A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump says the military campaign against Iran could last weeks, and as Iran retaliates, the war has expanded across the region. U.S. and Israeli forces have hit Iran with almost 2,000 strikes in just three days. The Iranian Red Crescent says more than 700 people have been killed in Iran by U.S. and Israeli attacks. NPR's Ruth Sherlock looks at the impact inside the country.
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: Air strike after air strike in the capital, Tehran, and in cities across Iran...
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SHERLOCK: ...Attacks that in these few days have already killed top Iranian officials and the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The killings prompted outpourings of despair from his supporters but also, for some in Iran, a visceral relief.
SHADI: (Non-English language spoken).
SHERLOCK: "Last night, we screamed so hard from the windows that I don't have a voice anymore," Shadi (ph) in Tehran tells NPR.
She, like other Iranians in this story, asked not to be identified with her full name, fearing arrest by the regime for speaking with Western media.
SHADI: (Non-English language spoken).
SHERLOCK: "I screamed, Khamenei is killed. I was shouting from the bottom of my heart, from the depths of my diaphragm," she says.
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SHERLOCK: A woman in a wheelchair, who asked NPR to remain anonymous, decided on the night of Khamenei's death that she just had to dance.
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SHERLOCK: A video she posted on Instagram shows her swirling her wheelchair round and around on a zebra crossing of a busy street. I don't know what will happen tomorrow, she wrote in the caption, but tonight, the most beautiful dance was mine.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Shouting in non-English language).
SHERLOCK: As the bombs fall, there is panic, too. And in this sudden war, civilians are scrambling for the basics.
KAVEH: (Non-English language spoken).
SHERLOCK: For the past two days, people have been trying to secure supplies such as flour, bread, cooking oil, fuel and other essentials, Kaveh (ph), a 23-year-old student from Tabriz, tells NPR.
KAVEH: (Non-English language spoken).
SHERLOCK: People are worried, he says. Schools and hospitals have been hit, and relatives of detainees in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, which also holds six Americans, say it's been taken over by Iranian special forces and that food for prisoners is scarce. President Trump has called on Iran's Revolutionary Guard forces, police and army to defect.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons.
SHERLOCK: It's a critical part of Trump's plan. No regime has been ousted through air power alone. But so far, says Ross Harris (ph), senior fellow with the Middle East Institute, the regime appears to be holding.
ROSS HARRISON: The regime is built for attacks from within and from outside.
SHERLOCK: In the Islamic republic's 47-year history, he says, it's learned from the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the country's monarch and the Iran-Iraq War how regimes can be toppled.
HARRISON: So they built it institutionally in a very complex, very resilient way, in terms of multiple institutions. So the supreme leader was the head, but think about the system as sort of a pyramid. And there are multiple institutions that overlap with one another.
SHERLOCK: In this fluid situation, Harris says, things can change very quickly, but for now, it appears the Iranian regime is bedded in for a protracted conflict. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News, Istanbul.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW BIRD'S "DANCE OF DEATH") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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