My hands won’t stop shaking. When the first bombs dropped, we were happy. We didn’t want this regime. We didn’t choose it. After 47 years we thought it was finally reaching its end.

On February 28th they announced Khamenei had been killed. We rushed to the streets—I had tears in my eyes. We chanted Marg bar Khamenei (death to Khamenei). It was like the 1998 World Cup when Iran beat America. A woman in a hjiab approached my mother and said it was disrespectful to celebrate someone’s death. My mother said, “Shut up. Your time has passed.”

Half an hour later regime forces started shooting bullets in the air, then releasing tear gas, so we rushed indoors. Text messages from the government pinged on all our phones: don’t send your children into the street, or they’ll be treated as enemies of the state. Like America and Israel.

Soon we had bigger problems. The Americans and Israelis targeted Isfahan a lot, because there’s a nuclear facility on the edge of town. We were anxious to find out what was going on. We had no internet but could still get satellite TV, so we watched a broadcast from Iran International, an anti-regime news channel. Sometimes its presenters would report on statements from Israel about where they planned to strike and relay calls to evacuate, which we reckoned gave us about 15 minutes notice.