In Iran, an Uneasy Calm Amid a Cease-Fire
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What is the current situation in Iran amid the cease-fire?
Hi there. I'm Jessica Mendoza. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm the co-host of the journal podcast. I live in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday afternoon, I opened up WhatsApp to record a voice note, a message to a man in Tehran, one of many people inside Iran that our reporters have been able to speak to in recent weeks. I wanted to know how people there were feeling this week as the world counted down to a Tuesday night deadline set by President Trump. He was threatening to strike Iran's power plants, bridges, and other critical infrastructure, and warning in a social media post that, quote, a whole civilization will die tonight if Iran didn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Within minutes, my WhatsApp pinged.
The man had responded. Reporter Hamraz Bayan translated for both of us in Farsi and English.
Hello, I'm 38 years old.
How are ordinary Iranians coping with the war?
I'm a civil engineer, and I manage construction projects.
Alongside that, my wife and I run a cafe and a restaurant.
There were a few hours till the deadline, and he was at home with friends, bracing for a potentially serious escalation of the conflict.
We were with two friends.
Tonight, we've invited two of our friends over to our home just to be together. It might be the last night we have electricity. Right now, we are having a small gathering.
By tomorrow morning, when we wake up, very bad things may have happened.
Less than 90 minutes before Trump's deadline, the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Trump's threats were off, for now. For many across Iran, the ceasefire brought a wave of relief after weeks of intense bombing. But the two-week pause looks fragile. The man I'd been speaking to told me that for him, the anxiety hasn't lifted.
This ceasefire has also made us worried whether in the next two weeks they will reach a final agreement, because right now both sides of the war are claiming victory. People are both happy and afraid at the same time. We have to wait two weeks to see which direction this situation will move in.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.
What led to the fragile cease-fire agreement between the U.S. and Iran?
I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, April 9th.
Coming up on the show, inside Iran during a fragile ceasefire.
For weeks now, people inside Iran have been living with this constant tension. What happens next? With the tentative ceasefire in place, I wanted to understand what regular Iranians had been living through. I started by sitting down with our colleague Jared Malson, who covers the Middle East from Turkey. And he reminded me that many Iranians were already suffering even before the bombing campaign began.
Well, so to begin with, you have to put this in context to set the stage of where Iran was before the war, which is the country was in a very severe economic crisis. You had this collapsing currency, a surge in price inflation, a rising cost of food and inability to sort of make economic decisions, which caused these protests over the winter and really a huge uprising against the government. The regime responded with a deadly crackdown in which they sent security forces to open fire on those crowds of people.
A new video appears to show protesters in Iran being shot.
Killing thousands of people in one of the worst, deadliest political crackdowns in recent world history anywhere.
Over a few days in January, Iranian security forces shot and killed thousands of protesters in the streets. Tonight, mounting evidence shows there is a deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters. Reports that thousands of anti-government protesters have been killed during a brutal crackdown. The exact death toll has been hard to confirm, but some human rights groups estimate that over 10,000 people were killed. Just a few weeks later, the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, and life got even harder for many Iranians.
People that we spoke to on the ground in Iran talked about how The bombings were shaking their buildings at night, waking up their children, blowing out the windows of their houses, and just causing a lot of fear and anxiety about the future of the country.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the current situation in Iran amid the cease-fire?
0:03–1:07
2
How are ordinary Iranians coping with the war?
1:07–2:53
3
What led to the fragile cease-fire agreement between the U.S. and Iran?
2:53–6:27
4
What are the implications of the cease-fire for the future of Iran?
6:27–8:47
5
How has the economic crisis affected Iran's stability before the war?
8:47–10:48
6
What challenges does the cease-fire present for long-term peace?
10:48–12:32
7
How is the Iranian regime approaching negotiations with the U.S.?
12:32–15:05
8
What are the personal stakes for Iranians as the cease-fire unfolds?
15:05–18:51