'We are a nation' Iran finds new spirit of unity after surprise attack by Israel

What was once the Tehran home of Ahmadreza Zolfaghari, workmen are demolishing the building's remains, ruined beyond repair by Israel's surprise attempt to assassinate Iran's political, military and nuclear elite in June.

- Patrick Wintour

The scientist had worked at the faculty of nuclear engineering at Shahid Beheshti University and was editor-in-chief of a nuclear energy journal, all of which made him a target. Zolfaghari was found dead in the rubble of his home, along with his wife and adult son.

The three adjoining buildings were also blown apart, killing at least five others, including an 11-year-old child.

As the sledgehammer-wielding workmen clamber over the rubble to demolish what is left of the building, loose masonry crashes to the ground, sending dust flying into the air.

The perilous task - the beams on which the workers stand creak as they hammer - seems a metaphor for a country still in shock, neither at peace nor at war, but in need of reconstruction.

More than 1,000 Iranians died in the Israeli attack and some professional sociologists - a broad term in Iran - argue a new nationalism has since emerged into public view.

There is no doubt that, outwardly, Tehran is changing fast and socially it is light years from western perceptions. The number of women not wearing the hijab in public is now about a third and it is not just young women but sometimes whole families.

A punitive chastity law passed by the religious conservatives still dominant inside parliament was rejected by the consensual, but reformist, president Masoud Pezeshkian on the pragmatic grounds that it would cause an uprising if enforced.

The burial of the measure has emboldened women. The police, once keen to bundle the "unchaste" into the back of a van, now leave unscarfed women to their individual choice.

The vibrant, albeit polluted, evening streets resemble Beirut as much as Kabul. The next step is to allow women to ride motorcycles.

Observers say that Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who collapsed in a police station in Tehran in 2022, sparking the "women, life, freedom" protests, did not die in vain.