Iranians slam regime for lacking bomb shelters amid US-Israel strikes

FIRST ON FOX: While officials of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, take refuge in underground bunkers in the face of joint US-Israeli military offensives, ordinary Iranians are berating the religious 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 obtain information about the progress of the joint US-Israeli air warfare campaign against Islamic Republic military sites and to share the theocratic state’s disdain for the civilian population.

“In a country that has boasted to the world about its military power for 47 years, it does not even have warning sirens, let alone shelters. They themselves hear the sounds of planes and unmanned aerial vehicles, and they realize this. [enemy airplanes] They came to the sky. They don’t even have radar,” wrote Noori from the capital Tehran.

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To compensate for the lack of residential bomb shelters and safe rooms, Iranian authorities have designated 82 metro stations and 300 parking lots in Tehran as public shelters, Noori said.

“They call it shelter. First of all, remember that there were no toilets in the subway stations, and these stations were locked when people tried to go there during the 12-day war.”

“Families living in the compounds of the Revolutionary Guard and the army are now living in subway stations out of fear,” Noori said. he said.

Noori and other Iranians who contacted Fox News Digital use their first names because of the risk of retaliation from the regime’s brutal security forces.

Faraz from Tehran said, “We are currently in a situation where we have no shelter and we fear for our lives. If we were at war with someone attacking residences, most of the ordinary citizens would die. We don’t even have warning sirens.”

Iran expert Lisa Daftari told Fox News Digital: “In Tehran, we see a city without any formal civil defense infrastructure on the ground. Families with children or elderly relatives have largely been evacuated to rural areas or to the Caspian coast. Those who remain shelter in place, moving away from windows and retreating to underground parking structures in apartment buildings when they hear explosions.”

Daftari, editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk, added: “There are no bomb shelters. There are no warning sirens. The Iranian people have not been given an official system to protect themselves. What you see on your screens – crowds in the streets – are not spontaneous demonstrations of support. These are Basij militias with megaphones ordering people out of their homes so that the regime can produce images of a loyal population.”

According to legal experts, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s placement of military facilities in areas where civilians are concentrated puts the country’s people in danger.

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This photo from Iran’s ISNA news agency shows the site of an 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 on an Iranian girls’ school in the town of Minab on February 28; This was the beginning of the US’s Operation Epic Rage against the Iranian regime. According to the Iranian regime, 175 people, mostly children, were killed in the airstrike at Shajarah Tayyebeh primary school. The school was located on the same street as the buildings used by the Revolutionary Guards.

Avi Bell, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law and Bar Ilan University School of Law, told Fox News Digital: “Densely populated civilian areas are unlikely to be used as drone strike sites or missile launch sites for any reason other than human shielding. For military reasons, it would make much more sense for launch sites to not be close to civilian areas.”

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Noori criticized the regime: “They brag to the whole world, but they cut off water, electricity, air and internet to their own people. They spent the money they received from Biden and Obama and from oil sales on missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, Hamas, Hezbollah and weapons production.”

Manouchehr, also from Tehran, wrote: “I am sending you a message in very difficult conditions, with extremely weak internet. I had to pay very high prices for VPN just to send this message. The security situation is not good at all. These clerics have spent years of our money on missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, funding Hamas and Hezbollah. They have not even built a single shelter for us, but they have been threatening the world for 47 years.”

VPN allows a few Iranians to bypass Iran’s near-total communications blackout. “The internet outage in Iran enters its 17th day after 384 hours. The last day has seen a decline in dedicated telecom network infrastructure, further reducing VPN availability and sending some whitelisted users and NIN services offline,” Netblocks reported on Monday.

Police officers stand guard next to banners depicting portraits of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution Square, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on March 14, 2026. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

Manouchehr added: “We are grateful to President Trump for not bombing residential areas. I ask that you please tell them that.” [the U.S. Government] Not declaring a ceasefire. “Otherwise, these hyenas will not leave any Iranian people alive, and they will take revenge for the attacks of Israel and America by targeting the Iranian people.”

The Iranians have stated that the Ayatollahs may build a bomb shelter system following the eight-year Iraq and Iran war (1980-1988), in which Iraqi missiles were launched against the civilian sector in Iran.

Lawdan Bazargan, an Iranian American activist and human rights expert on the situation in Iran, told Fox News Digital: “Iran’s Islamic regime does not value 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, but has still left 90 million people without sirens, shelters, or any system to warn civilians of danger. At the same time, the internet has been largely shut down and phone lines have been shut down.” “We are making people unable to receive news or even communicate with their families.”

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Iranian women raise money for the war effort outside an air raid shelter in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War on May 11, 1988. (Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)

He continued: “What makes this 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 seek some protection. Today, even that basic level of safety no longer exists.”

The Iranian regime imprisoned Bazargan in the infamous Evin prison in Tehran for his political dissident activities in the 1980s.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on March 8 that it had “issued a security alert to civilians in Iran as Iran’s terrorist regime blatantly disregards the safety of innocent people.”

A group of men examine the ruins of a police station that was hit during a U.S.-Israeli military operation on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

According to a statement from CENTCOM, “The Iranian regime uses densely populated civilian areas to conduct military operations, including the launch of one-way attack drones and ballistic missiles. This dangerous decision puts the lives of all civilians in Iran at risk because places used for military purposes lose their protected status and may become legitimate military targets under international law. Iranian forces use crowded areas surrounded by civilians in cities such as Dezful, Isfahan and Shiraz to launch attack drones and ballistic missiles.”

Hossein, who lives in Tehran, said: “Landline phones are also under very strict security control. There are absolutely no warning systems or alarms, and people have nowhere to take shelter if there is any danger because, in general, the lives of the Iranian people have no value for this government.”

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Iranian police commander Ahmadreza Radan said more than 80 people had been arrested for spreading “disturbing content” online and that police officers were “ready to pull the trigger” if protests occurred.

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the UN declined to comment for this article.