TEHRAN – Several days have passed since the release of the video depicting Israel's attack on Tajrish Square in Tehran.

Yet, news networks affiliated with the U.S., U.K., and Israel—particularly their Persian-language branches—are still struggling to frame the brutal second strike on public water infrastructure, vehicles halted at red lights, and ordinary pedestrians as merely a projectile that "accidentally" struck the wrong target during an assault on the same initial location.

To fact-check and assess the plausibility of this claim, I head to Tajrish. From Qods Square, I walk eastward until I reach the intersection of Shariati and Bahonar streets. Ali Shariati was an Iranian intellectual who died under suspicious circumstances a year before the 1979 Revolution. Mohammad-Javad Bahonar was a cleric and academic who served as Iran’s second Prime Minister and was martyred in a 1981 terrorist bombing of the presidential office by the MEK. For Iranians, this crossroads bears symbolic weight—a meeting point of religious and secular intellectualism, both victims of physical and character assassinations by foreign-backed forces.

I raise my head, scanning the square in search of the city surveillance camera’s position. I finally spotted it just past the entrance to the metro, on the north side of Shariati Street. But it’s the Ashura banners on nearby buildings that grab my attention. I turn my head and notice that most passersby are dressed in black for Muharram.

I replay the video of the attack on my phone to determine the camera’s angle, facing northeast. The targeted building should be roughly 200 meters ahead of the camera, on the north side of the street. I begin walking from the south side for a clear view, but soon get distracted by a taxi stand. The yellow cars and their drivers catch my eye. Three of them are chatting nearby. I approach and ask, “Were any of you here on the day of the attack?” None were present, but one of them, who had left around noon, says someone named Hamid had been there. The others confirm it.

They don’t know his full name—he’s not a regular colleague but a freelance driver with a Pride sedan, which he no longer owns after the attack. They say he was injured in the hand and can no longer work. One of the drivers also points to a spot where bloodstains are still visible on the wall, saying an elderly vegetable seller who used to sit there was martyred in the incident. I check the video again. The mentioned Pride car is visible on the south side of the street, picking up passengers when a large piece of asphalt lands on it.

To pinpoint the exact location, I need to identify the struck building. About 50 meters ahead, across from a juice shop, I find it: a five-story apartment where the top three floors have completely collapsed. In the video, the projectile is clearly fired head-on from south to north. As I stand in the middle of the street, gazing up to verify how short the buildings opposite the target were, a car honks loudly to pull me out of my reverie.

Across from the destroyed building are three structures: an old two-story juice shop, a small elementary and preschool named after Ali Akbar Motazedi with a sign on its door announcing new student registration, and another low two-story building—its ground floor is a now-closed coffee shop, and its upper floor was a doctor’s office, shut due to the damage. Only the young juice vendor remains open, cheerfully answering curious passersby.

Locals know him well. They come in by name to buy carrot juice, orange juice, and ice cream. One customer jokingly asks, “How are you still alive?” He says, “I was inside the shop. It broke and ruined everything, but two days later, we cleaned it all up.” Noticing my inquisitive look, he continues without being asked: “The building hit was the Mosque Affairs office.” I ask if he knows who was inside at the time; he shakes his head but says angrily, “What difference does it make? Civilians were hurt. I saw with my own eyes, two seconds after they hit the intersection, a pregnant woman trying to cross the street was killed.”

I step outside to check the video again. A woman in white, her dress billowing slightly ahead of her, is seen crossing the intersection. After that, how can I ever forget that white-clad woman fleeing the falling asphalt shards—yet unable to escape?

The targeted building is sealed off, but nearby structures all show visible damage. I circle around to a side alley to check the rear. A tall apartment complex with a beautiful tailor’s shop backs directly onto it. The alley is a dead end from both sides. So, residents of the rear buildings must have had serious difficulty escaping during the attack. The decorative trees in the yard are still lush with summer greenery, but their roots are no longer in the ground. Workers are clearing rubble from the courtyard. Shattered floor tiles catch my eye, and my mind quickly asks: Why was there no sign of explosion or debris at the intersection itself? If repairs were done, the asphalt should at least look new.

I walk northward from the middle of the street. Stuck at a red light among the cars, I finally spot the fresh strip of asphalt—right where the usual white lines are missing, about 20 meters from the intersection, and there’s no pedestrian crossing either. I check the video again; when the intersection clears, the surface water drainage covers become visible.

BBC Persian’s video confirms the footage is genuine and not AI-generated. But when paused and enhanced, the moment of missile impact and its angle become crystal clear—even the white body and fins of the missile can be seen.

Unlike the first projectile, this missile enters the intersection from the northwest and strikes cars waiting at the red light. Three vehicles are hurled violently into the air; another is crushed under a massive piece of asphalt. At least four more vehicles are seen behind the impact point, though their fate is obscured by smoke.

What’s clear, however, is that there is no way the second missile was aimed at the same target as the first. The angle of impact differs drastically in all spatial dimensions—latitude, longitude, and altitude. Even if the missile’s trajectory had continued, it would have hit the municipal administrative building on the south side of the street.

Based on explanations from military experts and journalists I’ve consulted, the pattern of Israel’s strikes during the 12-day war shows a deliberate strategy: in targeting one individual, all potential locations of their presence were hit, regardless of whether families, civilians, or children were in the vicinity. That’s why not only many scientists and commanders’ families, but also their neighbors and random bystanders were killed or injured.

Even so, other strong hypotheses exist—especially among the Iranian public and some analysts—claiming that Israel’s second strike directly targeted Tehran’s water infrastructure to provoke public discontent, while also potentially disrupting emergency response to the first attack.

But the common thread among all these interpretations is summed up in what two pedestrians tell me as I cross the street. When I say I’m a journalist, they ask me to make sure my report emphasizes this: that contrary to its claims, Israel targeted many ordinary civilians, women, children, and men. They say even if the goal was to assassinate a military figure, the martyrdom of nearly a thousand civilians is, for us Iranians, an unforgivable and barbaric crime.