MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
In the three weeks that the United States and Israel have been at war with Iran, there have been a breathtaking number of developments - Iran's supreme leader and other key officials killed, Iran retaliating against U.S. targets throughout the region, soaring gas and oil prices threatening to destabilize the global economy. Well, each day on this program, we have tracked those events. Today, we're going to take a slightly different tack - step back and take a few minutes to talk through how we do that. NPR's Arezou Rezvani is in Iraq. She opened her reporter's notebook with me on our weekly national security podcast Sources & Methods.
(SOUNDBITE OF EMANUEL KALLINS AND STEPHEN TELLER'S "PLUNGED INTO CRISIS")
KELLY: Talk to me about how you're operating there as an international journalist. I know, for example, you tried to leave your base in Erbil and drive south to Baghdad. What happened?
AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: Yeah. I was with a team, and our group tried to go down to Baghdad. The reason being that Baghdad is another place where there's a pretty large American footprint. It's where the largest U.S. embassy in the world is located, and that embassy has been getting attacked relentlessly by Iran in recent days.
KELLY: I did not know that...
REZVANI: And by...
KELLY: ...That was still the biggest U.S. embassy in the world. Go on.
REZVANI: It is.
KELLY: Interesting.
REZVANI: It is. Yeah, and Iran-backed militias are also attacking it pretty relentlessly. And the U.S. military also has a base there. So we wanted to go down there to get a sense of how hot this war was there. Iran-backed militias - many of them are based there. A lot of their parliamentary members are affiliated with those Iran-backed militias. We wanted to speak with them face-to-face.
So we were about to go. We were actually on our way to head down there. And at one of the checkpoints, we were stopped. They took a look at our passports, figured out that we were Americans and advised us to turn around. And we did get a call from the U.S. embassy really advising us to reconsider going down there. There was some chatter about kidnappings, I suppose, in certain circles. And so they were very nervous having Americans go down there.
KELLY: What about going the other way? You've been to the border with Iran, trying to talk to people who are - what? - just leaving Iran. Tell me where exactly you were and what people were telling you.
REZVANI: So about three hours east of Erbil by car, there is the Haji Omeran border crossing. I spent a few hours there, and one of the most striking things from my visit was that in the few hours we were there, there were a couple of drones that flew overhead. These are the noisy and cheap drones that Iran has been launching since the start of this war.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRONE FLYING OVERHEAD)
REZVANI: They were flying very low, very slow. And so that was pretty interesting. And then we also - what was striking to me was the fact that people who were crossing over were absolutely terrified to speak, even though they had left Iran. I spoke with one woman. She was in her 60s, and I asked her what life was like under this war. And she kept talking about the economy and how difficult it was to find jobs and hold jobs. It was almost like we were having two different conversations.
KELLY: Right. Like, she's not answering your question.
REZVANI: Not answering my questions, which is, you know - as you know, Mary Louise, you've covered Iran. It's not unusual. But at one point, she turned to me and asked me to turn off my mic.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: And at that point, she burst into tears and said that life had become absolutely unbearable between the airstrikes from the sky and Iran's crackdown on the ground, that it had just become so difficult to live. And she had wished that some of the airstrikes on her city had killed her. So it's a very just desperate situation in Iran right now.
KELLY: Pull back the curtain a little bit because you've been doing some amazing work trying to get us voices of people still in Iran. Just walk us - to the extent that you're able - through how that works.
REZVANI: You know, it's very, very challenging. I mean, even during peace time, it's a very difficult place to reach people and to get people to talk with you. Iran has a very, very strong surveillance state. It does not tolerate critics very well. And so people have always been very reluctant to speak.
But it's especially difficult right now because for the last couple of weeks and really the last couple of months, ever since protests erupted, there has been an internet blackout. It's a very intense internet blackout. At times, only 1% of the country has connectivity. And so it's been virtually impossible to reach people. Those who have Starlink or some kind of sophisticated configuration can get online, and I have been able to stay in touch with some of those people.
But I got to tell you, I mean, I look at my phone every day. I look at the Telegram channels, or I check into WhatsApp, and there are people who I still have not heard from in the last two weeks.
KELLY: Yeah.
REZVANI: And your mind starts to wonder.
KELLY: Are they OK? Yeah.
REZVANI: Are they OK? Have they fled? Have they been detained? So it's very, very difficult.
KELLY: NPR's Arezou Rezvani speaking with me on our national security podcast, Sources & Methods. You can hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
