How the Internet Could Help the Iranian People

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2:13From Wired, this is The Big Interview, where we'll get to know the people beyond the headlines, in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power, and culture. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director, Katie Drummond. It's been nearly three months since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, targeting its nuclear facilities and infrastructure. Gas prices are rising, traffic in the crucial Strait of Hormuz is being disrupted, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. To help us make sense of this and what could be next, I'm joined by Jason Rezaian, director of Press Freedom Initiatives at The Washington Post.

2:48Jason has a perspective on this conflict that few others do. He's an Iranian-American, a former Tehran correspondent, and in 2014, he was detained in Iran's notorious Evin prison, accused by the regime of being an American spy. Jason spent nearly a year and a half in prison as world powers were embroiled in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. This year marks a decade since Jason's release in a prisoner swap. Jason, thank you so much for being here and welcome to The Big Interview. Thanks for having me, Katie. I appreciate it. Delighted that you're here. So let's start with the latest.

3:19We are talking on a Wednesday, about a week before this episode is going to come out. Right now, there is what I would describe, I think, as a fragile ceasefire in place. Questions remain over how long it will hold. The U.S. has not ruled out additional strikes. And there are fears, especially with Iran's latest statements, that the war could spread not only beyond its borders, beyond the borders of the Middle East. That's the big concern as it stands today. What is your sense and your interpretation of the situation right now? I want to start by saying that we've been at some level of conflict with Iran since 1979.

3:59So we've never been at peace with the Islamic Republic. one of the first things that they did was take American diplomats and held them hostage in our embassy in Tehran. So this enmity, animosity is not new. I think where we are right now in this ceasefire, if I had to guess, I don't think that the Trump administration, President Trump in particular, wants to attack Iran again. It seems pretty obvious to me from his statements, right? I was going to do it last night, but, you know, I got talked out of it. Changed my mind. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think it's pretty clear that the economic pain that we're feeling at home has changed his attitude and desire for regime change.

4:47If that was his desire in the first place. I don't think that if you asked him, you'd have a clear answer of why he got into this in the first place. That being said, I mean, I think Israel, in particular, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to keep going. I think he's the wild card in this situation. And then also the level of pain and suffering that the Iranian regime is ready to absorb and ready to force its public to absorb, I think is beyond what we imagined. Right. I also don't want to conflate the people of Iran with the regime. Of course. Regime is ready to keep taking hits, to keep fighting.

5:30They've been in a fighting posture with the United States, but with other countries for the entirety of their existence for the last 47 years. That's not to say that they want to keep fighting. I don't think it's necessarily in their long term interest to do so. So I think, you know, we will see skirmishes pretty incredible that Israel and the United States were able to take out so many top layers of the Iranian leadership, both last summer and then in the strikes that started earlier this year. Maybe even more incredible, though, is that the regime has continued to function. Well, and this is actually a question I have for you.

6:09I remember several months ago when these 2026 U.S.-Israel attacks happened. They took out the supreme leader. They made a big show of it. It was a big sort of public show of force on their part. And I remember sort of thinking, but surely the Iranian regime has layers upon layers of succession planning. And indeed they did. I mean, I'm a news junkie, but certainly by no means an expert in Iran. But it was very obvious to me that that was the case and would be the case. Did the United States and Israel simply miss something there? I think that our analysis of Iran in Washington leaves a lot to be desired.

6:53I think there were a lot of people in the sort of foreign policy, the expert space who said this supreme leader is the totalitarian leader of Islamic theocracy and when he dies it'll all fall apart. Well, that was never going to happen. It doesn't mean that there isn't dissent. It doesn't mean that people want to see this regime perpetuate. But there is a very big power structure that is built with Iranian ingenuity and creativity, which means there's horse trading, jockeying, lots of vying for influence and power within that system. And they have lots of guns, right? Yeah. So they're able to maintain control for, I don't want to say the foreseeable future, I don't want to put an expiration date on it, but they have control right now.

7:43And I think that what we missed was the idea that an aerial campaign that was, frankly, incredibly successful and took out lots and lots of leaders beyond the supreme leader, a lot of officials, former Speaker of Parliament who was main negotiator in earlier nuclear negotiations and many others, that that would lead to somehow an opening. and President Trump talked about this, for people to rise up. Well, how are people who are unarmed and unable to connect to the internet? And I talk about this a lot to the extent that people say, is it really that simple to get people back online? No, it's not that simple.

