Iranians who have weathered more than a month of war are bracing for things to get worse if President Trump acts on his threat to escalate attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Families in Tehran are taping up their windows and sleeping together in rooms away from the glass, as their buildings have already been shaken by nightly explosions from the most sustained bombing in the capital since the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war.
Some are rushing to buy generators, concerned that new attacks could cause critical services like electricity and water to unravel.
The bombings and threats have left many Iranians living in fear not only of their own government, but their would-be American rescuers, who pledged at the beginning of the war to create the conditions for their government to fall.
A 43-year-old woman living in Tehran and undergoing treatment for breast cancer said she worried what intensified attacks on infrastructure could mean for her healthcare.
“Trump had said that help was on the way for the people of Iran,” she said, “but the prolongation of the war and the destruction of infrastructure, universities, pharmaceutical companies, et cetera, has made us very worried.”
Iranians reached by the Journal, however, expressed more fear than hope.
