Iran latest: View from the border / Trump strong-arms allies

0:00This message comes from Total Line and More. College Basketball's biggest tournament is here, and watch parties are underway. Shop Total Line and More in-store or online to get ready today. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, be 21. Be hard to claim success if world oil prices remain high and there's no real solution here. President Trump has demanded, begged, and threatened U.S. allies to join the war in Iran. Those allies are not exactly leaping in to help. Can Trump finish the war he started without them? This is Sources and Methods from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly every Thursday. On this podcast we dive deep on some of the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters who are out there covering them. This week, I am here in Washington with one of our regulars, Greg Meiery and Pierre National Security Correspondent. Hey there, Greg.

1:00Hi, Mary Louise. And Arzu Resvani and Pierre's correspondent, currently in Erbil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Arzu, welcome. Hi, Mary Louise. So I just want to timestamp this. We are speaking. It is, I believe, just after eight in the evening, your time there in Iraq. It's actually just after seven, my child. Just after seven, your time. Okay, it is about noon, just past noon here on the East Coast. Arzu, kick us off. You're in Iraq. You're trying to cover the war with Iran from next door. And I know you've been there for more than a week. I mean, this may be an obvious question, but why Erbil? Well, I should say, Erbil is considered to be in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. And I'm here because, well, it's a few different reasons actually. The location of Erbil is quite significant. It is wedged between Turkey to our north and Iran to our east. And so this is one of the closest places where you can really feel

2:01and see the fallout from the war next door. And Erbil is a fascinating place because America has a pretty large footprint here. There is a US consulate in Erbil that has been targeted in recent days by both Iran and Iran-backed militias. And there is also a US military base here in Erbil next to the airport that has also been targeted by Iran and Iran-backed militias. So you can definitely feel the war in those places. You said you can see it. You can feel it the fallout from the war. Like what? It paint me a picture of what it's like in Erbil right now. Well, the nighttime is when you really sense the most activity. That is when a lot of drones start flying into Erbil. A lot of intercepts from the air defense system here. And in some senses, life is really normal. But everyday life is punctuated by the sudden boom in the distance. And sometimes it doesn't feel so distant.

3:02Sometimes it feels really close by. Talk to me about how you're operating there. As an international journalist, I know, for example, you tried to leave your base in Erbil and drive south to Baghdad. What happened? Yeah, I was with a team and our group tried to go down to Baghdad. The reason being that Baghdad is another place where there's a pretty large American footprint. It's where the largest US embassy in the world is located. And that embassy has been getting attacked relentlessly by Iran in recent days. Did not know that we're still the biggest US embassy in the world. Go on. Interesting. Yeah. And Iran-backed militias are also attacking it pretty relentlessly. And the US military also has a base there. So we wanted to go down there to get a sense of how hot this war was there. Iran-backed militias, many of them are based there. A lot of their parliamentary members are affiliated with those Iran-backed militias.

4:04We wanted to speak with them face to face. So we were about to go. We were actually on our way to head down there. And at one of the checkpoints, we were stopped. They took a look at our passports, figured out that we were Americans, and advised us to turn around. And we did get a call from the US embassy really advising us to reconsider going down there. There was some chatter about kidnappings, I suppose, in certain circles. And so they were very nervous having Americans go down there. What about going the other way? You've been to the border with Iran, trying to talk to people who are just leaving Iran. Tell me where exactly we're and what people were telling you. So about three hours east of Erbil, by car, there is the Haji Umran border crossing. I spent a few hours there, and one of the most striking things for my visit was that in a few

5:05hours we were there, there were a couple of drones that flew overhead. These are the noisy and cheap drones that Iran has been launching since the start of this war. They were flying very low, very slow. And so that was pretty interesting. And then we also, what was striking to me was the fact that people who were crossing over were absolutely terrified to speak, even though they had left Iran. I spoke with one woman, she was in her 60s, and I asked her what life was like under this war. And she kept talking about the economy and how difficult it was to find jobs and hold jobs. It was almost like we were having two different conversations. She's not answering your question. Not answering my questions, which is, you know, as you know, Mara Louise, you've covered Iran. It's not unusual, but at one point, she turned to me and asked me to turn off my mic.