8:26But the fact that we're not able to help them stay online and internet access is like oxygen as it is anywhere else in the world at this point. Going back to 2009 when, and I want to talk about President Ahmadinejad because he's back in the news again this week, right? But going back to his contested reelection in 2009, the first time that the Islamic Republic cut off the internet, the United States has said, we're not going to let this happen again. We're going to do whatever we can to keep them online, right? And your audience and your colleagues at Wired know a lot more about how the internet works than I do, but we have technological capability to help people stay online in ways that we didn't have 17, 18 years ago.

9:13Whether it's Starlink or direct-to-sell satellite internet access, these things exist. And they're a hell of a lot cheaper than the missiles and bombs that we have been, the American taxpayer has been subsidizing. And I wanted to ask you about the internet blackout. We'll talk more about that. But But I wanted to back up for a minute to talk about this moment in February, right? The U.S. and Israel launched strikes in Iran. For you as an Iranian-American to go from protests that felt there was potential, real potential for a monumental change, even maybe a step towards democracy, to what is unfolding now.

9:51You wrote an article about sort of the excitement and the hope you were feeling as Iranians took to the streets in protest against the regime. Fast forward to now, we're in a very different scenario. I want to acknowledge that the administration did a better job of acknowledging the reality that Iranians were rising up against their repressive regime better than previous administrations had and faster. Right. Right. So the idea that Donald Trump wanted to have the backs of protesters, right, support protesters, it's a nice notion. And it would have been a nice about face for a president who has, unfortunately, going back to his first term, done nothing but make the lives of Iranian people harder.

10:38There's a travel ban against people of several countries. The first iteration of that, which he did almost immediately coming into office in 2017, it was fewer than 10 countries that were affected at that time. But if you looked at the data, more than half of visa applicants would have been from Iran. So you can't really say that you're supporting the aspirations of Iranian civil society and institute a travel ban that blocks them from studying in our universities and taking part in all the wonderful things about the United States, not helping them stay on the Internet when they're blocked from it.

11:16I would like to see the United States, which is still the strongest power in the world, right? If you take all of our assets as a superpower, militarily, economically, but really importantly, culturally, and in terms of soft power and resources that we can provide to support freeing up societies, I'd like us to better employ that last bit. And I think that's the missing piece of the puzzle here. Well, in terms of the way of going about it, I'm curious for your take on what was the goal here? What is the goal here? Did they know? And I think going back to the very first days of this and then to the first set of attacks last June, this question of is there daylight between the Israeli and American plans for this?

12:12and U.S. officials say, absolutely no daylight. We're in this together. We have the same goal. I don't think that was ever true. I don't even think they realized what the goal is. And in a situation where you have not had your own diplomatic ties with a country, the size and scope of Iran, 93 million people, biggest combined oil and gas reserves in the world, a top three national security challenge for half a century, right? But it's really like a political football. We should have a national policy towards Iran, not one that changes every two or four years based on elections that we have in this country.

12:56So I think we missed a lot, and we continue to miss a lot. And if the reporting that the New York Times had about Israel and the United States hoping to free up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president, from house arrest to potentially lead Iran after the regime fell. It's just really quixotic and kind of ridiculous. Yeah, it is ridiculous. If those are the plans, then there's not real plans. Then there was no plan. There was no friggin' plan. No plan. Now, you were accused of espionage by the regime. You were detained for 544 days. Watching all of this unfold now from the U.S., I mean, I'm sure mixed feelings doesn't even begin to describe what you're feeling, but you know so much more about how brutal this regime can be to its own people than obviously the average American.

13:47I would say, you know, the 99 % of people given what you went through. Talk to me about that. I mean, what should Americans know about the Iranian regime? What they should know is that it is incredibly brutal to its own population. It's capable of metting out chaos and violence to people in the region and in isolated instances, people on U.S. soil, on European soil. but that ultimately this regime is not a match for the United States and our allies, right? I mean, I'm not going to call it a paper tiger because you can see that it's holding its own. But they fight asymmetrically. Sometimes we say that that is a sign that they are a sponsor of terror.

14:38And I'm not going to get into those designations. But really what it means is if you force them into conventional ways of dealing with problems, they can't really do it. The future of that country has to be in the hands of the people of that country. The hands of the people of that country are tied in multiple ways. And over a 25-year period that we've recognized their desire for change, going back to the late 1990s when they elected Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who espoused a much more open approach to the world, every time they've had the opportunity in these elections, they've gone for the person who says, we want to open up the society.

