The war in Iran will enter its fourth week on Saturday, with no real end in sight. The Pentagon is reportedly requesting $200 billion to fund the ongoing military operation, even as it unsettles the world economy. Meanwhile, Iranians say that airstrikes are growing louder and more intense as the US and Israel pursue high-ranking officials, infrastructure and other targets in densely populated cities. 

Today, I want to focus on that latter perspective — the view from inside Iran. The country has been under a near-total internet blackout since attacks started, making it difficult for Western media to fully capture the mood inside the country or the scale of the damage. 

But Roya Rastegar — a producer, writer and co-founder of Iranian Diaspora Collective, a pro-democracy group — is in touch with a network of people on the ground in Iran. In a piece for Vox this week, she shared their experiences of the ongoing war, as well as their hopes for the country’s eventual democratic transition. 

Today, Roya and I discuss the internet blackout, the political atmosphere in Iran and daily life in a warzone. (This conversation has been edited for length and flow.)

In a piece for Vox earlier this week — “This war is putting Iranians in an impossible moral dilemma” — you share the stories of a number of Iranians living through the war. What is communication and internet connectivity like inside Iran now? How are people getting messages out to you?

Communication inside Iran right now is fragmented, unstable, and politically controlled by the regime. This internet blackout isn’t a technical, wartime issue — it is a deliberate, political choice to cut off 90 million Iranians from the global conversation. 

The blackout makes it almost impossible to hear about conditions on the ground in real time. Messages are coming out in bursts, not in any steady or reliable way. A friend gets access for a few minutes through a VPN that belongs to a friend of a friend of a neighbor, they send a voice note, or Signal chat — something before going offline again. There is also a distinct sense that calls are being monitored. So even when you are able to talk with people, conversations are constrained by fear. 

People are not just dealing with the constant fear and anxiety of bombs dropping — they are also dealing with an information siege. They don’t know what has been hit or where, who is dead or alive, or what is state propaganda and what is real. 

So the message we keep getting from people on the ground is: Turn the internet back on. The blackout is isolating people psychologically as much as physically.

What is daily life like for the people you’re in communication with? I was really struck by a collection of translated posts that the Iranian Diaspora Collective shared on Instagram: Iranians talking about how they entertain their kids while hunkering down indoors, or how they try to stay focused on studying even when they can see smoke out their windows.

Are people still going to work and school? Are they able to get food and other necessities? What is ordinary life like under this kind of bombardment? 

People are still trying to work, study, parent, shop, clean their homes, and prepare for the new year, but they are doing it under bombardment, under surveillance and under martial law.

Access to basic necessities is uneven, as prices have surged even further. Gasoline is being rationed. More businesses are shutting down — I’m hearing that the majority of businesses have been closed for more than two weeks. Even people who were formerly middle-class are struggling to afford basic things.

Nighttime is especially hard — people can’t sleep. They jolt awake to explosions, planes overhead, and the anticipation of what might come next. People go to their windows or rooftops at the slightest sound to determine whether it was an attack.

Streets are empty in Tehran. Bakeries are open but have no customers. People are staying indoors not only because of the strikes, but also because the regime’s security apparatus is everywhere. I’m consistently hearing — from my friends and sources, and from other friends talking to their friends and family in the country — that people in Iran are more afraid right now of being killed or arrested by the regime’s security forces than they are of bombs hitting them. Plainclothes officers, called Basij, are stopping people on the street more aggressively: checking their phones, questioning them, arresting them.

I’m glad you made that point. My assumption — and I think the assumption of many people outside Iran following the war — is that the airstrikes have been profoundly disruptive to civilians. And they have, to be clear. But you’re saying that people were already effectively living under siege. 

Yes. The regime has been waging a one-sided war against Iranian civilians for 47 years. Women, religious and ethnic minorities, poor and working-class people are the ones who are the most targeted by the regime.

