One day it's peace, the next it's war.

A new wave of American attacks on Iran has once again plunged Iranians into deep uncertainty and fear, after a period of relative peace while a fragile ceasefire was in place.

Iranians who spoke to Reuters via an encrypted messaging app said economic problems were deepening and they were preoccupied with worries about what would happen next.

Sharing a photo of her weekly grocery shopping, Somaje (40), a photographer from Tehran, said prices have almost doubled compared to before the war.

"The most important thing in general in the midst of war is the economy. Every day our situation is getting worse and worse," she said.

"The most stressful thing is the constant back and forth: one day it's war, the next it's peace. We don't know what's really going to happen. We can't even make plans for the next two days."

Like all other Reuters interviewees, she spoke on condition of anonymity, declining to have her full name published for fear of government reprisals.

Amir, a 30-year-old software engineer from Sanandaj in the western Kurdistan province, said he got married just before the war began with US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

He worries about how he will provide for his family and has had difficulty finding work since Iranian authorities cut off his internet connection in January during anti-government protests.

"After about a month, when the internet was restored, the war started. The internet was down again, business was again severely affected, there were a lot of problems in my industry," Amir said.

"I had a huge debt. I had no other options because I live in Sanandaj and work remotely, and my job depends on the internet. I couldn't work at all," Amir added.

He had only found a job a few days ago, but now hostilities have intensified again in the more than four-month-old war, after a ceasefire reached in June turned into daily attacks and counterattacks.

They remain in Iran despite the attacks

Nazanin, a 34-year-old psychotherapist also speaking from Sanandaj, said she had previously wanted to leave Iran to pursue a doctorate in psychology. However, the value of the rial has plummeted and she can no longer afford to leave her homeland.

“I could probably go to Turkey and stay there for two months, but I don't have the money or the ability to make it happen,” she said.

Nazanin said that her decision to stay in Iran was also influenced by the great anxiety she felt when she was separated from her family during earlier waves of attacks.

“During the war, whenever I was away from my family, I would start thinking: if I were hit in an airstrike, how would that affect my family?” she said.

“And then I would think: if my family were killed in a bombing, what would I do? The thought of not being with them and having to live the fate of a person carrying grief alone was so difficult that it influenced my decision to emigrate.”

Somaje, a photographer, told Reuters that she too had once planned to leave Iran. Those plans fell through because of the currency crisis, she said, but added that she would not leave now even if she had a realistic chance to leave the country.

"Today, even if I could leave, I don't think I would, because my life, my home, and my family are here. Even if I could leave for a few months, I would have to come back and continue my life here. I don't think I would ever leave," she said.

Khiva, who lives in the city of Mahabad, also said he has no desire to leave. He sees the economic problems, exacerbated by the war, as the seeds of social change.

"The continuation of this war could trigger social processes, because with the continuation of the current inflation trend, there is no conceivable alternative other than street riots," he said.

Thousands of Iranians were killed when authorities suppressed the January protests. Iran has since tried to prevent new internal unrest with arrests, executions and the deployment of security forces on the streets.

Amir described suffering from insomnia after being unable to contact his father for months while he was in Iraqi Kurdistan. He said that despite all the pressures, he would stay in the country.

“My mother was here during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and she told me that my grandfather used to say at the time that it doesn't matter if we die, as long as we are under our own roof,” he said.

“We don’t want to leave our home. We don’t know what it would be like to leave. Will the borders be open? Will other countries accept us and will we face the same situation that Syrian refugees went through?” he asked, referring to Syrians who fled the civil war in their country from 2011 to 2024.

The risk of a return to full-scale war is growing

In a new wave of attacks, Washington and Tehran are testing the limits of escalation since their ceasefire agreement collapsed last week, raising the possibility of a return to full-scale war.

The United States yesterday targeted bridges and an airport in Iran, prompting a response from Tehran, which attacked a power generation and water desalination plant in Kuwait.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to launch large-scale air strikes on Iranian infrastructure and has not ruled out a ground attack on Iran's coast or islands. US officials have said the strikes on southern Iran were partly designed to give Trump a variety of options.

Such moves carry the risk that Iran will retaliate with escalation by attacking the vital infrastructure of vulnerable neighboring Arab states, or that its allies in Yemen will further disrupt global energy supplies by attacking ships in the Red Sea.