The New York Times:

By Farnaz Fassihi and Leily Nikounazar

Teachers talk about slain students and cry during recess. College students are boycotting final exams in honor of fallen classmates. Young men and women say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt.

Mariam, a 54-year-old designer, said she panics whenever her teenage son leaves the house because he had friends and classmates who were shot and killed in the protests.

“The truth is that we are feeling extremely not well,” she said. “I have never experienced this kind of collective grief and instability. We don’t know what will happen in the next hour.” Like many people interviewed for this article, Mariam asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of retribution.

Protests demanding the ouster of Iran’s authoritarian clerical rulers have ended. But many Iranians say that feelings of rage against the government and anxiety about the future permeate all aspects of life, and that nothing feels normal anymore.

The government’s continuing crackdown and arrests of dissidents, including prominent political figures in the reformist faction, contribute to the sense that the standoff is not yet over.

While Iran’s leaders struggle to suppress the dissent at home, they are facing pressure beyond their borders. President Trump has been building up U.S. warships in the waters near Iran, ready to potentially strike if ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran do not lead to a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.

Teachers say they and their students alike are traumatized. Nafiseh, a 35-year-old high school teacher in the capital, Tehran, said that during recess, she and other teachers discuss the uprising and cry.

“The students are extremely distracted and frightened,” she said, adding, “At the slightest sound of an ambulance siren or an airplane, they tremble with fear.”

Iran’s government has blamed the killings on terrorist cells linked to the United States and Israel. It claims that armed operators infiltrated the protests, necessitating the government’s militarized response, and that the terrorists killed many of the protesters.

But more than a hundred videos and images, verified by The New York Times, show the breadth of the government’s violence, including videos of security forces in uniform and on motorcycles firing directly at unarmed protesters.

The government said that about 3,400 people were killed, among them 200 children and minors and 100 college students, and at least 500 security officers.

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