15:22Our path towards success is opening up. If you're looking at it on balance, we haven't really done anything to support those aspirations. And I would argue that every time we've gotten involved, it's kind of set that clock back. If I think about the early 2000s when I first started traveling to Iran, I made my first trip to Iran in the spring of 2001 before 9-11. And then six months later, after 9-11, and then in 2003, I moved there for the better part of a year, kept going back and forth until ultimately I moved there in 2009. There were many moments when the society, I think, was closer to opening up and really reclaiming some autonomy and control from this regime.

16:15And at every turn, we had sanctions or a military attack or cyber attacks that kind of set those things back. How much of what's happening in Iran right now are we actually hearing about? I mean, look, even when I was there before I was arrested, I can't say that there was a sort of a flourishing journalistic core. There was a handful of us working there and then local media. At that time, let's say there were 20 foreign correspondents based there. It's a country of 93 million people. It's massive. It's huge. And from the day that I was arrested until now, 12 years later, the access of independent international media has only shrunk.

16:58We don't have good access into it. We don't have good windows into it. And I think when I look at the information war that's being fought on social media and also, you know, lots of deep fakes and very difficult landscape to try and verify information from, it's very confusing for the average American. And I think if you look at the Israel-Gaza conflict post-October 7th and Ukraine-Russia war, very similar. But this is the first one that America is actually directly involved in. And ordinary people, when they watch this news, without any context and without real open access to information from that country, how do you expect them to make sense of it?

17:46Well, and this was a question I had for you was the quote unquote meme wars, right? Sort of the social media propaganda war that's playing out. You have the Trump administration putting out like just these bizarre like movie clip propaganda, you know, warmongering videos. You then have, you know, pro-Iranian activists, young creators putting out things like these Lego videos. I don't know if you've seen them. I've seen a few of them, yeah. How are you seeing sort of the propaganda piece of this conflict? I would first of all say that Iranian propaganda from the time I was detained until now has improved leaps and bounds in efficacy, right?

18:29Yeah. My impression would be, and correct me if you think I'm wrong, would be that more Americans probably saw those Lego videos than saw the Trump administration's bizarre propaganda. And not just Americans, people from all over the world. Look, I don't think that there are guys sitting in Tehran who have a full understanding of the cultural contexts that we're dealing with here. But they've done a great job of outsourcing that. They have. Whoever is doing that. And it's less reactive. You know, when I was taken, and I've seen this play out in other instances of hostages that they've taken. there's just like a kind of an immediate campaign to sully the reputation of that person you know we've got this evidence of x y and z the story that they tell is very much from their own point of view for their own audience for their own domestic audience this is different right this is real trolling right yeah and it works it makes people think to themselves wow you know when they bring the Epstein files into it and gun violence into our country, you know, they would talk about those things on their state television, but talk about it in their, from their own ideological lens that this is ungodly.

19:49This is, you know, un-Islamic. Look at, you know, how those infidels live over there. This is very different. It's designed to be consumed by young people here. And in that way, it's not only more potentially effective, but also more radicalizing. I want to talk about this, the internet blackout. And for listeners who are not sort of following this closely, someone living in Iran right now, what can they not do? What can they not access that we take for granted here? Look, in normal times, they can access almost everything through VPNs, things like Twitter and Facebook, TikTok, highly filtered.

20:35So it takes some time and some doing to get online. But Instagram, for example, has been mostly open since 2012. And it's something that a lot of Iranian businesses rely on as a means to advertise. because it's really the only space that they had. Right now, with this internet blackout, almost all of that is shut off. It's also a country that relies and has for at least a decade on Telegram, right? Right, of course, yeah. So, you know, that's a way that people have been sharing information and communicating for over a decade. That's been taken away from them. You do have a handful of people who have what they call white SIM cards, right?

21:20People who do have access. And so anybody that you see posting from Iran right now, you should be very skeptical about what they're saying because they are doing it with the approval or acceptance of the state. That's what that would mean, the white sim card. Yeah. And I'll tell you, over the last couple of months, there have been a handful of instances where I'll get a DM from somebody in Iran or see somebody post a story and then immediately try and communicate with them and maybe have a few messages back and forth before it gets cut. I remember, you know, very clearly in the wake of that 2009 election and the protests, the violence, and the internet shutdown that followed it, how disorienting that is.

