Day 3 of US-Israel war: Tehran lives under sirens, smoke, and an unravelling normal life

By Monday morning, three days into the Israeli-led strikes backed by US intelligence and logistical support, Iran had entered what felt like full wartime mobilisation. Tehran and the country's other major cities were bearing simultaneous pressure on both their military and civilian infrastructure, a combination that is testing the state's capacity to function at every level.

At dawn, a new wave of airstrikes hit scattered targets inside and around the capital, targeting missile systems and air defence infrastructure belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The successive explosions, cutting across continuous air raid sirens, transformed the atmosphere of the city into something more commonly associated with active conflict zones than the heart of a sovereign capital. 

Fighter jets and drones flew at varying altitudes above Tehran throughout the day in what appeared to be a deliberate effort to sustain military pressure on Iran's defensive depth while limiting the room for air defence units to manoeuvre.

Reza Hosseini, a 40-year-old secondary school teacher, was standing at the entrance to Niloufar Square when the ground shook.

"The sun was weak and smoke was covering some of the buildings," he said. "Suddenly the ground shook with a powerful explosion, glass flew everywhere, people were screaming, and I ran toward the centre of the blast. I jumped over the rubble, carefully moved the bodies, and helped rescue teams carry one of the victims. Everything around me was chaotic: columns of smoke, the sounds of people, blood on the pavements."

When it was over, he sat on the pavement exhausted. "My hair drenched in sweat, my hands stained with blood. But the physical pain didn't matter compared to what I had seen," he described.

The Iranian Red Crescent announced on Monday that the death toll had risen to at least 555 people killed in the US-Israeli strikes since the early hours of Saturday. In a statement, it said the joint attacks had struck 131 residential areas across Iran, according to the Fars News Agency. 

Strikes expand beyond Tehran

The war did not stay within Tehran's boundaries. Strikes extended to Isfahan, Kermanshah, Karaj, and areas in the south near the port city of Bandar Abbas, hitting military and logistical sites in each.

In several main squares, columns of black smoke rose from sites near residential areas, pointing to the targeting of logistical and military positions close to civilian population centres.

Iranian retaliation escalated in parallel: waves of missiles and drones were launched from Iranian territory toward Israeli and American targets across the region, producing explosions in Gulf capitals and military bases and pushing the conflict beyond a bilateral confrontation into a broader regional one.

In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fired rockets and shells toward northern Israel, prompting the Israeli army to expand its operations to include Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon  adding another front to an already widening war.

Near Milad Tower, Shahab Moradi, 38, an accountant at a private company, was walking on the pavement when a massive explosion hit. A piece of shrapnel pierced his shoulder and he fell to the ground. "The people ran in every direction, and a neighbour picked me up and put me in an ambulance," he said.

Inside the vehicle, pain and dizziness overwhelmed him.

"From the ambulance window I saw all the shattered buildings, people screaming and searching for their loved ones. I felt helpless. I remembered the last time I drank tea with my friend  we laughed a lot and all those moments disappeared against the scale of destruction and death that had swept the place," Moradi said.

A city pulling inward

Several neighbourhoods across Tehran experienced near-total internet and communications blackouts, deepening the disorientation among residents and complicating coordination between official bodies. 

Hospitals declared states of emergency as casualties mounted, with some facilities forced to partially evacuate after nearby buildings were struck.

Markets and service institutions normally the pulse of civilian life  were effectively shut down, with security forces deployed to maintain order as sirens continued and bombardment intensified.

Major airlines cancelled flights across Middle Eastern airspace due to escalating security risks, with direct effects on global travel and regional aviation economies.

The impact extended to cities further from the capital. In Isfahan and Yazd, the sound of airstrikes cut through what had been quieter cities, marking a sharp before-and-after in everyday life.

Traffic in Tehran's streets contracted sharply and the city's normally restless streets fell into an uneasy quiet between sirens.

When the call came that her husband had been in Niloufar Square at the moment of the explosion, Mona Farahani, 27, a law student at the University of Tehran, ran out of her third-floor flat.

"Everything around me looked different: smoke covering the buildings, the sounds of people mixing with smaller explosions, cars stopped suddenly. As I walked, I was thinking about the last time we had breakfast together, his laugh, his passion for music that used to fill the house," Farahani described.

She reached the square and ran between rescue teams calling his name.

"Every detail of the place reminded me of him: his smile, his voice, his hand that always held mine," she said.

The shock came when she learned her husband had died in the blast.

In the Shahroudi neighbourhood, which was struck directly by Israeli aircraft, Samiyeh Bahrami, 47, a housewife, was in her fourth-floor flat when the building shook. The explosion threw her to the floor. She grabbed her bag and ran outside into smoke and rubble. 

A neighbour she was close to had died.

"His missing voice has stayed in my mind the whole way through," she said. "Everything around me was destroyed: the sounds of screaming, broken glass, twisted metal, a feeling of helplessness and fear overwhelmed me."

She walked carefully through the rubble searching for signs of other neighbours, dust covering her face, before contacting her family to inform her neighbour's relatives so they could come to receive the body.

The transformations of Monday intensified airstrikes, an expanding Iranian response, regional security consequences, and direct impact on civilians and critical infrastructure make this a significant marker in the trajectory of the war, and raise urgent questions about whether the escalation can be contained before the confrontation becomes a fully regional conflict.

This story was published in collaboration with Egab.