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From Our Own Correspondent
Iran: the funeral of Ayatollah Khamanei
00:29:19
Lyse Doucet has been in Tehran as throngs gathered to mourn the late supreme leader.
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Hello. Today our diplomatic correspondent returns to Moscow after several years hiatus. Are there signs the war's impact is finally cutting through? We meet some of the Ukrainian soldiers dealing with the hidden scars of the battlefield and the therapists working with them. Italian lessons are all the rage in Argentina, with descendants of those who first emigrated now planning a return to Italy. We hear why. And finally we're in Algeria, where the Kasbah, a site with a rich history but crumbling structures, is undergoing a restoration. But first to Iran, where the streets of Tehran and major cities across the country have been lined with mourners attending the funeral procession of the former leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The supreme Leader's final burial took place in the holy Iranian city of Mashhad. But as huge crowds of supporters were gathered, renewed attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz threw the region into more turmoil, prompting a heavy U.S. response. The preliminary truce was intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow longer negotiations toward permanently ending the war. Both goals are now in question. Lise Doucet has been in Tehran.
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I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was June 1989 at Tehran's Lale Hotel. Once part of the American luxury Intercontinental chain then, it was famous for the US flag painted on the floor inside the front door. It meant you had to walk across it and insult the Stars and Stripes of America. It was my first trip to Tehran. An Iranian journalist sitting with me in the lobby offered an insight into her country. We swing from one extreme to the other, she explained. In 1979, we went from the rule of the extremely pro Western shah to the extremely conservative Islamic Republic. One day, she confidently assessed, we will find the middle. I listened carefully. We were meeting at an historic turning point. Iran had just buried its revolution's founding leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. The world wondered who would replace him and where was Iran heading now? The funeral in 1989 was chaotic. In the frenzied stampede of mourners, the Ayatollah's flimsy wooden casket burst. His white shrouded body tumbled into the crush. Panicked security forces struggled to snatch him and finally, after some struggle, ferried him away in a helicopter. The next day, the procession proceeded with a sturdier, locked coffin. I kept thinking about that time this week when I was in Tehran to cover the funeral of his successor, another 86 year old Ayatollah Khamenei. This time, the organizers ensured there would be no repeat of that mess. But nearly four Decades on, knowing much more about the projection of power, they choreographed a week long spectacle of public mourning. The cleric's coffin was transported from one city to the next, five cities in all, including two in neighbouring Iraq, the world's second largest Shia Muslim nation. The event of the century, the organizers exclaimed. The crowds were huge at every stop. How many is impossible to say, and it's hard to say. Who was there? A throng of the deeply bereaved and those who were bussed in. The religious, who revered him, the curious, who reviled him. And this time too, the human flood which filled the streets, slowed and stopped the procession. In Tehran, the Ayatollah's casket, painted in the green, red and white of Iran's flag, was set on a flatbeg truck decorated with ornate latticework and Arabic Islamic script. And this time, four other coffins made this journey. One of the Ayatollah's daughters, a son in law, a daughter in law and a grandchild, Zara, just 14 months old. All of them killed in the US. Israeli airstrikes in the first hours of the war on February 28th. This time, religious and political symbolism were meshed in seas of mourners clad in black. The brightest color was red. Red religious flags symbolizing blood and revenge. And placards spelt it out in red and white. Kill Trump and kill Netanyahu. Where is Iran heading now? 37 years ago, when Ayatollah Khamenei assumed the mantle of top clerical, even he knew he could not match the stature of his predecessor. But year after year, the second supreme leader built his base, the commander in chief, who strengthened the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And he ruled with a firm fist, weakening reformists who emerged within his ranks, suppressing the cyclical waves of protests. And through it all, he remained deeply distrustful of the United States. But he calculated cautiously to avoid direct confrontation. In the end, the leader, whose world view was defined by the slogans Death to America, Death to Israel, was killed by their warplanes. And his Revolutionary Guards now play an outsized role in the system he leaves behind. Where is that Middle? The Iranian journalist told me about so long ago. Perhaps there were glimpses of it down through the decades. In 2009, in the protests after disputed elections, when Iranians took to the streets calling for reform, not regime change, but their voices weren't heard. Or in 2015, in the celebration in the streets, when Iran signed a nuclear accord with world powers, including the us And Iranians dared to hope their lives would get better. But President Trump pulled out of that deal in his first term. On a hot day in Tehran, as the procession surged past, two women clad in black pulled me aside. You must listen to the voices of the real revolution, one whispered. Not those voices, she emphasized, gesturing to the crowd. The protesters, she said, on these same streets six months ago, when security forces killed many thousands and then they melted but back into the multitude. There's still no middle ground in Iran, now ruled by its third supreme leader. Now it's Mujtaba Khamenei, severely injured in the attacks which killed his father and not seen in public since, leaving everyone to wonder and to worry again. Where is Iran heading next?
