MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Let's talk now about a new book about a specific country. The book describes that country as being heavily influenced by, and I quote, "a movement that harbored dreams of social justice, equality, independence and political freedom." Can you guess the country? It's Iran, or at least Iran at the time of the 1979 revolution. The path from '79 with the toppling of a monarch through the decades that followed - decades of oppression and economic turmoil - to this current moment is mapped out in the book "Stolen Revolution: Betrayal And Hope In Modern Iran." Co-author and journalist Yeganeh Torbati is here to talk about it. Welcome.
YEGANEH TORBATI: Thank you so much for having me.
KELLY: So I was so eager to read this book because it feels like we've got Iran in the headlines every day right now. But missing from the coverage is often the voices of ordinary Iranians, which you have six of them in this book, six Iranians. Tell me how you picked them. How did you arrive at this particular group?
TORBATI: My co-author and I really wanted to be able to tell the story of Iran through a diverse set of sources and through the experiences of both ordinary people and then also people who had at one point or another held great power and influence inside the country, and really sort of show what had happened since the 1979 revolution through their eyes. So in this book, there's a story of a cleric who is a devoted follower of the founder of the revolution, who rises to great power and then is ousted. And we sort of see through his eyes both the promise of the revolution and why he believed in it and also kind of what happened to that promise over time.
KELLY: Yeah.
TORBATI: You know, there's an - a poet activist who was part of the reform movement and then the green movement. There's a businessman who, I think, gives us a window really into the corruption and the pressure on the private sector in Iran in the modern era. And then there's Gen Z, you know, women who really had a completely different experience of the revolution of the Islamic Republic that resulted and never really had that faith in it that some of our earlier characters had.
KELLY: To raise a practical point, it is risky for people to speak their minds in modern Iran. How did you get these stories? How'd you get people to talk?
TORBATI: A few of the characters are now outside the country, and so it was much safer for them to be able to speak. I do think that, you know, we had the luxury of time. We worked on this book for over five years. And we were able to sort of convince people over time, gain their trust. But I also think, of course, the sources - they showed a great deal of bravery in speaking with us. There were times where we asked people, are you sure you want to go on the record? Are you sure you want to have your name out there? And they were very comfortable with it. They wanted people to know kind of what had happened to them and what actions they had taken over the course of their lives.
KELLY: Yeah. I'm thinking about a point you make in the book. Our understanding outside Iran of Iran, its people, its stories, the country has been so fractured because it has been so hard to hear voices like this. What do you think the consequences of that are? What are you hoping this book might be able to do to change that?
TORBATI: I think one of the consequences is that we hear a lot from the government's perspective, and I think that's been magnified over the last few months when the internet has been shut down in Iran. You know, it would have been very difficult for us to report this book under these conditions because we relied on people having internet connections and being able to speak with us for sometimes hours at a time.
KELLY: Interesting. So you couldn't have maybe gotten all of these voices now (inaudible).
TORBATI: Not at this moment, right? And I think what we wanted to do was talk to supporters of the government and also opponents, really a wide range, but just have a more nuanced understanding of kind of their experience of what it's like to live in Iran, what it's like to kind of contend with this system. And we don't really paint any of our sources, for sure, as a villain or as all good. We think that, you know, people have to make choices to survive and to contend...
KELLY: People are complicated whether they're Iranian or American or anything else.
TORBATI: Exactly.
KELLY: And what you're saying resonates, you know, in a very different country here, speaking of the United States, but the idea that it often is voices on the extremes of our political spectrum that are the ones that get amplified, and it's harder to hear from the relatively quiet people who are somewhere in the middle trying to figure it out. I saw a story you wrote recently about a sense of hopelessness in Iran. Tell me how you went about reporting that and what people told you.
TORBATI: So I've done - you know, obviously, I can get in touch with people in limited fashion, but, you know, it's a complicated issue. I will say that, you know, last year during the 12-day war and after, and at the beginning of this round of conflict, I did hear from a lot of sources that they were happy that this was happening or that they were at least hopeful for it, that, you know, in their view, they have tried a lot of different things. They tried electing moderates and reformists in the '90s. And as you kind of see in the book, that effort is stymied. And for a certain subset of Iranians, they feel like they've tried everything. Nothing has worked. The regime, the government, like, refuses to make significant changes. And therefore, maybe a military attack is the only way to dislodge...
KELLY: External pressure is the only way that we're going to get...
TORBATI: Exactly.
KELLY: ...Anything changed.
TORBATI: And I think, you know, for some of the - I'd say many to most of the people that I've spoken with who had that view, they've been quite disappointed by what this war has brought them. There's no signal to them that this regime is changing. And so I think people just feel like, well, nothing has worked, and what do we do from here?
KELLY: You, in that same story, though, write about a rock concert in Tehran that has just sold out and about, you know, hipsters - young hipsters in Tehran who are still hanging out at cafes and having fun. It's fascinating to read joy continues. Hope does continue even amidst a wider sense of hopelessness.
TORBATI: Life goes on. You know, I think, even people in war zones figure out ways to have those moments of joy 'cause you sort of have to to keep going.
KELLY: To bring it back to the six people that you center in your book, you write that they have diverging visions for Iran's future from the total overthrow of the Islamic Republic to its reform from within to the return of the monarchy. I read that, and I thought, how fascinating, how surprising is it that given how dramatic the events of this spring have been, including the killing of the supreme leader, it's resulted in none of the above. None of those things have happened.
TORBATI: Yeah. I think most of the Iranians I speak with are quite disappointed with kind of where the country is at this point. And it's like, all these dramatic things happen, and we've ended up with a supreme leader who's also named Khamenei and, you know, very much the same system, perhaps even kind of more hardened and willing to kind of exact revenge from those that it sees as its internal enemies. These authoritarian systems are very powerful. It's not 1979 anymore. They have tools at their disposal that the shah didn't have, including surveillance and technology, and the opposition movements inside have been quite repressed. Outside, it's been difficult to kind of form a united front. I think at this moment, a lot of the people I speak with are quite despondent.
KELLY: Yeganeh Torbati, thank you.
TORBATI: Thank you so much for having me.
KELLY: She is Iran correspondent for The New York Times and co-author of the new book "Stolen Revolution." You can hear our full conversation on our national security podcast, Sources & Methods, wherever you get your podcasts.
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