STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
One of the few international journalists who report from inside Iran during the war is CNN senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen. He's just left Iran and joins us now from Berlin, where the communications are a little better. Good morning.
FRED PLEITGEN: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Just...
PLEITGEN: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Glad you're with us. Just tell me the story. How'd you get in?
PLEITGEN: Yeah. So we were - we had visas approved by the Iranian government, and then because obviously nothing is flying into Iran right now, at least no civilian aircraft, we took the overland route. This was me and my camerawoman and producer, Claudia Otto, who did an absolutely amazing job, you know, caring about logistics, getting us there. And I'm obviously filming everything, and I'm very much indebted to her forever...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
PLEITGEN: ...For going through that with me. But we took the overland route. We flew into Yerevan in Armenia and had to drive about nine hours to the border with Iran. When we got to the border, the border guards actually told us the border was closed. We weren't going to get in. So we had to negotiate our way in. They finally let us through. And then I'd say we had another about 12-hour drive to Tehran from the border, where we already saw some of the damage from airstrikes. We actually saw some airstrikes, the immediate aftermath of it as well. So you could really feel that you were on the ground in a country where a war was going on.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Really dramatic images. I saw quite a few of them as your reporting unfolded. I just want to mention, here's my experience in Iran in the past. You have to move carefully. You're clearly monitored in various ways, but you can move around. You can talk to people, and people are surprisingly frank about their opinions. That was the experience in the past. What about this time?
PLEITGEN: Yeah. Well, first of all, people are not as frank with their opinions, especially if they're against the government. There were, you know, very few people that openly said any of that. However, people were very frank if they were for the government. And we were able to speak to a large number of people, but it was more restrictive than it had been in the past. Basically, what we did was when we wanted to go somewhere and film something, we talked to the culture ministry and said, look, we'd like to go there and there. And then, is that OK with you guys? And then we went there. It was us who had the initiative. They suggested things every once in a while, but it was really us - up to us whether or not we would go there. So we actually managed to do all of the things that we wanted to do. But, of course, right now, with the security situation being as it is, if you go to somewhere where there was just an airstrike and the security forces are cordoning that area off, it can be an issue. So we definitely had to coordinate things more than we have in the past.
INSKEEP: OK. In the end, though, you were able to report what you found. You didn't have restrictions on that, did you?
PLEITGEN: No. We reported absolutely what we found. We went to the places that we wanted to go to. For instance, there was an oil storage facility that was hit, and we had...
INSKEEP: Yeah.
PLEITGEN: ...To negotiate with them whether or not we'd be able to go there, because that's obviously critical infrastructure. Security forces around there as well. But in the end, they also relented in that and let us go there and film that.
INSKEEP: One thing about a war zone, of course, is that the story comes to you. And I'm remembering the day that you were in Tehran and the Israelis did hit that oil storage facility, and the skies were black over Tehran, and it seemed to be raining oil. What was it like to be in a city where it was raining oil?
PLEITGEN: I'll tell you, that was really probably one of the craziest experiences that I had there because we - in the night, we already saw that there were huge airstrikes going on. And one of the things about the situation right now in Tehran is that you never really feel safe anywhere because you constantly hear airstrikes and the ammunition that's being dropped there is so heavy that you know that if a building that you're in, even if it's a residential building, will probably get completely flattened. So it is - it's a constant thing. And then we saw those plumes of smoke over those oil installations in the south of Tehran, in the west of Tehran, especially.
And in the morning after that, I woke up and I saw that the whole sky was black and it was raining. And so I went outside on the roof terrace that we had, and I saw that there was soot or what seemed to be oil mixed into the rainwater that was coming down. And one thing that I did feel is that my lungs felt really heavy after having been out there that day. So I don't know if that was, you know, whatever was in the air there. I got a headache, so it did feel like, you know, the air was pretty contaminated after that.
INSKEEP: I imagine your laundry must have been something, and the laundry of millions...
PLEITGEN: Yes.
INSKEEP: ...Must have been something after that. You mentioned not feeling safe anywhere, and I wonder about a particular aspect of that. You did go at least once and speak with a senior Iranian official. You're going to government offices, and you know very well that government offices are being targeted by the Israelis in the United States. What was that like?
PLEITGEN: Yes. That - it's interesting that you mentioned that because that was definitely one of the moments where I felt that, you know, you want to get the interview over with as fast as possible. You want to be there. Obviously, you have to be there. The official that I spoke to is the foreign policy adviser to the supreme leader. So definitely a very important person who's shaping right now the way that the Iranians are reacting to the bombings of the U.S. and Israel. So a really important guy to talk to. But, yeah, I mean, it did feel a bit uneasy being in that building for an extended period of time, especially after having seen that so many other government buildings had already been taken out.
INSKEEP: And this is one of the most important reasons to go to a country that's on the other side in a war. You want to know how it is that Iranian decision makers are thinking about the situation. American officials need to know that. So what did you learn about the way that Iranian officials are viewing this war?
PLEITGEN: So I think, from my perspective, from what I've seen, that what you've had in Iran right now is really consolidation of power around the more hard-line stream of things. There was a bit of an attempt at maybe de-escalating things by Iran's president when he apologized to neighboring countries about having fired towards their territory. But obviously, President Trump rejected that almost immediately. And it was since then that you could really see the hard-liners consolidating. I think with the new supreme leader that you have in place right now, he's very much in line with the security apparatus, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
And if you see the people who more - most publicly are messaging right now, it's also hard-liners. It's the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, the head of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Those are real hard-liners who are saying that the Iranians are going to continue this war. So it seems to me that for now, the decision has been made in Tehran that they've consolidated their power base. The military feels as though right now they're on more solid footing than maybe at the beginning when those initial attacks happened.
INSKEEP: Wow.
PLEITGEN: They feel that they can still put pressure on the region. They feel that they can still fire missiles, and they're going to continue this right now. They say negotiations are not possible. And obviously, one thing that they think is their main tool in their toolbox is the Strait of Hormuz and keeping that closed to shipping traffic unless the Iranians allow that to go through. That's something where they feel that they can put pressure on the international community to try and end the war. But again, the Iranians are saying right now they're willing to continue it.
INSKEEP: Just got a few seconds left, but President Trump at one time talked of encouraging the Iranians to rise up. Vali Nasr, an analyst who's been on this program, said, in fact, people are more wedded to their government now because of the attacks. In a few seconds, did you have any sense of an uprising?
PLEITGEN: I didn't see any of that. It's obviously very difficult for us to really penetrate the society, but it certainly seemed to me, also from seeing the amount of security forces that are on the ground, that the government is definitely trying to project that they're very much in control.
INSKEEP: Fred Pleitgen is a senior international correspondent for CNN and he has just left Iran. Thanks very much for your reporting.
PLEITGEN: Thank you.
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