When the first U.S.-Israeli bombs started falling on Tehran on February 28, 2026, it wasn’t just the noise and destruction that shocked Iranian citizens. The nationwide digital blackout imposed by the government and the darkness that followed exacerbated the fear of millions of Iranians, who were cut off from any communication with the outside world. Almost overnight, Iran was thrown into a near-total digital silence. News of the outbreak of war arrived only in pieces, if at all. This was deliberate and tactical: the blackout cut off families and isolated communities, turning simple facts into rumors and confusion. In the ensuing chaos, losing digital connection became as traumatizing and devastating as the war itself.
One of the first targets hit by the bombs was the Islamic Republic Leader’s compound in downtown Tehran, killing him and more than fifty top commanders around their breakfast table. For 36 years, Ali Khamenei had positioned Iran within the framework of resistance, a politics defined not only by slogans like “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” but by a continuous theater of confrontation through regional proxy wars. His regime cultivated hostility toward Washington and Tel Aviv as both a sacred duty and a historical inevitability, escalating tensions to a level that would spiral into the catastrophe we are witnessing today.