Vanishingly few Western journalists have been able to report from Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in September. Protests erupted after the 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman died in police custody after the so-called morality police accused her of not wearing her hijab appropriately. Five months later, NPR was granted a visa to visit Iran — the first time since 2021.
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly and producers Fatma Tanis and Connor Donevan spent a week in Tehran and Isfahan interviewing citizens and state officials about the months of widespread anti-regime protests and Iran's brutal government response.
"What we know of what's happening in that country is through social media accounts ... [and] the little bits that Iranian journalists have been able to get out," Kelly says. "And so we spent a week going everywhere we could — street corners, parks, people's living rooms, restaurants, wherever — and just saying, 'What do you think about what's happening in your country? What do you want Americans to know?' And then we listened.
"When you go to report from a place like Iran, you're not going to be able to see everything you want to see," she says. "My attitude has always been: what's the alternative? Isn't to glimpse something better than nothing?"
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