In the heart of the Iranian capital, the Boof cafe serves up refreshing cold drinks on a hot summer’s day.
They must be the most distinctive iced Americano coffees in this city – the cafe sits in a leafy corner of the long-shuttered US embassy.
Its high cement walls have been plastered with anti-American murals ever since Washington severed relations with Tehran in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis – which still cast a long shadow over this tortuous relationship.
Inside the charming Boof cafe, Amir the barista says he’d like relations to improve between America and Iran.
“US sanctions hurt our businesses and make it hard for us to travel around the world,” he reflects as he pours another iced coffee behind a jaunty wooden sign – “Keep calm and drink coffee.”
Only two tables are occupied – one by a woman covered up in a long black veil, another by a woman in blue jeans with long flowing hair, flouting the rules on what women should wear as she cuddles with her boyfriend.
It’s a small snapshot of this capital as it confronts its deeply uncertain future.
A short drive away, at the complex of Iran’s state TV station IRIB, a recorded speech by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was broadcast to the nation on Thursday.
“The Americans have been opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran from the very beginning” he declared.
“At its core, it has always been about one thing: they want us to surrender,” went on the 86-year Ayatollah, said to have taken shelter in a bunker aer Israel unleashed its unprecedented wave of strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile sites and assassinating senior commanders and scientists.
We watched his speech, his first since President Donald Trump suddenly announced a ceasefire on Tuesday, on a small TV in the only office still intact in a vast section of the IRIB compound. All that’s le is a charred skeleton of steel.
When an Israeli bomb slammed into this complex on 16 June, a raging fire swept through the main studio which would have aired the supreme leader’s address. Now it’s just ash.
You can still taste its acrid smell; all the TV equipment – cameras, lights, tripods – are tangles of twisted metal. A crunching glass carpet covers the ground.
Israel said it targeted the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic, accusing it of concealing a military operation within – a charge its journalists rejected.
Its gaping shell seems to symbolise this darkest of times for Iran.
You can also see it in the city’s hospitals, which are still treating Iranians injured in Israel’s 12-day war.