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Lise Doucet, who was reporting from Tehran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC's Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran. Ukraine has been escalating its drone attacks on oil refineries across Russia, on its major ports, and on tankers forging ever deeper into Russian territory. Plumes of black smoke stretching across the Moscow skyline have brought the war with Ukraine closer to home for everyday Russians who might otherwise have viewed the conflict as something remote, even abstract to day to day life. James Landale has been in the capital.
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You are a deceiver, the security officer said. I am deporting you immediately. My visit to Moscow was not beginning well. For several hours at the airport, I had been handed from official to official, each peering at my passport and visa with equal amounts of incredulity and scepticism. But here I was finally in front of a man who seemed to have ultimate authority, and over whether I would be allowed through customs or packed off home on the first available flight. He was suspicious of my temporary work phone, which had few photos or contacts. But what left him most unimpressed was the fact I had been to Ukraine recently and often, the undeniable evidence stamped in cold, hard print across my passport. Why do you go there? He asked. Do you not love Russia? Reporting the news did not seem to him a convincing argument, and it took some further negotiation before he changed his mind and let me on my way. But it struck me on one level the officer was right. It was unusual for anyone to visit Kyiv and Moscow in the space of a few months. For a journalist, it was a rare chance to report a war from both sides of the fence. So how do the two capitals differ after more than four years of fighting? Well, let's get the obvious out of the way quickly. The difference in scale is immediately apparent. Moscow is just vastly bigger than Kyiv in Geography and population. Here, young men throng the streets. In Kyiv, less so many there are, either on the front, hiding from the draft, or living abroad. In Moscow, one sees few people in uniform. In the Ukrainian capital, they are ubiquitous. And Muscovites do not have the red eyed fatigue of a people living under almost nightly air raids. I go for an evening stroll in Gorky park, think Hyde park, but busier, and it's packed with friends and families, or making the most of a brief Moscow summer. They're walking, swimming, dancing, drinking, eating. But it feels different to Kyiv. There, people enjoy themselves when they can, despite the war, cherishing what precious moments of normality they can find. But here in Moscow, they are living, it seems, almost apart from the war, as if not quite acknowledging its existence. This does not feel like a nation alive to the fact that about a thousand of its soldiers are being killed or wounded every day, at least according to the Ukrainian military. Of course, that's not to say people here are ignorant of the conflict. It's on the news and in the papers. And in recent weeks, the residents of Moscow, Moscow and St. Petersburg have seen black smoke cloud their horizons. As oil refineries burn in the wake of Ukrainian attacks, the fuel for their cars is growing harder to find. We spent a day visiting petrol stations around Moscow. Almost all had queues, some short, some long. Those that had none were closed. Waiting drivers expressed genuine frustration and anxiety. They blamed the war. But at a tangent, Andre spoke of geopolitics. Valeri pointed to military actions. What none would do is attribute responsibility in our country, Elmar said, you can't say who or what is to blame. To discuss this, we went to meet Nina Khrushcheva, great granddaughter of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and a distinguished professor of international relations. Sitting in a leafy park in northern Moscow, she told us President Putin was unlikely to bend to any economic pressure, not least because of the paradoxical view she said many people hold. Russians don't want the war, she told us, but in a very Russian manner. They have ended up agreeing with him fighting the war. They tolerate and adjust to him fighting it. This ability to hold two seemingly opposing views at once sounded very familiar. But it took me a moment to realise I'd heard echoes of this on the streets of Kyiv. Many people there say they, of course, support the war to defend their homeland, but they also say they're tired and just want all the death and destruction to end. In other words, there is, despite everything, a shared view between at least some Russians and Ukrainians in their respective capitals. They support the war, but they want it to end. In such contradiction and commonality lies perhaps a small shard of hope.
