Tehran residents were going about their daily routines on Saturday, despite the overnight Israeli attacks that struck close to the Iranian capital.
“That was not a real attack,” a 57-year-old saffron seller in a prosperous part of northern Tehran said as he sipped his tea. Mr Moussavi told of his 28 months of service in the Iranian military during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
“We do not fear a major war,” he said, adding with his eyes flashing: “Iran will in any event react.”
Israel carried out “precise strikes” on military targets including missile production facilities, ground-to-air missile systems and air defence systems, according to the Israeli army.
But the morning seened like any other in Tehran, with the usual traffic jams and delays despite the widely-anticipated retaliatory attack by Israel.
The strikes are seen as a response to Iran’s October 1 attack on Israel, in which it launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at the Jewish state.
On Saturday, Tehran’s schools remained open and air traffic resumed as usual. Ironically, the Iranian currency, the rial, even gained in value against the euro after weeks of decline.
A resident of an eastern Tehran suburb spoke by phone of the attacks. “The windows shook,” as the jets thundered overhead and muffled explosions followed with flashes in the distance, she said.
The highly sensitive Parchin military complex lies to the south-east of Tehran. “Perhaps that is where they attacked,” she said, adding that she felt “stress” watching from the window.
Iranian state media played down the attacks, saying that Israeli combat jets had not penetrated Iranian airspace and that the damage had been minimal.
Observers said this could be an indication that the Iranian leadership wished to see the current round of tit-for-tat exchanges as over.
“Personally, I believe that there will now be propaganda rhetoric aimed at the domestic market,” one said.
Israel had heeded US advice not to bomb Iran’s oil sector or nuclear facilities, the analyst with close links to Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said.
And he noted that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said earlier this month during a tour of Middle East states that Iran was not seeking escalation.
Any final decision will, however, be taken not by the government but by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the IRGC.
Iranian society has grown used to crisis and to difficult economic conditions. Many Tehran residents could be seen taking their customary exercise in the city’s parks despite the attacks.
Some heard of them only afterwards. “I did not notice the attack last night at all,” Kian, a 20-year-old architecture student, said. “I’m not afraid of an Israeli attack, because I know that their targets are military and not aimed at the population,” he added.
A passer-by just shrugged when asked about the attack. He, in his late fifties, was in the army himself, he said. Asked his view, he responded, “If the other side is stronger, you should hold back.”
