TEHRAN – It has been several days since the release of a video depicting Israeli attack on Tehran’s Tajrish Square.
However, news networks belonging to the US, UK and Israel (particularly in Persian branches) have struggled to frame ordinary pedestrians, simply by public water infrastructure, a brutal second strike of vehicles stopped at red lights, and by ordinary pedestrians who accidentally “misertly” attack the target.
I head to Tajlish to fact-check and evaluate the validity of this claim. From Qods Square, walk east until you reach the intersection of Shariati and Bahonar streets. Ali Shariati was an Iranian intellectual who died under suspicious circumstances a year before the 1979 revolution. Mohammad Javad Bahonard is a clergyman and scholar, serving as Iran’s second prime minister, and was attacked by the MEK in the 1981 bombing of terrorists in the presidential office. For Iranians, this intersection has symbolic weight. This is a meeting point between religious and secular intellectualism, and the victim of physical and character assassinations by foreign-supported military forces.
I lift my head and scan the square for the location of the city’s surveillance cameras. I finally found it past the entrance to the metropolitan city on the north side of Shariati Street. But what catches my attention is the ashura banners from nearby buildings. I turned my head and noticed that most passersby were wearing black clothes for Muharram.
Play video of attacks on your phone to determine the angle of the camera facing northeast. The targeted building should be about 200 meters ahead of the camera on the north side of the street. I start walking from the south to get a clear view, but soon I get distracted by the taxi stand. The yellow car and its driver are catching my eye. Three of them chat nearby. “Was anyone here on the day of the attack?” he asks. No one existed, but one of them departed around noon says that someone named Hamid was there. Others will check it out.
They don’t know his full name. He is not a regular colleague, but a freelance driver with a pride sedan that he no longer owns after the attack. They say he was injured by his hand and can no longer work. One of the drivers points to a place where the smell of blood is still visible on the wall, and says an elderly vegetable seller sitting there was marching in the incident. Check the video again. The Pride Car mentioned is visible on the south side of the street, picking up passengers when a large part of the asphalt lands.
To determine the exact location, you need to identify the building that attacked. About 50 meters across from the juice shop, I find it: a five-storey apartment with the top three stories completely collapsed. In the video, the projectile is clearly fired from south to north. I stand in the middle of the street and stare at me to see how short the building on the other side of my target is, as the car cried out loud to pull me out.
There are three structures across from the destroyed building. An old two-storey juice shop, a small elementary school and kindergarten named after Aliakbar Motazedi with a sign on the door to announce new student registrations, and another low two-storey building, a coffee shop currently closed, with its upper floors being the office of a doctor who was closed due to damage. Only young juice benders remain open and answer passersby cheerfully with curiosity.
Locals know him well. They come by name to buy carrot juice, orange juice and ice cream. One customer jokingly asks, “How about you still alive?” He says, “I was inside the store. It broke everything and ruined it, but two days later, we cleaned it all up.” Noticing my favorable look, he continues without being asked, “The building hit was at the Mosque Affairs office.” I ask if he knows who was inside at the time. He shook his head, but said angrily, “What difference does that make? The civilians hurt. I was killed with my own eyes, two seconds after hitting the intersection.”
I’ll go outside to check the video again. A white woman, she can be seen crossing the intersection, her dress swirling a little beyond her. Can we then forget that a white covered woman who escaped from falling pieces of asphalt can’t escape?
Targeted buildings are sealed, but any nearby structures exhibit visible damage. I go around the side alley to check the back. A tall apartment with a beautiful tailor’s shop will return directly to it. The alleys are dead ends from both sides. Therefore, the residents of the rear building must have had serious difficulties in getting away during the attack. The decorative trees in the garden are still lush with summer greenery, but their roots are no longer on the ground. Workers are cleaning up the tiled rubs from the courtyard. The crushed floor tiles catch my eye, and my mind immediately asks: why were there no signs of explosions or debris at the intersection itself? If repairs are made, the asphalt should at least look new.
I walk north from the middle of the street. Clogged in red light between the cars, I finally found a fresh strip of asphalt. There are no normal white lines, about 20 meters from the intersection, and no pedestrian intersection. Check the video again. Once the intersection is cleared, you will be able to see the drainage of surface water.
BBC Persian videos confirm that the footage is authentic and no AI generated. However, when paused and strengthened, the instant of the missile’s impact and the angle of its angle becomes transparent. Even the white body and fins of the missile are visible.
Unlike the first projectile, this missile enters an intersection from the northwest and attacks a vehicle waiting at a red light. Three vehicles are thrown into the air violently. The other is crushed under a huge piece of asphalt. At least four vehicles can be seen behind the impact point, but their fate is obscure by smoke.
But what’s clear is that there’s no way the second missile aimed at the same target as the first. The angle of the impact varies dramatically for all spatial dimensions (lat, longitude, altitude). Even if the missile trajectory continued, it would have been impacted by a municipal management building on the south side of the street.
Based on the descriptions of military experts and journalists I consulted, the pattern of Israel’s strike during the 12-day war demonstrates a deliberate strategy. Targeting one individual, whether a family member, civilian, or child was nearby, all potential locations of their existence were hit hard. As a result, not only the families of many scientists and commanders, but also neighbors and random bystanders were killed or injured.
Still, other strong hypotheses exist, especially among the Iranian masses and some analysts. Israel’s second strike could directly target Tehran’s water infrastructure, causing public dissatisfaction and disrupt emergency response to the first attack.
But the common thread in all these interpretations is summarised in what two pedestrians told me as I crossed the street. When I say I am a journalist, they ask my report to highlight this: contrary to that claim, Israel targeted many ordinary civilians, women, children and men. They say that there are around 100 civilian martists who are unacceptable wild barrage crimes for our Iranians, even if the goal is to assassinate a military man.