Tehran's residents, exhausted after an anxiety-inducing day of airstrikes and having received their first evacuation order from the Israeli army, discovered, late on Monday night, June 16, a message from US President Donald Trump calling for "everyone" to "immediately evacuate Tehran!" "Iran should have signed the 'deal' I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again!" he wrote, reiterating his pressure on Iran to return to the negotiating table. Earlier, Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said that Iran was prepared to halt its retaliation against Israel if it stopped its "aggression" against his country.

That night, several explosions were heard in eastern Tehran and the city of Natanz, home to one of Iran's main nuclear enrichment sites. Kimiya (whose name has been changed at her request), 40, had considered leaving Tehran from the day the first Israeli strikes hit the capital, June 13, to protect her 4-year-old son. A Tehran resident, she still remembers the sound of sirens that blared before every bombing during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), when she was a child. "It is out of the question for me to let my son suffer from the same trauma," she said.

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