found themselves stranded having come to Tel Aviv for a wedding. David Seal said that their visit changed from strolling through the old cobblestoned neighbourhood of Neve Tzedek, which he likened to 'Shoreditch on the Sea', its tables at restaurants 'brimming' at midnight, to a war zone threatened by Iranian 'hellfire.'
On Friday night, with the wedding off, Seal, his wife and daughter went down to the bomb shelter in the hotel where they are staying.
'Again, we're scrolling through the phone, see what's going on, realise that parts of Tel Aviv have been hit badly with casualties and buildings destroyed. So again, you're very concerned, but that was 15 minutes in the middle of the night. Came in, back upstairs. You don't sleep properly because you're trying to doze off, or you try to avoid dozing off into a deep sleep, because you're concerned [that] if something happens, you sleep through it. So you wake up six in the morning, tired, exhausted and frankly, concerned. That was our night.
'I'd like to go home now. But I can't see how we're going to get out of here any time soon,' Seal said, adding that the British embassy had been 'useless' in rescuing its citizens.
• Israel travel advice: is it safe to visit right now?
The days ahead
Netanyahu, who has long championed a large-scale attack designed to cripple Iran's nuclear facilities, called on Friday for Iran's country's population to rise up against the regime. 'The time has come for the Iranian people to unite around its flag and its historic legacy, by standing up for your freedom from the evil and oppressive regime,' he said.
His oft-repeated call was met with frustration by many in Iran, even those who despise the regime. Mina Akbari, a journalist and film-maker, wrote on Instagram: 'My generation grew up during the Iran-Iraq War, listening to sirens and running to shelters. Those who speak of saving Iran through war either haven't studied history or benefit from destruction.
'Democracy doesn't arrive on fighter jets. Military strikes mean deeper repression, silencing opposition and postponing freedom. Democracy is built through grassroots movements — not precision missiles. War only builds graves.'
The Israeli leader does not enjoy anything like majority support at home either.
There can be little doubt that Israel as a whole is tired of war. Most people want a ceasefire deal to return the hostages and end the conflict in Gaza.
In Tel Aviv especially there has long been an awkward dissonance between the death and suffering just down the coast in Gaza and the relative comfort of their own beaches, plentiful jobs and buzzing bars and coffee shops.
But something changed in recent days.
The sporadic threat of rocket fire, and the constant bleak awareness of the kidnapped civilians held by Hamas in underground tunnels, were one thing. The uncertainty and fear felt now over what could happen next is something else entirely.
On Saturday evening the city prepared again to hunker down at dusk, not knowing what the night would hold. 'What's about to happen is even scarier, as it's going to get worse. The more we're exposed to these attacks, the more fear and anxiety we'll suffer,' said Irit. 'It's not clear how the coming days will look, how we'll cope with the new reality. It's apocalyptic here. Just total uncertainty.'