How the War Has Reshaped Life in Iran

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1:54Hi, Cora. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Tyler. Based on your conversations with people who are on the ground in Iran right now, what do you think is the biggest misconception about what life has been like there since the war started? Or is there something that people would find kind of surprising given the rhetoric in the U.S. and from Trump? I think what's been most surprising is the sustained level of hope that a lot of people still have. It surprises me every day when I hear from people who sound very scared when they're surviving from bombardments one day, but then the next are still celebrating the death of Hamini, the supreme leader, and are talking about how they're hoping for the days when they can come back to the streets and protest again.

2:42That's Cora Engelbrecht, who just wrote a piece for The New Yorker about what life has been like for the Iranian people during the war. Ever since war broke out in Iran and across the Middle East, so much of the coverage and conversation has centered on the global effects of the conflict. How the region has been destabilized, why the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is threatening an international energy crisis, or whether the American people approve of Donald Trump's handling of the war. But something central has gotten lost in all of this, which is how the Iranian people's daily lives are being affected by the U.S.

3:14and Israeli bombardments, and how the Iranian regime is using the war as an excuse to crack down even harder on civilians. I wanted to talk with Cora about what her reporting has revealed about the day in and day out for the Iranian people, how the dissident community, who were in opposition to the supreme leader and his regime before his death, are thinking about the war, and how they're hoping the conflict might resolve. This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

3:46You know, I feel like there's been so much coverage of the Iran war. And at the same time, there have been so few stories about what life is actually like on the ground for Iranians, you know, civilians who are there experiencing this war. And so I thought that we could start by just having you talk a little bit about why it is so hard to even get in contact with people who are in Iran right now. And how you were able to navigate those obstacles in order to report your most recent story for The New Yorker, which was a very in-depth, intimate portrait that was told through a series of dispatches that were sent to you from one writer and dissident on the ground who you refer to as Hottie.

4:25Yeah, it's been a process since the very beginning when the blackouts started. I think because these blackouts have been so total and have reemerged throughout the course of the demonstration since, you know, late December. By blackouts, do you mean internet blackouts? Internet blackouts, yeah. It's been really hard to keep in touch with someone consistently. I would say since the start, when the demonstration started before January, I was in touch with a lot of dissidents, a lot of people who had fled Iran and were outside the country and were still in contact with people inside. And because they were dissidents and had vested interest in what was going to happen in the future of Iran, they were in touch with a lot of people who had Starlink accounts.

5:16And that's how I started reaching out. I began hearing from the dissidents who began putting me in touch with people inside the country. And those were the most sure, consistent links for information, because these are people who sort of set up for this moment. They were primed for this moment for the lights to go out. Hadi, who we nickname in our story in this most recent piece. I connected with him early on when he started attending a lot of funerals for demonstrators that were killed in these mass killings in January, January 8th and 9th. He was attending a lot of these services, and he wanted someone on the outside to understand how they were being surveilled by security officers.

6:02He was going to a lot of cemeteries that were being guarded by security officers. He was meeting with a lot of families of dissidents that were killed who were being harassed by security officers, being pressured to cancel or limit their ceremonies for their relatives who were killed. He was in touch with a lot of families who had no idea, had been left completely in the dark about the whereabouts of prisoners, people who had been arrested during the mass demonstrations in late December. And so he was sending me a lot of material around the time of these funerals. And then the war happened. And everyone else I was in touch with disappeared immediately.

6:47But his light stayed on. And that's how we started corresponding in the first three days after war. Just tell me everything. Tell me what's going on whenever you can. update me. And that extended for about two weeks. How risky was it for him to keep you updated? I mean, you mentioned that Starlink is the main way that he was able to sort of stay in contact with you throughout the internet shutdown. But what were the potential consequences if the authorities had caught him using Starlink to send a foreign journalist information about what's happening inside of the country? The consequences are huge.

7:25We've been hearing about this since late December. We've been hearing about this since the 12-day war. There was a huge crackdown after the 12-day war from Israel and the United States. And the regime arrested tens of thousands of people after that crackdown, calling them infiltrators. Very worried or determined to basically stave off another military intervention or event and wanted to make sure that they had stamped out any opposition or any organizers. So all the evidence was there. I'd say after the mass demonstrations, more laws were enacted, specifically surrounding the use of Starlink and sending information to any foreign media that was going to be treated as a very serious offense that could lead to a death sentence.