22:13Once you've, you know, become so accustomed to it. And I can tell you, in a year and a half that I was in prison, I didn't have access to the internet. And it's incredibly disorienting. Sort of like isolating. It's so isolating. And it's also, you don't realize until you don't have it how often you rely on it to answer a question in a day. Yeah. From things that you need to know to more mundane pieces of information. You know, what was the name of the actor in that movie? Who won the World Series in 1987? Those sorts of things that are sort of standard parts of your life. You're starved of all of that, right?

22:53And imagine that on a mass scale. I've seen a couple of really good essays where former political prisoners have written about the feeling of imprisonment that not having access to the Internet sort of replicates for them. And I talk about this over and over and over again, hoping that someone in the position of power in the United States is listening and thinks to themselves, well, maybe there is something that we can do. Well, and what could they do that they're not doing? So, I mean, look, I think the silly idea is to activate and drop a lot of Starlink terminals. Come on, Elon. I would support a contract, you know, a U.S.

23:37government contract to do that because it would cost less than a couple of these missiles. Yeah, sure. And we own the airspace at this point. You know, they don't have air defenses. And then, you know, the use of this, I think every cell phone, every smartphone produced after 2020 or 2021 has the ability to connect to satellite internet. It requires flipping switches. To do that, we require an act of Congress or an executive order and probably some guarantees to cellular providers that if you provide cellular access to Iran, we're not going to sanction you. We're not going to enforce this. Do you have any educated guess or informed hypothesis about why these very simple switches are not being?

24:22I just don't think it's on people's radar screens. And I don't think that you should connect a country of how many people? Ninety three million people back to the Internet. I think it's one, not necessarily on their radar screens to not a priority, because I think if the right people knew about it, they'd do it today. Yeah. Well, hopefully someone's listening. I mean, it seems exceedingly obvious. It's pretty obvious. Right. And it's one of these things where we put people on the moon, right? We've figured out a lot of much more complex challenges. This is a country of 93 million people. The smartphone penetration is incredibly high.

25:00People use these things. It's kind of an obvious piece of the puzzle that hasn't been put in place yet. What are we all missing in all the talk about the street and gas prices and the Trump administration? What are we missing about those 93 million people, right? The daily lives, the aspirations, the future. None of us are immune to, you know, rising costs and how that impacts our lives. But it is a very minor, I don't want to say inconvenience because I know it's more than that, but it's minor in comparison with the matters of life and death and liberty that these people are faced with on a daily basis.

25:49have so many instances of Iranians stepping forward and saying, hey, look, we want to connect with the outside world. We want to be able to study in your universities. We want to be able to learn from your institutions. We want you to come and invest in our country. Actually, the regime even courts foreign investment. And I would say, hey, foreign company, don't send your staff there until they make some guarantees that they're not going to take people hostage because they do that all the time so it's a very complicated situation because there is not a good guy in this story the good guy is the people of iran the united states of america islamic republic of iran and israel neither of those three entities have the interests of the people of iran in their agenda and i defy you to show me otherwise.

26:46I mean, a lot of people go, no, we love our people. Or, you know, the Israelis or Americans say, no, we've got their back. We said, no, you haven't. You haven't done anything credible to support them. How do I know that? Because their life gets worse and worse and worse. And you can't just pin it on one group. The Islamic Republic will pin it on America. We pin it on the Islamic Republic. In the middle, people are saying, hey, look, just help us. And there have been many, many, many people who've said consistently, if you're going to start this war, keep going to the end, because they're going to treat us much worse.

27:26You know, when there is external force and pressure on an authoritarian state, and the Islamic Republic is a prime example, their response, their reaction is always to take out more revenge and force on their population. It's not an act of vengeance. It's an act of survival. If the people sense weakness from the air, they're going to respond with incredible force against them on the ground. And that's what they've been doing. The execution rate is as high this year as it was last year. And last year was the highest rate of executions that they've had since the early 1980s, right? It's not rocket science.

28:10And, you know, unfortunately, I know and love a lot of people in that country, and I'm not willing to concede that their lives can be collateral damage in the ideological struggle between big powers. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Ever notice how the second you Google something, suddenly every ad you see is about it? Or you try to watch something while traveling and it's just blocked? Yeah, the internet isn't as open as we think. That's why I started using ProtonVPN. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security.

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