Some people have actually told me they get anxious when the bombs stop for more than six hours. For these people, the sound of airstrikes is a “strange comfort,” because their overwhelming fear is not the strike itself but the possibility that the Islamic Republic survives and becomes worse than ever. I am becoming increasingly aware of the psychological toll this moral calculus is playing on us as a people.

While we may disagree vehemently on how, almost all Iranians agree that the regime must go. The massacres in January were a point of no return. The Islamic Republic cannot claim sovereignty while denying the Iranian people theirs. The regime lost its legitimacy when it massacred tens of thousands of people. 

Your piece traces a tonal shift in the messages you’re hearing from Iranians, both in-country and in the diaspora. Initially, you write, there was a sense of relief that the US and Israel were intervening in Iran — a hope that the regime would fall. But that relief curdled into something else, particularly after the US struck a girls school and killed 168 people, many of them children. That was more than two weeks ago. Has anything changed? Where do things stand now?

People are struggling. It is sickening to see the destruction being done to the country, to your neighborhood.

The binary of “pro-war vs. anti-war” is too simplistic for this situation — especially for Iranians. Maybe to the rest of the world it seemed that Iran was previously in peacetime, but that wasn’t the case. This regime doesn’t govern; it tortures, coerces, maims, threatens, and kills. Violence reached a peak two months ago on January 8 and 9. The regime is the warmonger. At any point, this regime could surrender. How psychotic is this regime that they would rather see the whole country burn down before giving up?

Of course, Iran is a country of 95 million people and then the Iranian diaspora is estimated to include another 5 million. So of course there are also those who oppose the regime and also do not believe this war will bring freedom. Those voices are real and deserve to be heard, as well. Everyone is horrified by the cost to civilians, including the destruction of cities, the psychological trauma, the lack of shelters and warning systems, and the fact that children and vulnerable people are being forced to absorb this terror. 

People are waiting, in limbo. People are in grief. They are exhausted. They are afraid, but also hopeful, but also hungry, but also overwhelmed, but also in the dark.

And one more thing has not changed: People continue to be deeply worried about political prisoners. Those prisoners include athletes, journalists, activists, teachers, lawyers, artists — some of the people who would help build a democratic Iran. They are trapped under horrifying conditions, with limited food, water, hygiene, or communication. 

And the state is still executing prisoners. Just yesterday, Iran executed three young men for participating in the January protests. This is why Iranians have become so desperate that they see outside intervention as the only remaining path.

You write that the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot be allowed “to continue its nearly half-century reign of terror.” That represents, in some ways, the worst case for Iran. I’m curious what you, and the Iranians you’re in touch with, think the best case is. If the regime falls, what or who would you like to see replace it? 

There is not a single consensus about who or what replaces it. There are several options, though — there is a transitional council of 35 anonymous leaders inside Iran who have made themselves known to the United Nations. Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel laureate, was just named the head of the Transitional Justice Committee by Reza Pahlavi [a political activist and the eldest son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah ousted in Iran’s 1979 revolution]. We are all just waiting to see if the regime can fall. When it does, Iranians will fill the space with a democratic transition.  

One thing to do in preparation is to develop a democratic culture and educate ourselves on the political landscape. Political education has been illegal in Iran under both the Islamic Republic and the former shah. 

Political education will be key in this next phase of our country’s future. And central to it will be fostering a democratic culture that holds different perspectives without demonizing or threatening people. 

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike killed Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official and the man believed to be running the country since the death of Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader. What was the reaction in Iran? 

It was like Christmas morning. Some people were even more relieved than they were when Khamenei was killed, because Larijani is considered to be one of the architects of repression, propaganda, and the hardening of the regime. 

That news also came the morning after Chaharshanbe Suri, an ancient Zoroastrian fire ritual that immediately precedes Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. People jump over fire as a cleansing act. I was stunned to see so many people inside Iran going to the streets to celebrate Chaharshanbe Suri — jumping over fire, singing, dancing. The risks were immense because the regime had told people to stay home. And yet, people came out. Of course, the regime’s thugs chased them out of the streets, shooting at them and threatening arrest. 