8:20I would say in the first two days that we were corresponding after the bombardment started, Hadi started sending me these messages that he was receiving every day, text messages from the government and from the police, reminding him that sending any information to foreign media surrounding the war would be met with a very severe sentence. So no, he was doing this at great risk. I would say he's part of a community that, as we write in the piece, they're used to living these invisible existences. And a lot of them have lost their fear. Just thinking more broadly about this concept of trying to report on Iran while Iranians are in the midst of a regime-imposed internet blackout.

9:13I mean, could you talk a little bit about the story that you reported back in January about the mass protests that turned into massacres, essentially? Yeah, that was really difficult to get a handle on. And it was all by design because the blackout, the massacres that we know now were nationwide. But at the time, the blackout was nationwide. We were only getting bits and pieces from across the country. It was very piecemeal, and so it was very opaque. The best way to counter something that's that broadly opaque, I think, is to really narrow in on one story and try and get a full picture. And I just happened to get connected with one protester in Mashhad, which is the second most populous city in Iran, where we now know hundreds were killed.

10:07And he had a Starlink account. He also had a group of friends that he had gone out with. They had all taken videos. And so I was, I got access to this trove of videos that really helped verify what had happened over the course of three days and gave a full picture of the brutality and also the strategy that the regime used over those three days to meet these mass demonstrations with this really lethal crackdown. I mean, it sounds like that crackdown is also sort of what made a lot of people on the ground in Iran hopeful for U.S. intervention, right? I mean, you even mentioned earlier this idea that they had never really thought they would be in a position to be kind of rooting for war, but because it was so awful what happened, it was like war was kind of the only way out.

10:57Yeah, that was the phrase that was used over and over and over. And I was in touch with a lot of Pallavi supporters during the demonstrations who would say over and over that people had lost their fear. And a lot of that had to do with being summoned to the streets by, you know, this hopeful leader that they had found in Pallavi. He's the son of the former Shah of Iran. But that that summoning was backed by Trump saying that if people were to be killed in the streets, that was going to be his red line. He was going to come to the defense of these demonstrators. So a lot of people, not just young people that we know now that those crowds were filled with many generations, chose this moment.

11:43even if it was going to mean a lot of death, it was going to lead to some form of liberation for them. And that hope of this being a liberation campaign, it's all they have in this moment. So I still hear that from people on the streets, even though they're losing their ability to live easily and they're sheltering at home, and their lives have changed so dramatically and arguably for the worse since this war started. they can only cling to this hope that in the end it will be a liberating event. And what was the mood on the ground at the very beginning? I mean, we started off this conversation by you talking about the hope that is still very much present among many Iranians.

12:28But I guess I'm wondering if sort of what was Hadi's initial reaction? What was kind of the reaction of the larger dissident community that he is so close to when the strikes began and when it became clear that an Israeli strike had killed the Ayatollah? Yeah, I think I want to go back even to a few days before this happened. Like when people were really waiting for war, it was an incredible time to take a survey of, you know, as much as I could. People were more in touch, so I could kind of speak to people who were from different corners of the opposition. And across the board, it was surprising how many people wanted war.

13:13People who never believed in foreign intervention in the past just always wanted, always believed in an opposition that would generate democracy from within the country. They wanted it to be generated from within. They, after the massacres, mass killings in January, just believed that there was no other option, that this was the only way that they were going to actually see real change or make some sort of difference. There were still people who were very skeptical, but there were some that would describe going to parties and talking about war as if they're waiting for the 4th of July. and that was pretty remarkable to hear.

13:55And what do you mean by wanting war? Like war can encompass so many things and I guess I'm just wondering if there were a lot of people who were specifically hoping that Trump would do something or whether it was kind of understood that this would be a joint operation by the U.S. and Israel if they wanted like boots on the ground, if they really just wanted a strike that would go, you know, for the Ayatollah and then they were hoping that that would, you know, do the trick and that would be the end of the regime. Like, kind of what, when they said they wanted war, what did that actually mean in their heads in that moment?

