Iran’s headline-grabbing stories in the past several weeks about the assassination of a top nuclear scientist, the raging coronavirus pandemic and soaring prices have overshadowed the shocking scene of an isolated shanty house being razed to the ground before the eyes of its poverty-stricken dwellers.
On Nov. 19, municipal workers of the city of Bandar Abbas demolished the tiny shelter of 35-year-old Tayyebeh amid desperate pleas among the wreckage from her three children, one of them disabled. The shack also housed Tayyebeh’s sister-in-law, another single mother, and her son. Captured on a mobile phone, the scene shocked ordinary Iranians, who are themselves already struggling for a decent life in the face of the worst economic conditions in their recent memory.