When Javad opens his bedroom window in Tehran, only the snow-capped Damavand mountain looks familiar.
Everything else has been transformed since the generals tightened their grip after last month’s 12-day war with Israel.
The 36-year-old software engineer now sets his alarm 30 minutes earlier – not for breakfast or prayers, but for the checkpoints that have multiplied across the capital.
At about 7am, he starts his Peugeot 206. The drive to his tech company office was once twenty minutes through familiar streets.
Now it’s a careful route through military checkpoints that have turned Tehran into something resembling Baghdad or Damascus.
“They stop me at the same checkpoint every day,” he said. “They’re at every roundabout, all of them armed.”
He added: “The regime is now far more brutal than it was before the war. They arrest random people in neighbourhoods and detain them for days – not because they’ve committed a crime, but to intimidate the local population.”
The Islamic Republic has launched its most aggressive domestic security crackdown in years following a fragile US-brokered ceasefire that ended nearly two weeks of Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran.
A former intelligence officer said things are so tense that top officials change safe houses every night and avoid using phones, fearing assassination.
Abdollah Shahbazi said Iran’s current situation would have been “unimaginable” before the 12-day war with Israel, describing the country as under the control of “hostile power,” referring to Israel.
“High and mid-level officials are in a situation similar to members of underground guerrilla groups in their own country,” Mr Shahbazi said. “They must change safe houses every night and distance themselves from communication devices like mobile phones for fear of assassination.”
The former official said it has become clear that beyond Israel’s air, missile and drone capabilities, “an active force from Mossad’s Iranian network is operating on the ground.”
Shahbazi questioned how long the current “dual situation” can persist, calling it perhaps the strangest development in his generation’s lifetime of dramatic changes.
Since mid-June, authorities have also detained hundreds of people across the country, accusing them of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service or assisting Israeli strikes.
Officials claim to have disrupted extensive espionage networks.
The clerical regime has mobilised the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Basij militia, and police for sweeping house raids and vehicle checks across the country.
Iran’s judiciary chief has ordered expedited trials and executions for alleged collaborators, using charges of “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth.”
At least six executions have taken place following what Amnesty International called “grossly unfair trials.”
On Thursday evening, armed forces killed four members of a family after opening fire on vehicles they thought were “suspicious” near a military base in central Iran.
Iranian media reported that the victims included a young couple and their five-year-old daughter.
Two other family members remain in critical condition and in a coma following the shooting.
The shooting has sparked a backlash on social media, with Iranians saying the regime is “taking revenge on its own people after losing the war to Israel.”
“They kill anyone they’re suspicious of,” one resident said. “Why are you so savage?” she added, asking the regime.
The situation is worse in western Kurdish cities, home to many dissident voices, where authorities have intensified security operations amid long-standing tensions with ethnic Kurdish communities.
Human rights groups report daily arrests in the region, with the whereabouts of several detainees and the charges against many remaining unknown weeks after their arrest.
Mohsen, a resident of western Saqqez – the hometown of Mahsa Amini, the young woman whose death in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police sparked nationwide protests in 2022 – said the heavy presence of armed forces makes the city feel like it’s under “martial law.”
He said: “The suppression forces – the IRGC, Basij, police, and plainclothes officers – have taken over the city and set up checkpoints inside the city and at every entrances and exits.”
He added: “They’re afraid people will rise up again and challenge their dictatorship, especially now that people have seen how weak they really are.
“They are very afraid and would shoot you even if you take a photo of somewhere or just look at them in a way that makes you think you’re stressed.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also under pressure to call for a referendum on the nature of the Islamic Republic.
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leader of Iran’s Green Movement – has nothing to do with the environment – called for a constitutional referendum last week and said the current system does not represent all Iranians.
In a message issued from house arrest, Mr Mousavi said, “The bitter situation that befell the country was the result of a series of major mistakes.”
Some 700 Iranian activists have signed a statement supporting Mr Mousavi’s call for political change.
Mr Mousavi and his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, have been under house arrest since 2009, following protests against the presidential election results and public demonstrations.
He said: “Holding a referendum to establish a constitutional assembly will pave the way for realising people’s right to self-determination and will discourage enemies of this land from interfering in the country’s affairs.”
The former prime minister during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war added: “The current structure of the system does not represent all Iranians. People want to see a revision of those errors.”
Back in Tehran, Javad is questioning how much longer the Islamic Republic can survive after last month’s US and Israeli strikes on the country.
“I always feared the regime would drag us into war,” he said. “They’ve done it – and now the people are paying the price.”