14:29It was a range. It was such an emotional, like, want. People wanted revenge, so that was the Ayatollah. They wanted, they didn't want all the death to go unanswered and just disappear into a vacuum. The memory of the 12-day war was fresh in people's minds, And so, you know, they knew that they were dealing with two forces, Israel and the United States, who make good on promises. And so that's why there was a lot of hope behind, you know, this sort of celestial event that could happen again, as one person described it to me. Again, this was often tempered by some with, you know, a sort of practical, this isn't what we ever wanted.

15:13We didn't ever want to be brought to this point. It's a suicide wish to, you know, want war, want foreign intervention, want your own home to be bombed. But we are at war with our own government. What else are we supposed to do? And so based on that, I would assume that the death of the Ayatollah was welcome when that finally did happen. Yeah, that was the big moment of hope, that the symbolic act of revenge that people are still clinging to right now, I think. They're trying to draw out this celebration of the killing of this leader who symbolized all of the repression that the regime has just become so expert at over five decades.

16:02um, Khamenei was just, he was the symbolic figure. We got a reaction, I think, from Hadi. He wrote me a long message in response to, you know, what, what Khamenei symbolized in, in his eyes. And he's, he's in his forties. So he really has grown up with this figure looming over his life and his generation, um, since he was very young. But he said that for many of us, Khamenei had become something like a demon, a symbol of evil, like Zahak, which is a figure in Persian mythology, a tyrant from ancient Iranian legends. And according to this myth, a sorcerer or the devil kisses his shoulders. And from the place of those kisses, two snakes grow out of Zahak's shoulders.

16:54And to calm those snakes, they have to be fed every day with the brains of young people. And he asked me, you know, think about how symbolic this is that young people were sacrificed so that this tyrant and this monstrous system can survive. That was his way of, you know, articulating how symbolic and important it was to bring down this figure, especially after the deaths of so many young people in January. More with Cora Engelbrecht after the break. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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18:36So there's a war happening, and the unpredictability of the strikes make it very difficult to characterize anything as, like, normal or routine. but I'm still wondering if you can say a little bit about what like normal daily life looks like for people like Hadi who lives in Tehran. Yeah I think when we were deciding whether or not this would be something valuable for people to see it was hard at first because he wasn't really able to go anywhere he was at home sheltering a lot of the time when the bombardment started He would go out here and there. He couldn't really film anything on the streets.

19:14Very dangerous to do so. But would try and give a lot of descriptions of how difficult it was to get food, bread, the lines around the blocks from bakeries, from ATMs. TMs. And gradually, I think as he got used to the rhythm of the bombardments, he started making plans with friends to try and gather. This was still daring, but people were desperate to do so, especially in his community dissidents who are trying to track each other closely, trying to figure out, you know, when there might be a moment to start organizing, just share information. This is what they do. So he was finding ways to get out or have people over.

20:05But for the most part, he's sheltering at home. Over the first seven days, I'd say he started seeing a lot of people leaving, a lot of people leaving the city, either because they had been directly affected by the bombardments, their homes had been damaged, or they just didn't see any reason to stay. It was too dangerous. It wasn't worth the risk. So he was determined to stick it out, and he started collecting these responsibilities from people who had left and fled. His routine became kind of that of a janitor for those who had disappeared. He would take care of people's cats. That was some of the more colorful material he sent.

20:52He collected a lot of keys from people whose family members had fled. He also was receiving a flurry of requests from people outside the country since he still had internet. I think as word got around that he had this secure connection, or a lot of relatives and friends started getting in touch with him from abroad, asking him to try and reach their relatives inside, check on them, find them safe housing, see if they were imprisoned in certain wards in Tehran. So, yeah, he became this kind of on-the-ground fixer. A lot of this information he didn't think was worth sharing with me. I had to keep prompting him to share because it is fascinating how the people who remain, you know, the responsibilities that they take on.

21:44No, I mean, I found like the story in its entirety is just so compelling. But like the videos of him feeding the various cats and you kind of just see like this empty city and he's in it and he's doing all these things, trying to help people, also trying to make sure that he stays safe. It's just, no, it's really, really incredible to, you know, hear his story, but also to see it. There's one message that he sent to you that I think about so much, which is when he talks about how for years the Islamic Republic was preparing itself for war with Israel, but only in military terms. And then he kind of goes on to describe how society there is just not really built to, you know, help people who have to shelter when a war is on.