6:10And at that point, she burst into tears and said that life had become absolutely unbearable between the airstrikes from the sky and Iran's crackdown on the ground. That it had just become so difficult to live. And she had wished that some of the airstrikes on her city had killed her. So it's a very disparate situation in Iran right now. Pull back the curtain a little bit because you've been doing some amazing work trying to get us voices of people still in Iran. Just walk us to the extent that you're able through how that works. You know, it's very, very challenging. I mean, even during peacetime, it's a very difficult place to reach people and to get people to talk with you. Iran has a very, very strong surveillance state. It does not tolerate critics very well. And so people have always been very reluctant to speak. But it's especially difficult right now because for the last couple of weeks, and really the last couple of months ever since protests erupted,

7:14there has been an internet blackout. It's a very intense internet blackout. At times, only 1% of the country has connectivity. And so it's been virtually impossible to reach people. Those who have starling or some kind of sophisticated configuration can get online. And I have been able to stay in touch with some of those people. But I got to tell you, I mean, I look at my phone every day. I look at the telegram channels or I check into WhatsApp. And there are people who I still have not heard from in the last two weeks. Yeah. And your mind starts to wander. Are they okay? Yeah. Are they okay? Have they fled? Have they been detained? So it's very, very difficult. We're going to take a short break. When we get back, President Trump has been trying to wrangle support from allies to end Iran's effective shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz. Those allies told him no. And what happens when the president hears no? That's ahead, on sources and methods from NPR.

8:16This message comes from LinkedIn. Who knows an empty seat can cost small businesses more than just space. That's why LinkedIn Hiring Pro makes it easy to fill that seat with the right candidate. Streamlining everything from posting jobs to short-listing talent. Nearly 60% of businesses find someone to interview in the first week. Hire right the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off at LinkedIn.com slash NPR offer. Terms and conditions apply. We're back on Sunday. President Trump demanded that NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. Here he is. This is speaking to reporters on Air Force One. It's the place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect. The next day, Monday, this is now at a White House event. He changed tech, criticized longtime allies who were not to use his word enthusiastic enough to help. Countries he says the United States has helped.

9:18We've protected them from horrible outside sources and they weren't that enthusiastic and the level of enthusiasm matters to me. Okay, again, that was Monday, then came Tuesday. We don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them. We don't need them. That's quite the flip-flop. Greg Myri, here we are just about coming up to have past noon on Thursday. Where are we at now? Well, still no confirmed assistance from Europe or Asia. The president, as you noted, has been all over the place and even before the war, he didn't consult with allies except when he took time to insult them. There was no coalition that was built. So he doesn't have any partners right now and it's going to be a very tough nut to crack, to have one country do it alone. The Gulf countries are getting hit and so they're very active in their own defense

10:23but it's not clear what kind of naval presence they might be able to bring. One thing I do think that's important to point out here is a lot of this oil in the Strait of Hormuz now goes to Asia in contrast to the past where it used to go to the US and the West. And I spoke with Daniel Jurgen. He's the longtime expert on the oil industry, wrote the classic book about the industry called The Prize. He's now at S&P Global. Let's have a listen to what he had to say. Japan gets 90% of its crude oil from the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea, about 70%, China, about 45%. So for all those countries, it's really significant what's happening. And so for them, it's really becomes a physical shortage. It's not a physical shortage in the United States. It registers in terms of price. So what he's essentially saying is the US shouldn't have any problem getting oil because so much is produced domestically but the oil is a global commodity so the price will be the same worldwide and so the US will feel the price shock.

11:24But those Asian countries could have real shortages if this drags on. So let's just focus on you said this is going to be a tough nut to crack, securing the Strait of Hormuz. Like how tough the US is asking not just from traditional allies and traditional rivals, it's asking China for help but like how would layout what the challenges are of trying to secure this waterway? Well, you just start with the geography which is so favorable to Iran. The Gulf is 500 miles long and Iran could strike from anywhere in those waters or along that coast. And then of course there's the choke point at the Strait of Hormuz which is only 21 miles wide and even that overstates it. There's two channels one for ships going in that's just two miles wide, one for ships that's going out which is just two miles wide. And there's believed to be more than a thousand ships that are now backed up on both sides of the Strait. So it's just hard to get all those ships through safely. The US has maybe 20 naval

12:28warships in the region. The US has certainly dealt heavy blows to Iran's traditional weapons, its army, its navy. But Iran still has lots of small mobile weapons, drones, small missiles, small fast patrol boats. And it would be virtually impossible to know if all those are eliminated and that the ships could pass safely. So even if the US is escorting them it can't be with all the ships all the time and Iran just needs these small guerrilla-type warfare at sea. You're describing that this is the epitome of asymmetric warfare. The US can have however many destroyers at once, however many, it can sink every one of Iran's mine-ling boats and you're saying a drone can still fly over or one dude in a speed boat can cause major havoc? Yeah, absolutely. Trump has said that all 30 or so of Iran's mine-ling ships have been destroyed and then that's significant. So yeah, it's the asymmetric warfare. It's not like it's going to be