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James Landale Despite Ukraine's renewed momentum in the war, Russia has in the last few weeks launched devastating attacks across Ukraine and in the very center of Kyiv, killing dozens of civilians. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his calls at the NATO summit for stronger air defenses against ballistic missiles, a demand President Trump has agreed to meet by granting Kyiv license to produce them. And even if peace eventually comes, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers will be living with the physical and psychological scars of war. Lucy Asch has been to a pioneering psychological retreat.
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As you walk into Rasochi, you hear the warbles of swallows and the rhythmic hammering of woodpeckers. Only the occasional scooter or car passes by. The village in the foothills of the Carpathians is just a few minutes drive from the Polish border. Enveloped by thickly forested hills and meadows carpeted in wild flowers, it is as far away from the war as you can get inside Ukraine. This morning, a group of 20 people have arrived in an old school bus and are tucking into buckwheat porridge and fried eggs. They're sitting at a long trestle table in a studio originally built for an artist colony. These servicemen and women are all from the 704th Brigade, a radiological, chemical and biological defence unit. They're on a three month recovery and rehabilitation program after combat deployments. Their roles range from hazardous materials and decontamination work in places like the Chernobyl exclusion zone to frontline operations. On their last deployment, they helped engineering units install obstacles and anti drone nets around the roads in eastern Ukraine. After breakfast, the soldiers are introduced to Nastya and Maxim, a husband and wife team of psychologists. Nastya asks them to sit in a circle and holds up a stuffed toy, a furry octopus. The octopus is passed around and whoever has it talks about their experiences. Should we talk about the bad stuff? She adds. Yes, because it's impossible to forget some of the things you have witnessed, so you need to address them. Ihor, from Zaporizhzhia, is the first to speak. A mechanic, he initially volunteered in 2015. He'd just got married when the full scale invasion began. I hardly ever see my wife, he mumbles. I'm so sick of war. I just want to be back at home in my village growing tomatoes and cucumbers. Maxime invites the group to look at the photos on their phones that bring them joy, whether it's pictures of loved ones, their dog or their vegetable garden. Use any time off in a positive way, he urges. Renovate your house or take your children to the seaside. Snatch moments of happiness whenever you can, he goes on, because you can't influence the war situation. You can only adapt. One middle aged woman with buffon hair breaks down when handed the toy. She's the unit's bookkeeper, originally from Kyiv, and her husband is a sapper. We're a military family, proud to serve, she sobs. But I'm scared of losing my child. Her son, who's also in a demining unit, is barely out of his teens. He's below the conscription age of 25, but he wanted to go. Not everyone here volunteered. Taras, a former plumber in a grey T shirt, says he no longer wants to see friends. He takes solitary walks in the forest and can sleep only after glugging glass after glass of cognac. Later, when we're alone, he tells me police grabbed him off the street on his way home from work last May and took him straight to a recruitment centre. His first tour was manageable, he says. He trained as a Storm Brigade driver, learning to spot and shoot down drones. But his second deployment still haunts him. One morning in the Kharkiv region, several of his comrades were killed by a lancet drone, one of the deadliest Russian weapons, which can hover in the air for 40 minutes, waiting for their prey. Taras only survived because he was cooking borscht that day. Back at the base, it was my turn to make lunch, he says. Then I got the phone call. I spent every waking moment with those guys and suddenly they were gone. I couldn't process it. How many died? He grimaces. I'm not allowed to tell you, he says. Under Ukrainian martial law, details of military casualties are classified. Before lunch, the group practices breathing exercises and stands on nail studded acupressure mats in their socks. Maxim says the technique releases feel good endorphins, which help to calm the mind. Nastya says acute stress activates the brain's survival mode, which may save you in combat but can be dangerous in civilian life. She fears a mental health crisis is looming for the country. People join the army and are taught how to kill, she points out. But when they come home, nobody teaches them how to live.