22:30Could you talk a little bit about, you know, what he explained to you in that moment in terms of just like how hard it is to be a civilian in Iran when the country is getting bombed? Yeah, that was one of the more surprising dispatches he sent where he said that there were just, in all the videos that he sent, because he sent a lot of the bombardments from his rooftops where a lot of neighbors would come out to watch and even to cheer these bombardments that were happening in other parts of the city. There were no sirens going on. There were no warnings. You know, they were getting text messages every day from the government warning them what would happen to them if they were to send any information out.

23:11But there was nothing informational in terms of their security and their safety. So, yeah, he felt like it was important for people to know how in the dark a lot of people were inside of the country, which is why he would try and gather with others to share information physically in one space. The only other access to information that he really had was on his television, which is just state TV, which he would send me screens of state TV programs more as a joke to say, look, this is the information, this is the story of the war that is being given to us. And even on state TV programs, there were these invitations summoning people to come out into the streets at night, which is when the bombardments were happening.

23:59So if anything, there was no indication, no infrastructure for warning or protecting civilians, it seemed. And not even any bomb shelters, right? Not any bomb shelters, right, for them to go to. No organizing to get people evacuated from big cities where a lot of these bombardments were happening. If anything, they want people to remain, come out into the streets, show their support. I feel like one of the more harrowing things about your piece is that it's kind of like you have threats coming from all sides. It's like you have someone who's in Tehran basically trying to dodge these strikes from the U.S.

24:36and Israel. And then there's also the regime itself, which continues to be incredibly oppressive. And even though there was this death of the Ayatollah very early into the war, kind of the beginning of the war, it doesn't necessarily seem like the regime has gotten weaker. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the way in which the sources in this piece were dealing with the regime on top of everything else. Yeah, there's a great proverb that he fed me at one point. I kept asking this same point, can you talk to me about being stuck between this, especially after these massive massacres and all these funeral services, people are just still reeling from trying to pick up the pieces of, you know, the human consequences of this lethal crackdown.

25:29and now they're dealing with war outside of Hadi. I'd been in touch with a lot of families prior to the war who were trying to locate their relatives who had lost contact with family members since the start of the demonstrations and now suddenly they were having to leave their homes to continue these searches while they're under bombardment. I kept asking him about cases like this and just what this must feel like. And he came back to me with this really great proverb called the mourning and the wedding chicken, which refers to a chicken that gets cooked either for a funeral or a wedding. He says it's usually said of someone who will lose no matter what happens, and that the people of Iran are like these mourning and wedding chickens.

26:20They're getting killed both by their government, and now they're under threat by this bombardment from foreign forces. I think of this when I hear someone like Trump ask people to come out under an autocratic regime and take back their country. You don't know what it's like to leave your house and even just visibly on the streets see these hulking regime besieged military forces roving the streets with guns with their hands on the trigger. It's a really terrifying way to just walk around. Outside of that, yeah, people's homes are being raided constantly. He speaks about this specifically, that some of his friends, if not their home, if they can't find the actual dissident they're going after, they locate their relatives and they'll go to their home, raid their home, take all of their electronics.

27:18People are still being arrested. And, you know, last week they started executions of prisoners that were arrested during the demonstrations in January. So the country's at war, but the crackdown definitely ensues. This is a priority for the regime. It knows that there are a lot of people at home and that their hate for the government has only deepened in the wake of all of these mass killings and that many people are waiting for their moment to organize. How did Hadi and the other people in the dissident community respond to the appointment of Hominay's son as the new Ayatollah? Was that kind of a turning point for the worse?

28:14Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of his friends felt that this was a really deflating moment, that there was so much hope and symbolism surrounding the death of Hamanim, that the appointment of Mushtaba, his son, was equally symbolic, that this was just going to continue on. and that they were vacated of their agency in this moment. It felt really, really depressing. He had one friend visit him the next day who said exactly this. He was more like, whatever, honestly, this is just— How he was? Yeah, a continuation of the same. These generational supreme leaders, they're interchangeable. If anything, they lose their power or their fervor.