13:32a big-pitch naval battle in the middle of the Gulf, but it's these small weapons, these small nimble, disposable weapons that can really be devil a large power. Oh, that's I guess grasping its straws, but one piece of good news that we're not looking at a giant pitched naval battle in the Gulf. This is for both of you, feel free to jump on it, but there is one piece of real estate in the Gulf that is suddenly all over the news that a lot of people, Americans listening, maybe weren't familiar with before this war, and it is Carg Island, which is a small island. It is in the northern Persian Gulf just off Iran. It is Iran's main oil export hub. Greg, what else should we know about it and why it's so significant and suddenly we're all talking about it? Yeah, virtually all of Iran's oil exports go through Carg Island. Iran's oil fields are on the main landmass of Iran, but then there's this little island. The oil goes to Carg Island. It gets processed there. It gets put on ships and then it heads out

14:38through the Gulf. And the U.S. last Friday took out what it said with all the military facilities on Carg Island. It seemed that was mostly for demonstration purposes just to show how easy and quickly the U.S. could do that. The U.S. says it has not hit the oil facilities. If it did that, it would take out most of Iran's oil exports. We're talking up to two million barrels a day, so that would just maybe 2% of the world's oil, but that would further diminish supplies and further push up global oil prices. You could be creating as many problems as you're trying to solve if the U.S. does, in fact, go after Carg Island. I'm listening to you both. My mind is going back to a week ago, we taped this podcast. Daniel Estren was joining us for our correspondent Tel Aviv, and he was making the point. President Trump started this war. It ends when he says it does. It's his to call it. Israel isn't going to fight on without the U.S.

15:42It sounds like we're now at a totally different point. There is a problem that has been created that didn't exist for this war, which is the Street of Hormuz is a mess, and it's not clear how or when or who can fix it. Can President Trump walk away from this, Greg, a problem that he created and just exit this war? It certainly seemed he could do that as you noted in the early days of the war. He could still do it now, but he would leave a huge mess behind, and certainly there's the expectation that he's going to have to solve some of these things. And I would point to a number of key things. One, obviously, is restoring normal oil flow in the Street of Hormuz or something resembling that so that you haven't, as you said, created a problem that didn't exist prior to the war. It'd be hard to claim success if world oil prices remain high, and there's no real solution here. And then, of course, the question of Iran's government, which seems to be weakened,

16:43and many of their leaders killed, but still intact and still functioning at some level. So there are some these huge, unresolved questions. Yeah. I mean, are you any thoughts from you on how this conflict might end? Are we looking at some kind of negotiated settlement? Is that the way? It's possible. It's very possible. And he has alluded to the fact that there might be some people with the ruling establishment that he'd be open to, staying in power. I can see him walking by President Trump exactly. You can certainly imagine a scenario in which President Trump can point to the fact that at least 10 of Iran's top officials and the Supreme Leader have been eliminated as a success. And he could point to that as a reason to say mission accomplished. If he's good at anything, it's the way he's able to brand things. And I think that he could very well walk away from this. And I can tell you that talking to a lot of Iranians, they're really scared that he will. And when I speak with them, one of the messages

17:45they have for the United States is continue to carry on this war. Don't stop. Continue to eliminate top brass. Continue to target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Because if you don't, and if this ruling establishment endures, the fear is that they will crack down even harder on people and that they could become even more hard line. And that one, as one person told me that Iran could become a failed state. The economy was already strained going into this war. And now there's just a lot of destruction all over the country. It's hard to imagine how they'll be able to pull out of this. That's so interesting you're hearing that from Iranians because I can imagine you could argue the opposite. You could argue that if the US and Israel continue to take out Iran's leaders, as we are seeing continue this week, that you risk even further radicalizing the remnants of

18:45whoever comes up to succeed them and replace them and make it even harder to ever imagine getting back to diplomacy or sitting down at a negotiating table. No, that's absolutely right. And you would think that after our many years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, both countries in the region, that we would have learned lessons about how groups tend to radicalize, that when you go and kill an uncle, a father, that their children often don't want to come to the negotiating table, they want to seek revenge. And I think that's a fear that a lot of Iranians have communicated with me. All right, after a quick break, open source intelligence will crack open each other's reporter's notebooks. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR. This message comes from LinkedIn, who knows an empty seat can cost small businesses more than just space. That's why LinkedIn Hiring Pro makes it easy to fill that seat with the right candidate,