You are — in addition to your writing and your work with the Iranian Diaspora Collective — working on a documentary about six young dancers in Iran. Where are they now? What are they doing? How does this war play into their story and the story you were telling about them? 

We had just wrapped production in December in Iran. When we were in development of our film, we had to do a tremendous amount of trust-building with them. It took many, many months before they felt comfortable participating in any kind of documentary. Over time, their enthusiasm grew. 

When the massacres happened in January, I thought they would be too worried to contact us — especially during the regime-imposed blackout, which always comes with heavy surveillance. But when we were able to finally get in touch with them we learned something incredible — even after the massacres, quite literally when the streets were still covered in blood, our cinematographer told us that some of the dancers were insisting on filming. Even now, they want to continue filming. 

As the director, this is hard for me to process, because of course my first instinct is safety. I want them inside their homes. I want them protected until this war is over. But they are young and they are brave, and they refuse to live on the terms the regime sets out for them. At this point, our film has become almost an existential assertion for them: that they exist, that they matter, and that they demand to be seen.

And that just tells you so much about these dancers — and their generation. They don’t want to merely survive. They want to assert life, beauty, agency, and presence in the face of constant threat of annihilation.

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The term “fog of war” usually describes the murkiness that combatants experience in conflict zones. For our purposes, it might also apply to the messages coming out of the White House over the past day or so.

President Donald Trump has claimed that he launched a war against Iran to guarantee the end of its nuclear program and topple its hardline regime. In the days since, administration officials have also claimed — without evidence — that the joint US-Israeli strikes prevented an imminent threat that would have caused American casualties.

That allegation is important, because it goes to the heart of the whole thing: Does war with Iran make the world more or less safe for Americans? This morning, we’ll attempt to tackle that unwieldy question.

Is war with Iran worth the risk?

On one hand, Iran is openly hostile to the US, and the Trump administration would argue that any attack that weakens it is good for American interests. The attacks did this in three ways:

1. They degraded Iran’s military capabilities. The joint US-Israeli operation struck hundreds of targets across Iran, including ballistic missile launchers, drone production sites, military airfields, key naval facilities, and air defense systems. Just as importantly, Trump has said, the strikes made it clear the US would tolerate nothing less than Iran’s complete abandonment of its (already damaged) nuclear program. 

2. They weakened a larger proxy network. The Iranian regime is a source of major conflict and instability in the Middle East, funding and arming proxy groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iranian-backed militias were responsible for the deaths of more than 600 US soldiers in Iraq. “It’s in America’s interest to make sure that Iran can no longer be the largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Meet the Press.

3. They maintained America’s status as a global enforcer. In the lead-up to the strikes, Trump set two conditions for averting military action in Iran: The regime needed to relinquish its nuclear ambitions, Trump said, and to “stop killing protesters…by the thousands.” Some national security experts have since argued that Trump needed to follow through on that threat or risk losing credibility in the region. 

But a weakened Iran could also, maybe counterintuitively, be very dangerous — especially if the regime believes it’s fighting for its existence. The degree and duration of this danger depend, in large part, on what the US and Israel choose to do next. Even ahead of that, however, political scientists and security experts see five major ways the war puts the US at greater risk:

1. The attacks invite direct military retaliation. Iran has responded to the strikes by launching ballistic missiles and drones at US military bases across the Middle East. At least six American soldiers died in Iranian attacks on Kuwait Sunday. 

2. They increase the risk of asymmetrical warfare. Iran has a long history of carrying out targeted assassinations, terror attacks, and cyberattacks in response to threats. While the strikes killed many senior defense and intelligence leaders, the Iranian military is likely prepared to retaliate without them — in the Middle East and, potentially, in the US. 

3. They could create a dangerous power vacuum. It’s not at all clear who will govern Iran long-term or what role the US will play in guiding that transition. But there are several possible scenarios in which Iran’s new government is even more anti-American than the old clerical leadership. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could step in, for instance. Or the country could fragment into semi-independent regions. A protracted period of civil war gave rise to the Islamic State in Iraq after the US invaded in the early 2000s. 

