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Yegana Torbati
we sort of see through his eyes both the promise of the revolution and why he believed in it, and also kind of what happened to that promise over time.
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Mary Louise Kelly
There's a country heavily influenced by, quote, a movement that harbored dreams of social justice, equality, independence and political freedom. Can you guess it? This is Sources and Methods from npr. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. That country I was just describing, it's Iran, or at least Iran at the time of the 1930s, 1979 revolution. The path from 1979 with the toppling of a monarch, through the decades of oppression and economic turmoil that followed to this current moment is mapped out in the book Stolen Revolution, Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran. Co author and journalist Yegina Torbati is here to talk to us about it in this special episode of the podcast. We've spent so much time here these last few months talking about the current war in Iran. It felt worthwhile to dig deep on. Yegan is reporting on some of the forces and people who brought Iran to this moment. Yegana Torbati, welcome.
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Yegana Torbati
Thank you so much for having me.
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Mary Louise Kelly
So I was so eager to read this book because it feels like we've got Iran in the headlines every day right now. But missing from the coverage is often the voices of ordinary Iranians, which you have six of them in this book. Six Iranians. Tell me how you picked them. How did you arrive at this particular group?
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Yegana Torbati
My co author and I really wanted to be able to tell the story, story of Iran through a diverse set of sources and through the experiences of both ordinary people and then also people who had at one point or another held great power and influence inside the country and really sort of show what had happened since the 1979 revolution through their eyes. So in this book, there's a story of a cleric who is a devoted follower of the founder of the revolution, who rises to great power and then is ousted. And we sort of see through his eyes both the promise of the revolution and why he believed in it and also kind of what happened to that promise over time. Yeah, there's a poet activist who was part of the reform movement and then the green movement There's a businessman who I think gives us a window really into the corruption and the pressure on the private sector in Iran in the modern era. And then there's Gen Z, you know, women who really had a completely different experience of the revolution of the Islamic Republic that resulted and never really had that faith in it that some of our earlier characters had. So you. You sort of.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Well, who are so young, they wouldn't have remembered the revolution, not to mention anything that came before, certainly.
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Yegana Torbati
And. And they. They were never kind of convinced by the Islamic Republic's presentation of the revolution and its meaning. You know, from the very moment of their awareness, their political awareness, they completely rejected it. And we sort of see that evolution over time.
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Mary Louise Kelly
To raise a practical point, it is risky for people to speak their minds in modern Iran. How did you get these stories? How'd you get people to talk?
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Yegana Torbati
A few of the characters are now outside the country, and so it was much safer for them to be able to speak. I do think that, you know, we had the luxury of time. We worked on this book for over five years, and we were able to sort of convince people over time, gain their trust. But I also think, of course, the sources showed a great deal of bravery in speaking with us, and they also felt like they wanted to tell their story. They wanted to just help people understand kind of what life is like in Iran today, what their own journeys have consisted of. There were times where we asked people, are you sure you want to go on the record? Are you sure you want to have your name out there? And they were very comfortable with it. They wanted people to know kind of what had happened to them and what actions they had taken over the course of their lives.
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Mary Louise Kelly
And just to note your personal background, you're born here in the US To Iranian immigrant parents, so you speak Persian, so you could, when necessary, communicate with people in their native tongue.
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Yegana Torbati
Absolutely. I'd say the vast majority of our sources, we conducted the interviews in Persian over the course of weeks, months, years.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Yeah. And before we dive into to the specifics of these stories, just. I'm thinking about a point you make in the book. Our understanding outside Iran, of Iran, its people, its stories. The country has been so fractured because it has been so hard to hear voices like this. What do you think the consequences of that are? What are you hoping this book might be able to do to change that?
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Yegana Torbati
I think one of the consequences is that we hear a lot from the government's perspective, and I think that's been magnified. You know, it would have been very difficult for us to report this book under these conditions because we relied on people having Internet connections and being able to speak with us for sometimes hours at a time.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Interesting. So you couldn't have maybe gotten all of these voices now.
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Yegana Torbati
Right. And I think what we wanted to do was talk to supporters of. Of the government and also opponents, really a wide range, but just have a more nuanced understanding of kind of their experience of what it's like to live in Iran, what it's like to kind of contend with this system. I think there are a few characters in our book that are black or white. We try to really delve into their. Their decision making and try to understand, like, what is it actually like to live under authoritarian system and what kind of compromises do you really have to make. And we don't really paint any of our sources for. For sure as a villain or as all good. We think that, you know, people have to make choices and to contend or
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Mary Louise Kelly
American or anything else. And what you're saying resonates, you know, in a very different country here speaking the United States. But the idea that it. It often is voices on the extremes of our political spectrum that are the ones that get amplified and it's harder to hear from the relative people who are somewhere in the middle trying to figure it out. So let's dig in. The book begins with the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. And you tell that story through the eyes of one of his most devoted clerics. Who was he and what was it about the message that Khomeini was spreading at that time that made it so compelling?
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Yegana Torbati
So his name was Mehdi Kadubi, and he was a young dissident Islamist cleric in the 1960s. He got to know Aya Khomeini in Qom. He's one of his students. And he became very devoted to his cause. And the reason for that was. Was kind of complex. He did believe in Khomeini's vision for an Islamist government and in the idea that, you know, that kind of government would be holy and just. But the specific reasons behind it, he was. Kadribi is someone who's very drawn to helping the poor. Social justice. He has sort of this humanitarian essence that he got from his father. And we try to kind of show that in the. As well. And so he attaches himself to Khomeini's cause and fights for it nonviolently. But he goes to prison under the Shah. He helps to spread Khomeini's message. He helps to raise money for Khomeini's cause and kind of supports people who had been imprisoned or exiled, you know, because of their work for Khomeini. And after the revolution, he is rewarded. He rises to a position of great power. He eventually becomes a speaker of parliament in the late 1980s. And it's after Khomeini dies that his story kind of takes a different turn and perhaps a more interesting turn. And we kind of try to delve into some of the contradictions that his experience really has over the ensuing 30 years.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Yeah, and I think it's useful because people who are not deeply familiar with the history of Modern Iran, 1979, the Revolution and everything that followed, you don't necessarily know that was a time of social justice and this kind of breath of freedom coming in. What, what changed? I know that's a big question, but what changed?
