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First on Fox: While officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a US-designated terrorist movement, have been hiding in underground bunkers amid joint US-Israeli military attacks, ordinary Iranians are criticizing the clerical regime for failing to build adequate bomb shelters and provide early warning siren systems.
The Iranians sent text messages to Fox News Digital about their efforts to secure information about the progress of the joint US-Israeli air war campaign against Islamic Republic military sites and to share the democratic state’s contempt for the civilian population.
“In a country that has spent 47 years boasting about its military might to the world, there are no warning sirens, leave alone shelters. They themselves hear the sounds of airplanes and drones. [enemy airplanes] Have come into the sky. Nouri wrote from the capital Tehran, they don’t even have radar.
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People walk past a portrait of late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the corridor of a subway station in Tehran on Friday, March 13, 2026. Subways have been used as makeshift bomb shelters for Iranians. (Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)
To compensate for the lack of bomb shelters and safe rooms in residential housing, Nouri said Iranian authorities have designated 82 metro stations and 300 parking garages in Tehran as shelters for people.
“That’s what they call shelters. Keep in mind that first of all, there are no bathrooms in the metro stations, and also, during the 12-Day War, when people tried to go there, they were closed.”
“Families living in IRGC and military residential compounds are now living in metro stations out of fear,” Nouri said.
Nouri and other Iranians who communicated with Fox News Digital are using their first names because of the risk of retaliation from the regime’s brutal security forces.
Faraj, who is from Tehran, said, “Now we are in a situation where we have no shelter, and we fear for our lives. If we were in a war with someone who attacked residential buildings, a lot of regular civilians would die. We don’t even have warning sirens.”
Iran expert Lisa Daftari told Fox News Digital, “What we’re seeing on the ground in Tehran is a city that is operating without any formal civil defense infrastructure. Families with children or elderly relatives have largely been evacuated to the countryside or to the Caspian coast. Those who remain are sheltering in place – moving away from windows when they hear explosions, into underground parking structures in apartment buildings.”
Daftari, editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, said, “There are no bomb shelters. There are no warning sirens. There are no formal systems given to the Iranian people to protect themselves. What you see on your screens – crowds in the streets – is not a spontaneous show of support. They are Basij militias on megaphones, ordering people out of their homes, so that the regime can create images of a loyal population.”
According to legal experts, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s establishment of military installations in highly populated civilian areas is putting the country’s population at risk.
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This photo obtained from Iran’s ISNA news agency shows the site of the attack on a girls’ school in Minab in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province on February 28, 2026. (Ali Najafi/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
The Pentagon is currently investigating a military airstrike that reportedly targeted an Iranian school for girls in the city of Minab on February 28 – the beginning of US Operation Epic Fury against Iran’s regime. According to the Iranian regime, the airstrike reportedly killed 175 people, most of them children, at the Shajrah Tayyebeh Primary School. The school was located on the same street as the buildings used by the IRGC.
Avi Bell, a professor at the University of San Diego Law School and Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law, told Fox News Digital, “It is highly unlikely that heavily populated civilian areas are used as drone strike sites or missile launch sites for any reason other than human shielding. On a military basis, it would be far more appropriate for launch sites not to be close to civilian areas.”
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Nouri was critical of the regime: “They boast about the whole world, but they cut off water, electricity, air and internet to their own people. Whatever money they got from Biden and Obama and from selling oil, they spent it on missiles, drones, Hamas, Hezbollah and building weapons.”
Manouchehr, also from Tehran, wrote, “I am sending you a message in very difficult circumstances with very weak internet. I had to pay a very high price for a VPN to send you this message. The security situation is not good at all. These clerics have spent our money for years on missiles and drones and on funding Hamas and Hezbollah. They have not created a single sanctuary for us, yet for 47 years they have been threatening the world.” Are.”
VPNs allow some Iranians to avoid Iran’s almost complete communications shutdown. According to NetBlocks on Monday, “The internet blackout in Iran is entering its 17th day after 384 hours. Over the past day, a degradation of the reserved telecommunications network infrastructure has been observed, reducing the availability of VPNs and sending some whitelisted users and NIN services offline.”
Policemen stand near banners showing the portrait of late Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at Enqelab-e-Islami, or Islamic Revolution Square, in downtown Tehran, Iran on March 14, 2026. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
Manouchehr said, “We are grateful to President Trump for not bombing residential areas. I urge you to please tell him [the U.S. Government] Not declaring a ceasefire. Otherwise, these hyenas will not leave any Iranian people alive and they will take revenge for Israel and America’s attacks by targeting the Iranian people.
Iranians have noted that after the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran (1980–1988) when Iraqi missiles were launched into civilian areas in Iran, the Ayatollahs could have built a bomb shelter system.
Laudan Bazargan, an Iranian-American activist and human rights expert on the situation in Iran, told Fox News Digital, “Iran’s Islamic regime shows no value for human life and treats the Iranian people not as citizens, but as a conquered population and slaves. It has spent decades building tunnels for missiles and drones, yet it has evacuated 90 million people without sirens, shelters or anything to warn citizens about danger. Also, the internet is largely down, and phone lines are restricted, leaving people unable to receive news or even contact their families.”
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Iranian women collect money for the war effort outside an air raid shelter in Tehran on May 11, 1988 during the Iran–Iraq War. (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
She added, “What makes it even more shocking is that during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when I lived in Iran, there were at least warning sirens. People had a few minutes to move away from windows or find some protection. Today, even that basic level of protection no longer exists.”
The Iranian regime imprisoned Bazargan in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison for his political dissident activities during the 1980s.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on March 8 that it had “issued a security alert for civilians in Iran… as Iran’s terrorist regime blatantly disregards the safety of innocent people.”
A group of people inspect the ruins of a police station amid the US-Israeli military operation in Tehran, Iran, on Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
According to the CENTCOM statement, “The Iranian regime is using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations, including launching one-sided attack drones and ballistic missiles. This dangerous decision puts the lives of all civilians in Iran at risk as locations used for military purposes lose protected status and can become legitimate military targets under international law. Iranian forces have been using air defense systems to launch attack drones and ballistic missiles at Dezful, Esfahan and “They are using crowded areas surrounded by civilians in cities like Shiraz.”
Hossein, who lives in Tehran, said, “Even landline phones are under very strict security control. There are no warning systems or alerts at all, and if there is any danger, people have nowhere to seek shelter because overall, the lives of Iranian people have no value to this government.”
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Iran’s police commander Ahmadreza Radan said more than 80 people had been arrested for spreading “disturbing material” online and that authorities were “ready to pull the trigger” if protests occurred.
A spokesman for Iran’s UN mission declined to comment for this article.
