On a bright Tehran spring day, Sanaei Ghaznavi street, with its mix of shops selling groceries and household goods alongside fast food and flowers, seems like an everyday place. In a country where lives have long been buffeted by crises, it is a snapshot of a people just trying to get through the day while their future hangs on forces beyond their control.
For Mohammad, in t-shirt and jeans, even cranking open the striped awning of his family's shoe shop is an act of hope. It makes me happy to be in here, he tells us when we wander into his pocket of a store with its floor-to-ceiling shelves of trainers, big and small. So many people have lost their jobs and aren't working. And there are few customers. We had so many before, his father, Mustafa, laments glumly as he proudly explains this business has been in their family for 40 years.
One Iranian website, Asr-e Iran, recently cited an unofficial estimate that up to four million jobs may have been lost or impacted by the combined effect of the war and the government's near-total internet shutdown.
Boxes labelled with western logos like New Balance and Clarks protrude from this shop's packed shelves. Made in China, both father and son note matter-of-factly. Even fakes are expensive in Iran, Mohammad adds. I expect them to express hope that the shaky ceasefire will hold, and that negotiations with America will succeed, in order to allow them to import the real deal when it comes to the latest fashions in footwear.
We hope the war starts again, Mohammad declares, breaking into a wry smile. His father eyes knowingly his 27-year-old son. Look at my grey hair, I understand more than him. We're just tired of living with an economy which keeps getting worse, Mustafa says. Some people believe that, if war returns, things will eventually improve dramatically.
Outside the nearby corner shop, Shahla, an elderly woman wearing a pale headscarf balances a loaf of bread on a clipboard securing her shopping list and a wadge of bills. She stops in her tracks when she sees us walking by and offers her thoughts. People are paying three times more for a loaf of bread now, she moans, her fingers resting on the soft white slices inside the plastic. People are going through hell now just to pay for bread.
She casts her eyes across this leafy street in central Tehran, which sits midway between the affluent north with its glittering shops and chic cafes, and the poorer, more conservative south. People who are well off, they're okay, but not for workers who don't earn much, Shahla spells out. I ask what her message to the negotiators is. Stop it, that's enough, she declares. I don't think something good will come of it for us because Trump is just threatening people.
Even Iran's communications minister Sattar Hashemi recently called for the ban on internet access to be lifted, highlighting that around 10 million people, mainly from middle and lower-income groups, depended on digital connectivity for their work. He called it a public right. Restrictions are slowly and selectively easing – although the message from security officials is they will stay in force as long as enemy threats remain.
As the sun sinks, we drive to one of many nearby squares where government supporters have been gathering nightly in response to their new leaders' call to show defiance and solidarity. In Vali-e Asr Square, there is a thicket of Iranian flags set against the backdrop of a new towering mural of the former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, assassinated by Israel airstrikes in the very first hours of the war on February 28. Tonight, rows of chairs stretching across this space are filled for an open-air debate on issues such as whether their late leader had approved negotiations with America.
The stark contrasts of life in Tehran are genuinely reflected in its people, who, while entangled in ongoing strife, navigate their hopes and dreams of a better future amid the shadows of poverty and uncertainty.