19:47streamlining everything from posting jobs to short-listing talent. Nearly 60% of businesses find someone to interview in the first week. Hire right the first time. Post your first job and get a hundred dollars off at linkedin.com slash NPR offer terms and conditions apply. We're back and we're going to stick with Iran, but switch gears slightly because here in Washington yesterday, the Senate grilled intelligence chiefs on Iran and its nuclear program Greg, give us the highlights. Sure, so we hadn't heard from the intelligence chiefs and there were five of them up there, but two in particular John Ratcliffe, the CIA director and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. They were really the focus of this hearing, which was the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday and then the House Intelligence Committee today. This is the whole annual ritual of the worldwide threat assessment. They do it every year and of course they got a ton of questions about Iran. Exactly, almost exclusively about Iran. And the real focus that

20:52several senators and congressmen pressed these these two intel officials on was was an attack from Iran imminent because that's what President Trump has said and of course he said many different things in the past that the nuclear program was obliterated that the missile program was weakened and then he's saying no, we had to launch this war because there was an imminent attack. So they were pressed on well how imminent was it and they were pretty evasive on this and in fact Tulsi Gabbard said something that certainly made everybody's ears perk up, which he said. Senator, the only person who can determine and what isn't is not an imminent threat is the president. And of course, that he analysts have said, well actually that's your job as the director of national intelligence precisely. And they asked questions, you know, so what were you telling the president in the in the lead up to the war? What were your briefings? Were you telling him that an Iranian strike against the United States might be possible that the state of hormones might

21:54be closed? Again, they were pretty evasive on this. Ratcliffe devolved a few details. He said that he speaks to President Trump 10 to 15 times a week on a range of issues, obviously Iran at the moment, but it could be any range of things. So we did get the sense that they know that if you go and criticize President Trump in a public hearing like that, you may not be long for your job. You may not be around to do the ritual at this time next year. The other note that we have to throw in here is that this question of how urgent was the threat from Iran, it's obviously timely, with the United States at war with Iran, but also because of Joe Kent quitting this week, Joe Kent, who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, he resigned to protest the Iran War and specifically the point. He said Iran didn't pose an imminent urgent threat. He gave his first interview last night to Tucker Carlson. Here it is. Was Iran on the verge of getting a

22:56nuclear weapon? No, they they weren't, you know, three weeks ago in this, this started and they weren't in June either. Greg, what's your read on this? Is Joe Kent wasn't read in or they're, we're just, it's going to be very hard to pin down the administration on who knew what when about quite how urgent a threat Iran posed? Well, Joe Kent is saying what we've been hearing from the intelligence community for many, many years that Iran formally stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003 that it has not restarted that program. It's certainly gone to the threshold by continuing to enrich uranium by working on missiles. So, you know, there's some fuzziness there and you could, you could sort of shape it however you like. But Iran did not have a nuclear weapon. It was not close to making one. The president himself said the program was obliterated last year. Iran does have a lot of missiles that can go throughout the region, but they cannot reach to the United States. So, Kent was saying what, what many others in the intelligence community

24:01have been saying for years. And, you know, he, this is a Trump loyalist. This is someone who says, you know, he voted for Trump three times. He was Tulsi Gabbard's acting chief of staff at the beginning of last year. And very much from that veterans community that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt those wars were misguided and did not think the US should get involved in another war, which is what President Trump had been saying for basically a decade until he launched this war in Iran. I'll also add, Joe Kent was somewhat a controversial figure in his own right. When he was confirmed in the Senate last year, one of the Democratic senators, Paddy Murray of Washington called him a conspiracy theorist and said he expressed white supremacist views. He's also spoken about January 6th, there's somehow being a deep state plot. So he faced a lot of criticism from Democrats who find themselves saying they may agree with him and his current assessment of Iran,

25:02but found him problematic in other ways. Joe Kent, if you're listening, please come give us an interview. Tell us more about what's on your mind. Same invitation to John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard and all the spy chiefs who were up there testifying we would love to talk to you. We got lots of questions. All right, as we wind down the show, a thank you for writing with your questions and reactions to what you hear our email address sources and methods at npr.org. All one word sources and methods at npr.org. You'll find that in our episode notes. A thank you this week to Mark who wrote us while writing the Metro in Budapest. Thank you to Luke who wrote to say he listens while working early mornings in a bakery location undisclosed, very sources and methods. Thank you also to Reverend Drew in Michigan who wrote to say he is a spy nerd. As are we all Drew, this show is his favorite way he wrote to think about foreign affairs. So there you go guys, there's your proof. We do read your emails and this week we have a specific request. I cannot say