4. They could accelerate nuclear proliferation. The US-Israeli operation assassinated Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even as his government pursued nuclear negotiations with the US. “This tells any potential adversaries of the US: Get nuclear weapons,” said Ryan Costello, the policy director at the National Iranian American Council, in an interview with The Intercept. Anything less, that thinking goes, won’t guarantee an enemy regime’s long-term existence. 

5. They further erode international norms. The United Nations charter allows the use of force in only two specific instances: in defensive response to an imminent threat, or with UN Security Council authorization. By defying the charter, the US arguably gives global powers like Russia and China more cover to menace weaker states in their respective spheres.

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Finland made international news earlier this month for a disappointing near miss: Its men’s hockey team looked ready to prevail in the Olympic semifinals, until a (literal) last-minute goal gave Canada the win.

Nearly 100 years ago, it had a different kind of near miss — a democratic one,  in which the country almost slipped into fascism, but ultimately recovered. 

Modern Finland was established in 1919, after a bloody civil war between socialist “Reds” and conservative “Whites.” Even after the Whites prevailed, a deep fear of communism persisted. By the end of 1920s, it had coalesced into a far-right, authoritarian faction called the Lapua movement — named for a violent clash in the town of Lapua between local farmers and a communist youth group.

The Lapua movement gained widespread populist support across Finland, drawing in not only far-right radicals but also moderate center-right politicians, professionals, bankers, and prominent industrialists who hoped to benefit from the movement’s popularity. In the summer of 1930, some 12,000 Lapua members marched on Helsinki in a demonstration modelled after Benito Mussolini’s 1922 March on Rome, which brought fascists to power in Italy. 

The Helsinki march didn’t topple Finland’s democratic government. But it didn’t really have to. The ruling conservative party was sympathetic to the Lapua movement, and in the wake of the march it passed a number of undemocratic “reforms” designed to limit the speech and political participation of Finland’s communists. 

Extremists in the movement still weren’t satisfied, however — and their attacks on Finnish democracy grew increasingly violent. They became known for symbolic political kidnappings in which they snatched political rivals from their homes and dumped them at the border with the Soviet Union. In 1930, Lapua radicals even kidnapped former president Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg, the first democratically elected head of the Finnish republic.

That escalation, in particular, alienated many of the moderate and center-right figures who had previously allied themselves with the far-right movement: It “went against the sense of decency of most of their supporters,” said Oula Silvennoinen, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, in an interview with Vox’s Nate Krieger. 

Finland’s far-right wasn’t quite finished yet, however. Two years later, in 1932, they attempted to launch an armed attack on the capitol from the nearby town of Mäntsälä. They called on the country’s civil guard — an auxiliary force that had been sympathetic to the anti-communist cause — to join their uprising against the central government.

Instead, most members of the civil guard stood down, while judges and — importantly — mainstream conservative politicians moved to marginalize the radicals. Finland’s conservative president, who had previously been considered a darling of the Lapua movement, declared a state of emergency, demanded the arrest of the movement’s leaders, and broadcast a nationwide radio appeal ordering its members to return home. 

“Throughout my long life, I have fought to uphold the law and justice,” he said. “And I cannot allow the law to now be trampled underfoot.” 

The movement fizzled out entirely within a few years, and — by 1937 — a stable center-left coalition had secured power in Finland. Today, it is the only country to score a perfect 100/100 on Freedom House’s political rights and civil liberties index. (The US, by comparison, scored 84 last year, and Canada scored 97.)

Silvennoinen stressed that the Finns aren’t outliers here. “We remember the fascists of Italy and the Nazis of Germany, but in reality almost every European country had their own far-right movements and organizations … and almost all of them failed,” he said. 

Finland’s story suggests that — even fairly late in the game — democracy can win. But only if the politicians who stand to benefit from extremism refuse to enable it. Watch Nate’s full story here.

This story was supported by a grant from Protect Democracy. Vox had full discretion over the content of this reporting.