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Lucy Ash Argentina has a thriving Italian community. Indeed, around two thirds of the country's population can trace their roots back to Italy. Their ancestors arrived in waves during the 19th and 20th century, when Argentina was one of the richest and fastest growing countries in the World and in the capital, Buenos Aires. Italy's cultural influence is everywhere apparent, from the food to the architecture. But as the economy stutters, Italian Argentines are increasingly returning home to Europe. Finds Jane Chambers the Immigration Museum in
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Buenos Aires is an imposing building with well trodden marble staircases. It sits near the shores of the estuary Rio de la Plata. Between 1911 and 1953, this was a hotel used by some of the thousands of immigrants, mostly Italians, arriving by transatlantic steamship looking for work. When I visited, I saw a room full of rows of painted white iron beds with thin mattresses that could accommodate up to 250 people in a single dorm. The Argentine state paid for their stay, which included medical care and food, and helped them find jobs. This was part of a strategy to encourage European immigration to build the country's workforce. The old hotel is not just of interest to tourists. It's now useful for Argentinians with Italian roots who want to make the return journey. It houses all the original records of who arrived and when. And once armed with this valuable evidence, Italian descendants can use it to apply for citizenship and after that, the precious European passport. But Italy's citizenship laws are tightening. These days. Only Argentines with at least one Italian parent or grandparent, or rather than more distant relatives, are eligible, and those who marry an Italian. Martina Oderis is one of the lucky ones. She managed to get a passport because of her grandfather. She and her family moved to Italy in 2018, first settling in Tuscany and now near the Adriatic coast. We chose Italy because of family ties and because we love the language. I have relatives living in Rome, she tells me. She goes on in Argentina. It was difficult to balance my work as a teacher with having a small child, and I found it frustrating. Another factor was safety. After being robbed a few times in Buenos Aires, Martina says she was always on the alert. Now she tells me that even though childcare can still be difficult, her life is much calmer because they've moved to a small town with a good school. Before she left, Martina practiced her Italian at the Dante Institution in Buenos Aires. La Dante, as it's known locally, promotes and teaches the Italian language, culture and heritage. In a spacious office, I meet the institution's education and culture director, Gisela Vomado. She tells me about other students looking to leave. Many of them go for a short time as part of an exchange program, but others want something more long term. The subject of security crops up again. Gisela explains that although safety has improved recently in Buenos Aires, in the outer suburbs, things are getting worse with frequent muggings and robberies. Part of this is due to organised crime, police scarcity and economic insecurity. Unemployment recently rose to 7.5%. Better job prospects are a predictable reason for others wanting to leave. Now it's Italy, not Argentina, where people hope to find brighter prospects. But this isn't just a middle class migration. Gisela's colleague Lucila Villacorda tells me about some of her other students. In the last few years we've had groups of mechanics, builders and lorry drivers doing courses here because they need to show they have a basic level of Italian to work there, she explains. Regions around Italy are actively looking for skilled labourers and talking to recruitment companies in Argentina because like many countries around the world, Italy has an aging population. During my short time in the city, I stumble across Argentines toying with leaving on a daily basis. There's a special WhatsApp group of Argentine Italian lifeguards who swap tips on where to find free Italian classes and how to navigate the passport paperwork. One group member, called Gabriel, says he wants to try his luck in the same town in southern Italy his grandparents came from. Meanwhile, Daphne Caccioni, who had an Italian father, fondly remembers speaking Italian in their neighborhood when she was little. She's now nearing retirement age and wants to up sticks. I'm fed up with this right wing government who are selling our country and exploiting its resources, she says angrily. Daphne then adds wistfully, I want to see the beautiful countryside in Italy and to be surrounded by centuries of history, there's nothing like it. The move to Italy isn't a tidal wave, more of a thoughtful stream. But for some Argentinians, their European ancestry has become a valuable form of psychological insurance, reassuring them that they, like their forebears, have an economic escape route.
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Jane Chambers and finally, councils and governments ruminate, and often procrastinate over what to do with crumbling aging structures, from buildings to bridges to infrastructure. In Algiers, the ancient Casbah, the historic citadel and medina have been the focus of multiple forsaken plans and discussions for its regeneration. But now it seems a restoration is gathering pace.