26:07too much yet, but we are working on a special way to answer more of your questions about national security, about how we do our jobs, about what's happening in Iran right now. So please email us question for me, question for Greg, question for one of the other reporters on our team. If you have written us in the past, that's great. We have got your note in our files. You can also write again if you want. Again, our email in our episode notes and stay tuned. We'll have more info soon. We hope on how and when we're going to try to answer some of those questions. With that, as always, we end with Oosent, Open Source Intelligence, the not-so-secret yet telling details that we stumble across in our reporting. Greg, go first. Yeah, on February 28th, the day the Iran war started, this mysterious shortwave broadcast began. It was a man speaking in Persian, just reading out a random assortment of numbers. We still don't know what this is or who's responsible.

27:13It seems to be being broadcast from somewhere in Western Europe, but it could be heard in Iran. There's a lot of speculation that this is an old-fashioned cold war style of communication between an intelligence agency and agents. Now, the way this would work is it's, you know, it's being broadcast on shortwave. Anybody could listen in, but it's these random numbers. But if you have an encryption key, those numbers make sense. It can be translated into a message. This was used during the Cold War, and it's considered a really unbreakable system. So as we hear about all of these high-tech battles to encrypt and prevent a system from being broken, here you have an old-fashioned system, numbers being broadcast on shortwave, and only the people who are in the know and have the encryption key can make sense of them. For the record, nobody's

28:14broken it. We have no idea what the stringing number is. We don't, and people who are experts say it is unbreakable. There is no mathematical formula or equation. You either have the encryption key and you know how to break it, or you don't, and there's no way you can. All right, Arzu, how about you? So this week, you know, there's an account online that a lot of Iranians have been following for many, many years now. The account is called Vahid Online. It's a pseudonym. No one really knows who's behind it. And on Telegram, on Instagram, on Twitter, on across all channels, he has regularly been posting videos, photographs, accounts from inside Iran. He's become a really big source for Iranians and also for just news organizations. And State Run Media this week claimed that they had hacked into his accounts and figured out who he is. And he, the person who's behind Vahid

29:17Online disputes that, he says that that's not true. But it's interesting because I think this is perhaps less about sending a message to him and perhaps sending a message to the people who are his sources and who really send him messages. From the last several protests that we have seen in Iran, Vahid Online has become a huge source for disseminating information and for really just offering a glimpse into what's happening inside Iran. And so this might be a way for the Iranians to send a message to anyone who's thinking about sending him information to think twice because if they have access to him, then it's possible that they might have access to his sources. Okay, you two are offering up these very secretive communications. I'm going old school. This is totally out there in the open. This is Department of, you never know who you might run into if you go for a jog in Hyde Park in London, which I love to do one of my favorite things to do every time

30:22I find myself in London. Had you been out running, doing a loop around the serpentine this week, you might have bumped into the Prime Minister of Canada out on a jog with the president of Finland. We're talking Mark Carney and Alexander Stube. They were both in London for meetings and in between, you know, running their countries. They decided to go for a run, fit in some cardio diplomacy, I guess is what you would call it. You can see it. They've both got it posted on their Instagram feeds. They're out there running with their wives, Diana and Suzanne. And I've been having a great time following along all of the running social media accounts I follow or having a field day with this checking out their gear and their heel strike and analyzing the, you know, how they are measuring up as runners. It's been fun to follow along. And I will know it. Alexander Stube is no slouch. He's a triathlete. I did not know this. He has completed multiple Iron Man.

31:25Uh, Iron Man, I guess you would call it. I would be scared to death to go for a run with him in public with cameras rolling. Um, so good on you, Mark Carney. All right. We will leave it there. I've been speaking with NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myri here in Washington. Thank you, Greg. Sure thing, Mayor Lewis. And our Zubrizvani, our correspondent currently in Airbeal in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Thanks to you. Thanks for having me. A reminder, you can email us with your feedback and questions and sources and methods at npr.org. And if you're enjoying the show, you can support us by leaving a rating or review on the platform where you listen in a world of algorithms that goes a long way toward helping new listeners find the show. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. We're back next week with another episode of Sources and Methods from NPR. This message comes from Bombas. When you're playing sports, you're focused. Your socks should be

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