Pharmacists have noted a spike in the price of medicines and contraceptives like condoms, as a result of the war. In the United Kingdom, pharmacies are charging 20 to 30 percent more for over-the-counter medicines, and the common painkiller paracetamol has more than quadrupled in price.
As missiles strike across Israel and Iran, what are we really allowed to see? With strict censorship and limited access, journalists and the public are seeing only part of the story: Who decides what information gets out, and what does that mean for truth in a war affecting millions?
Iranian security forces have arrested several figures from the country's reformist movement, local media reported on Monday, as Tehran's crackdown on dissent continues to widen. Those arrested include Azar Mansouri, the head of the Reformist Front, which represents several factions, former diplomat Mohsen Aminzadeh and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, who was part of the group that stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Iran's media landscape is divided between outlets closely affiliated with the state and those considered reformist. State-aligned outlets include organizations such as Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Tasnim, Fars News, and Mehr News. These conservative outlets often promote narratives that support Iran's ruling clerical establishment.
Carrying banners showing the face of the country's slain leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, people on Monday held a new portrait that of his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. Other similar scenes on state media showed pledges of loyalty from several cities across the country, with people chanting, Death to America and Death to Israel, as security forces looked on.
The Iranian announcer was grieving the loss of a "father," as he put it, while for Alinejad and so many other Iranians in exile and at home, the vaporized ma[n represented something entirely different]. Such torrential downpours, from loyalists and dissenters alike, often follow the deaths of notorious and long-ruling dictators-Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein.
During the height of Iran's blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service. What they couldn't do was check international headlines about thousands of people being killed by government forces during one of the bloodiest weeks in recent Iranian history.