TEHRAN—Just after 1 a.m. in Tehran, my friend and I were still sitting in a crowded café. Hookahs passed from hand to hand. People scrolled through their phones, speaking in low voices that occasionally broke into laughter. Then came the blast, deep and heavy, the kind you feel through the floor before it reaches your ears.
Conversations stopped. Heads turned toward the windows. For a few seconds, the room went silent. Then life resumed.
In Tehran, this is what war looks like a month into the war: a dizzying juxtaposition of anxiety and resilience, surges of patriotism alongside criticism of government policies, and a vexing question on everyone’s lips—how does it end?
Strikes are no longer confined to military targets. Residential neighborhoods have been hit. Health centers and universities have been damaged. War is now a condition of daily life, something that people absorb and navigate.
That same night, my friend Farhang received a call from a neighbor. A nearby explosion had shattered the windows of his family’s home. His mother, alone and in her late 60s, was inside. His father had died only days before the war began.
He picked up and tried to calm her, telling her it was thunder, a storm passing over the city. She didn’t believe him. Tehran shook every few hours that night.
This was supposed to be a short war. Washington’s strategy followed a familiar logic: apply overwhelming but limited force, escalate in controlled steps, and force a rapid political outcome. A few days of sustained strikes, the thinking went, and Tehran would concede. Israel, in parallel, appeared to calculate that external pressure might align with internal fractures, weakening the system from within.
One month into the war, the Islamic Republic remains intact and the popular uprising Israel and the United States hoped for has not materialized.
No doubt, many Iranians continue to oppose the government. It’s hard to expect people to protest when missiles are landing in the streets. But the war has also revived something that many believed the country had lost.
In some neighborhoods, rallies take place almost every day. Families walk through the streets carrying Iranian flags, sometimes with children perched on their shoulders.
Zohreh is one of them. She attends the rallies with her husband and their only son. For her, the conflict has restored what she calls Iran’s revolutionary spirit.
“For years, our leaders tried to be too pragmatic, too diplomatic. That was not the spirit of Imam Khomeini,” she said. Zohreh wasn’t even born yet when Ruhollah Khomeini died in 1989. “But his values were passed to us through our hearts,” she said.
Nearby, Fatemeh marched with a small Iranian flag wrapped around her shoulders.
“When we were fighting in Syria and Iraq, people complained and asked why we were spending our resources there,” she said. Now she believes the answer is obvious. “That was to prevent … the war from reaching Tehran.”
In her view, Iran’s weakening position in Syria and the pressure on Hezbollah in Lebanon created the conditions for the current conflict. “When we lost Syria and became weaker in Lebanon, our enemies felt the moment was right,” she said. “And the war came here.”
Others view the war less through ideology and more through uncertainty. Farhang, still shaken by the explosion near his family’s home, asked a question that’s on the minds of many Iranians: How does this war end?
He wants Iran to evolve beyond being merely a regional power. But even among his friends, the debate about what that future should look like is intense.
One evening, sitting around a table, a friend of his argued that Iran would eventually have to abandon what he called “unnecessary liabilities,” including its nuclear program and parts of its regional influence, in order to survive the pressure now being applied.
Farhang disagreed on at least one point. Whatever political system Iran has in the future, the country should never give up its ballistic missiles. “That is our real defense,” he said.
Others find themselves caught between political conviction and the realities of war. Mohsen is among those who would normally favor deep political change in Iran. But the war has complicated matters.
“People are dying,” he said. “How can I protest the state right now when our neighbors down the street were just killed? My own family would disown me if I did that.” For him, the issue is not whether change should come, but when.
Setareh, an activist who took part in earlier protest movements against the government, has arrived at a similar conclusion for now.
“I’m against the Islamic Republic,” she said. “But I’m also against the United States and Israel killing my people.” She believes that Iran’s internal political struggle must be decided inside the country, not under the pressure of foreign intervention.
“We will protest when it is between us and our government, not when bombs are falling,” she said.
Setareh pointed to history to explain her suspicion. Iran’s troubled relationship with Washington did not begin with the current war, she said. The United States helped topple Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh 73 years ago, and today, she said, some people abroad are pushing to restore the monarchy.
She shrugged at the idea.“I don’t mind a king,” she said. “As long as he obeys a constitution.” What she rejects is a monarchy that would sacrifice Iran’s independence for Western support.
“My mother would probably accept the Pahlavis if Iran became like Istanbul or Dubai,” she added.
Then there are people such as Amir. A journalist who had been living in Turkey for years, Amir returned to Iran last week when the war escalated. He said that he did not come back for politics or ideology.
“I just felt I should be here, with my family, with my neighborhood,” he said. For now, that is what matters most to him: that his parents are safe, that the street where he grew up remains standing.
These conversations in Tehran reflect a society adjusting to war rather than collapsing under it. And yet, the risks of escalation are growing.
Iran’s strategy of striking at countries across the region and creating energy choke points has been effective at denying the United States a quick victory. But it has also raised the stakes in the war. Meanwhile, U.S. and Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities carry the danger of radiological fallout, even without nuclear weapons being used.
Diplomatically, there is little visible progress. According to a source familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity, the indirect contacts between Washington and Tehran, reportedly mediated by Pakistan, have moved beyond traditional diplomacy.
According to the source, the exchanges increasingly resemble security-level negotiations conducted through military and intelligence intermediaries, while formal diplomacy functions largely as a public façade.
On the Iranian side, figures linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Supreme National Security Council are believed to be involved. Iran, in effect, is negotiating on its own timeline.
Most U.S. conditions are being rejected. Tehran has its own framework, but it is deliberately withholding it. The calculation is simple: Why enter formal negotiations when the military and political signals suggest that the terms are not yet stable?
From Tehran, where people pause at the sound of explosions before returning to their conversations, the conflict already feels less like a moment than a condition.
Another night after the strikes, Farhang sat quietly at the café table, staring down at his phone. Earlier that evening, his mother had called again to say the windows in their apartment still rattled every time the air defenses fired.
After a long silence, he looked up and asked again the question that hangs over the city.
“How does this war end?”
For now, no one in Tehran, or far beyond it, seems able to answer.