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Philip Sweeney My first visit to The Kasbah around 20 years ago coincided, I now realise, with one of the earliest signs of its revival. This was a new venture by an elderly Kasbaji shopkeeper named El Hadj Zubir Dar. El Marusa Zubia's historic house, painstakingly restored from a semi ruin, was just opening to the public. Today, the massive studded street dorm conceals a thriving museum restaurant run by his six children carrying on the legacy of their father, who died in 2022. Visitors explore the ornate interior, dine on the Al Jehrawah noodle dish called Reshta, and maybe listen to musicians performing the hypnotic and plangent Shabi music of the old Kasbah. Now, El Marussa is emulated by a number of similar businesses. But when Zubia bought the property in 1996, the middle of the Black decade, the worst years of a vicious civil war, the warren of steep, narrow alleys was semi deserted, still infested with the Islamist terrorists who murdered police and journalists. Venturing there back then, a young Algiers museum curator took me on my first visit. I'll bring my wife, he suggested. She'd love to see the Kasbah, but she's scared. Echoes of that period still linger. When I went to the old Cafe Malakoff for its Thursday night Shabi session recently, my elderly taxi driver refused until I found a police patrol for him to park beside. That's in the Kasbah, he kept muttering. I'm not going there, especially at night. The ending of the Black Decade, achieved via a mixture of military crackdown and amnesty, reduced the Kasbah's insecurity, but didn't tackle the decrepitude. Everywhere, buildings decayed or collapsed, pulling down their neighbours, blocking alleyways and cutting water pipes. Old residents left, replaced by squatters from the countryside, often letting the buildings deteriorate more, so they'd be rehoused by the authorities. For years, a succession of conferences vacillated over schemes for regeneration, and associations like Sauvent La Kasbah let's Save the Casbah, criticised the lack of government action. At one point, a collapsing house killed five occupants and an angry crowd hurled abuse at visiting city officials. Nowadays, plans for the area focus on restoration, but it wasn't always so. In the 1930s, Le Corbusier, one of the century's most famous architects, proposed a futuristic graft of highways and mega blocks instead. More recently, one researcher stated that the only practical way to save the Kasbah was to demolish it and build a replica. But little by little, important monuments began to receive attention. The palace of the Day, the Ottoman era governor, has been beautifully restored. So has the Qechawa mosque, financed, appropriately enough, by the Turkish government. And seven more major sites are on the list for action. Gradually, individual dwellings are being restored too, using masons, carpenters and coppersmiths from the little local workshops. A prominent recent example is the house of the family of Jamila Buhired, one of the most celebrated Mujadihat of the 1950s War of Liberation, during which she planted bombs in French frequented cafes. The Casbah's little Ali Lapointe Museum, devoted to one of the star freedom fighters of the Battle of Algiers, is now an established attraction, and virtually every second street bears the name of a hero or martyr of that conflict. But the Kasbah is not all war memorial. The museum restaurants have seen a boom in Iftar parties, boisterous late night buffets, breaking the Ramadan fast. Does all this add up to impending gentrification? Property prices are increasing in the lower Kasbah, adjoining the new metro and government offices. The newspaper El Watan even spoke of a gold mine for speculators, but estate agents told me that historic Kasbah houses rarely come up for sale, and then often privately between Kasbah dwellers. The dark closed style of the Kasbah's diret dwellings with inward looking rooms around a central courtyard, doesn't appeal to modern Al Jawar, an architect told me. My clients want new flats with balconies and views, he said. When the Kasbah is restored it will be for tourists. Nonetheless, El Hadj Zubayr's far sighted investment during the Black decade has undoubtedly paid off. Dar El Marousa must have increased a lot in value, I suggested to his daughter. Fishing for some figures. Inshallah, she replied enigmatically and changed the subject.
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Philip Sweeney and that's all for Today From Our Own Correspondent was produced by Serena Tarling and Polly Hope. The editor was Richard Varden. I'm Kate Ady and you can hear more stories from around the world on from Our own correspondent on BBC Sounds, including a dispatch from Hungary on how the new PM is shaking up politics in the normally slow cucumber season. And our correspondent reflections on what's happened to the American dream on its 250th anniversary. We'll be back with a new episode next Saturday.
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I'm the BBC's climate editor, Justin Rowlatt. In the 20 years I've been covering the Green Movement, I've noticed its evolution has been formed not only by protest or by dire warnings about climate change, but by conflict within the ranks, friends, sometimes enemies, hashing out big ideas that help define what it means to be green.
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The anger was justified that action was not.
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This would grow to become the number one domestic terrorism threat in the United States.
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We might lose this fight, but we
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win the whole war.
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For BBC Radio 4 from Understand 10 fights that made the green movement listen first on BBC Sounds.