Confusion swirls over Iran-Israel ceasefire

The Israeli military issued a new evacuation warning to the residents of an area in Tehran's District 6 early Tuesday local time, just over an hour after a similar warning for District 7.

"Dear citizens, for your safety and well-being, we kindly ask you to immediately evacuate the designated area on the map and avoid approaching it in the coming hours," the warning, published in Persian on X read.

"Your presence in this area puts your life at risk."

Iran says has not received any ceasefire offer, CNN reported citing a senior Iranian official, contradicting the announcement made by President Trump minutes earlier.

“At this very moment, the enemy is committing aggression against Iran, and Iran is on the verge of intensifying its retaliatory strikes, with no ear to listen to the lies of its enemies,” the official told CNN.

I still carry its smell of damp concrete and stale fear. I dream of bulldozers flattening the walls and children playing where the interrogation rooms once were. But bombs are not bulldozers, and a missile strike is not a promise of renewal.

I picture a June afternoon. The heat in Tehran is already unbearable when the siren splits the air.

Inside Evin’s women’s ward, glass gives way with a sharp, accusing crack. Shards slice arms and cheeks before anyone even understands what happened. Outside, the scene is worse: mothers, fathers, siblings—mine among them—stand at that kiosk manned by a teenage conscript teenager who despises his post as much as we despise the regime.

In a single flash, they all disappear.

This is every visiting day at Evin: desperate faces pressing for scraps of news, hoping for a glimpse, a rumor, a promise. Now the asphalt is scorched, the kiosk mangled.

How, exactly, does bombing a prison free a nation?

Ruins attract new bosses, not playgrounds. That is not the future we fought for when we risked everything to challenge the regime.

These are strange times—to say the least.

Friends and family members are turning against one another. Geography is becoming a dividing line.

Concerned, broadly well-meaning Iranians watching from London or LA are far more likely to cheer. They don’t hear the explosions rattling our walls. They don’t see the plumes or the pale, crumpled faces—our neighbors, our parents, our children—shaking in silence.

I try not to block those who infuriate me with their aloofness, their crass humor. They’re a product of the Islamic Republic too—desensitized by a daily flood of suffering from Kyiv to Gaza, stripped of empathy by proximity to too much pain.

I try not to block them because we need each other, as many as we can, if we’re to survive this and not fall into the abyss.

I am exhausted, furious, with this regime as anyone. I despise the system that robbed me of my life with empty slogans, the man who telegraphs defiance from a bunker under my city.

But this is not deliverance.

Once we were never asked whether we wanted uranium enrichment in exchange for our aspirations. Now no one asks whether we want Netanyahu’s jets overhead or police compounds in downtown Tehran pulverized.

I shed no tears for slain IRGC generals—courtrooms would have been better—but I do mourn our own powerlessness, trapped between rulers who do not care and outsiders who use our suffering as a talking point.

Spare us the righteous speeches please. Pursue your interests if you must, but don’t pretend the collateral is a gift to the Iranian people.

A true leader would have stepped aside long ago to spare us this spiral. Instead, Khamenei hides underground while we—prisoners in and outside Evin—keep counting the costs.

I am typing this having passed by a crater’s dust on my way home. I’m not sure who will read this. But it’s the only thing I can do between mourning the lives blasted away and fearing the new bars that will rise where the old ones fell.

US President Donald Trump announces 'complete and total ceasefire' between Iran and Israel.

"CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE!," his post reads. "It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!"

It continues with details and timing of the implementation of the agreement.

"On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR.”

"This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!"

Israeli intelligence operatives warned several senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards generals that they had only a few hours to abandon Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and flee with their families — or be killed — according to three sources familiar with the operation who spoke to the Washington Post.

The June 13 call, made just hours after Israeli strikes began killing key Iranian personnel, was part of a covert intimidation campaign targeting more than 20 officials, the report said.
“You’re on our list right now,” an Israeli caller told one general, adding that Israel was “closer to you than your own neck vein.”

“I advise you now: you have 12 hours to escape with your wife or child,” said a voice in the recording, ordering the IRGC commander to record a video renouncing the Islamic Republic.