Chapter 1: What recent events have shaped the situation in Iran?
From 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. Jason 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. We 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. So 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.
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Chapter 2: What unique perspective does Jason Rezaian bring to the discussion?
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, if that was his desire in the first place. I don't think that if you asked him, he'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. The regime is ready to keep taking hits, to keep fighting. They'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 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. I 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. I think there were a lot of people in the sort of foreign policy, the expert space, who said this supreme leader has 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, you know, there's horse trading, jockeying, lots of vying for influence and power within that system, and they have lots of guns.
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. And I think that what we missed was the idea that an aerial campaign that...
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Chapter 3: How does the current ceasefire impact the Iranian conflict?
But going back to his contested re-election 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. 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. Whether it's Starlink or direct-to-cell 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 I wanted to back up for a minute to talk about this moment in February, right? The U.S. and Israel launch 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.
You 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? So the... 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. There's a travel ban against people of color. 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 of 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.
I 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.
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Chapter 4: What role does technology play in supporting the Iranian people?
But anyway, I mean, it was the sort of thing that I joke about it and I joked about it at the time. But, you know, I was getting incredible death threats and they re-air it. So I think that I don't know that I'll...
be able to go back ever I hope that I can I hope things change dramatically I get lots and lots of messages from people that are very positive inside the country I meet people all the time who've recently left Iran and arrived in the west and
You know, I think in all those interactions, people have shown a layer of knowledge and complexity about the circumstances that I faced, and that's encouraging. But just knowing their track record of hostage-taking and targeted assassinations, sadly, I just don't think it's happening anytime soon.
I want to turn for a minute to talk about press freedom, bigger picture. You've been a longtime advocate for press freedom around the world. It's a cause that's important to me, too. How are you looking at that imperative in this political moment, right, in the U.S. and abroad in the context of the Trump administration? I mean, what stands out to you? What should listeners know?
So the decline of press freedoms in democratic societies has been going on since before Trump. And in this country, going back to September 11th and beyond, and I think in a lot of instances in other parts of the world. They've used the national security protocols that we created to suspend Miranda rights and due process.
They've kind of weaponized this against journalists and others in their countries, right? So when I was taken and said, okay, you're being accused of national security crimes. We don't have to give you access to a lawyer. And, you know, I'd get into these long conversations about, you know, Guantanamo Bay with my interrogators, right?
And you can see that, like, they're using this as a justification. And then I think there's been this sort of trend of dehumanizing journalists. Oftentimes female journalists. Maria Ressa, a Nobel Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines. Rana Ayyub, a Washington Post contributor from India.
It's all designed not only to silence the individual, but to silence others and to deter others from getting into this work. Then there's this whole other element of the problem, which is economic and the business models of journalism. You guys understand this very well here. We deal with it all the time.
And I think the ecosystem of press freedom defenders, and when I say that, it's a big community of individuals and organizations. is catching up to the problems at hand. There was a time when a strong letter from a U.S. senator was all that was required. That's quaint. Or a statement of condemnation. Those things don't do anything anymore. They take journalists prisoner because it's audacious.
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