A woman, her face painted in the colors of Iran, at a rally in support of the Iranian people, Istanbul, Turkey, January 11, 2026. EMRAH GUREL/AP
For three hours, Farnaz (all names have been changed) kept her eyes fixed on the arrivals board at Istanbul airport in Turkey on Thursday, January 15. Farnaz, an Iranian national and student who had come specially from London, has anxiously followed the deadly crackdown by the Iranian regime in her homeland. Until the last moment, she feared that her parents’ flight from Tehran, operated by Mahan Airlines, would be canceled. Late Wednesday night, commercial flights had been suspended for several hours over Iran due to the threat of a US military intervention, but air traffic gradually resumed.
With a suitcase in hand, a petite woman wearing a headband appeared as the automatic doors opened. Her face lit up at the sight of her daughter Fernaz, but the dark circles under her eyes conveyed long, sleepless nights. “What is happening is indescribable,” she said in a whisper. Residents of Tehran, she and her husband are both high school science teachers. They could not stop themselves from joining the crowds in the streets on January 8 and 9, carried along by the euphoria that gripped the capital.
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