STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Next, we hear voices from inside Iran, where people are watching U.S. and Israeli airstrikes while also watching out for the crackdown from their own government. Despite an internet blackout, some Iranians have been sending NPR’s Arezou Rezvani voice memos.
AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: Twenty-eight-year-old M dreads nighttime in Tehran.
M: (Through interpreter) I go to sleep terrified. Every night, we’re jolted awake by explosions and bombs raining down on the city.
REZVANI: He asks NPR to only use his first initial for fear of government reprisal. He says security forces across the capital city are stopping people at checkpoints and requesting their phones.
M: (Through interpreter) They looked through one of my friend’s phones the other day. They searched to see if he had any apps for bypassing the internet blackout, and they looked through his text messages.
REZVANI: Some 400 miles away from Tehran in the city of Baneh, near the Iran-Iraq border, a 40-year-old Kurdish Iranian man, who asked NPR not to identify him even by an initial, describes a militarized city.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Through interpreter) These security forces are everywhere. They’ve left their stations and are in schools, hospitals, mosques and the sports stadiums and have told people who live near those places to leave. The regime has sent most of its forces to border cities. And for the first time, all armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guard and the army, are working together.
REZVANI: Numerous sources inside Iran have shared similar versions of these accounts with NPR in recent days. They alleged security forces have relocated to civilian buildings, that they’re hunting down people who talk with foreign media. Many say they’ve received text messages warning them not to join crowds that might turn into protests. It’s a heavy price Iranians are paying, and some are willing to endure it.
On a muffled phone line, one 17-year-old girl in Tehran, who also asked NPR not to name her for fear of government reprisals, says that despite the destruction and the casualties, she wants the U.S. and Israel to carry on.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Through interpreter) You guys killed our old supreme leader. Thank you very much for that. I’d like to also see his son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, and all the other top officials join him in the afterlife.
REZVANI: She still dreams of regime change and worries President Trump might call off the war and simply accept the surviving ruling establishment.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: “If these guys stay, I’d rather die than go on living,” she says.
(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Israel and the United States.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Israel and…
REZVANI: Throughout this war, Iran’s state TV and social media channels have been showing footage of anti-Iran war protests abroad. Crowds are seen denouncing Trump’s strikes on Iran as an illegal act of war, an argument echoed by Iran’s government. It’s a connection one woman in Tehran finds infuriating.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Through interpreter) I see these left-wing, anti-war protesters abroad. Perhaps they don’t know what they’re supporting. This is a system that legally allows child marriages, that executes gay people. These protesters might think they’re fighting imperialism or Trump, but the real imperialist power is the Islamic republic that has killed thousands of people in Iraq and Syria and killed thousands more of its own people in the most brutal ways. This Islamic republic that speaks of peace and negotiation is the same one that turns around and brutalizes our people.
REZVANI: Iran’s government is fighting for its life. Whether it lives or dies will have enormous consequences for people living through the war.
Arezou Rezvani, NPR News, Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
(SOUNDBITE OF BOREAL MONKEY’S “MASTERPIECE”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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