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Yegana Torbati
I think what's complicated about Katterby and why I personally was really drawn to him as a character is that he actually helps to sort of put in place some of the unjust systems that then turn to oppressing him and, you know, also his political allies and the Iranian people. So he helps to found these foundations that the intention was a good one, which was to help the poor, help the people who had lost someone in the fight against the Shah. But they're funded by property confiscations, you know, from people who are claimed to be supporters of the past regime, but it was really kind of a free for all. And he is entrusted with these properties. You know, they're sold, they're. They're used to fund kind of the, these foundations operations. And what we see in the ensuing 20, 30 years is that those same institutions and that same model for expropriating wealth from perceived enemies and channeling that wealth to your perceived supporters or base is one that really grows unchecked. You know, these foundations are still active in Iran's economy. They have invested in a slew of businesses. They really dominate the private sector along with the Revolutionary Guards. And so we kind of see that this model that was first justified outwardly by claims of social justice over time, and under Khomeini's successor, Ali Khamenei, really became a way to channel wealth and power towards regime supporters and away from kind of the broader society.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Right. I'm going to turn to another person whose story you tell. We're fast forwarding now to the 90s, which tell me, I know this is probably simplifying things, but it seemed like reformers started to gain some power in the 90s in Iran, taking Iran in a bit more of a liberal direction. And. And you write about those years partly through the eyes of a poet, Hyla. Who was she?
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Yegana Torbati
Yeah, her name's Hila Sedgly. And so she was in her adolescence in the 90s, growing into. She was basically a teenager at that time. And she is really captivated by the figure of Muhammad Khatami. And, you know, Khatami was part of Kaadribi's political movement, actually. They were both kind of on the Islamic left. They were sort of ousted from power after Khomeini's death. But then in the early to mid-90s, there was an opening. Their rivals were kind of infighting, and there was an opening for them to kind of make an electoral show. They decide to nominate Khatami. And he really appealed to people like Hila, her family, that generation of sort of middle class, young, kind of striving Iranians who were sort of tired of, you know, the 15 years of first the war during the 1980s with Iraq, and then also kind of the cultural restrictions, the social restrictions on young people. And Hila urges her parents to vote for him. She was too young to vote at the time. And once he's elected into office in a really landslide, sweeping victory that took everyone in Iran's political system by surprise, she really sees her horizons widen. There's kind of this civil society that starts to form in Iran. She takes. She's a active member of that. And as she gets older, she is more active kind of on the cultural and art scene. But of course, that also bleeds into politics. And she does campaigning and kind of organizing on behalf of political candidates. And we kind of follow her story through the Green movement and through 2009, and we sort of through her see how those apparently spontaneous protests really were also built on this bedrock of civil activism that had been in place since the 90s. And with her generation, what was the
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Mary Louise Kelly
experience of her generation of women in Iran compared to what we know of today?
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Yegana Torbati
Yeah, it was. It was complicated. Right. So Iran had at that time, a pretty conservative culture by today's standards. So even, you know, within her family necessarily, or within her community, it wasn't okay for, you know, a girl to maybe like, refuse to wear the headscarf or to kind of flirt or talk too loudly or sort of just be seen in any way as kind of like violating social norms for women. So, you know, in. It's. It's. But it's. It was complicated. So in her you know, civil society groups. She was very active. She was a leader of one. The the men around her got used to seeing a woman kind of in charge of something and maybe even as their superior. And so their thoughts and and behavior sort of subtly changed in the years to come. But overall in society, Iran was kind of still in a conservative moment, and there wasn't kind of this huge gap between the state's vision women should behave and society's vision of that. And so Hila contended with that. She, you know, very early on wrote poems about the mandatory hijab that were, you know, against that, but she abided by them because that was kind of the social norm at the time. And of course, over the last, you know, five, ten years in Iran, that has completely changed. And the standards for how women should dress and behave are just much more liberal and kind of equal now, at least on the on the societal level, not so much at the state level.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Time for a break. Before we do that, quick plug for our episode. Earlier this week when I spoke with Jake Sullivan, national security advisor under President Biden, before a live audience at the 2026 WBUR Festival, we talked China, Ukraine, Cuba and of course, Iran.
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Synchrony Bank Announcer
The nuclear deal seems to be getting further away, not closer. You have the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps even more hardline regime in place and frankly, seemingly solidly in place. So I think we are in an extremely difficult spot.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Make sure you check that episode out before it goes into our archive in a few weeks. Coming up, what do ordinary Iranians want their future to look like? That's ahead on Sources and Methods from npr.
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NPR Sponsor Announcer
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- [15:45]
Synchrony Bank Announcer
This message comes from Synchrony bank, who wants to inspire you to stay flexible, save smart and keep dreaming big. With their High Yield savings account. You'll earn a great rate without monthly fees or minimums so you can reach your savings Goals faster without the hassle. Open an account with a great rate in five minutes or less and dream on. Go to synchrony.com NPR member FDIC.
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Mary Louise Kelly
You're tracking all of this as a writer in your book. You're also tracking it as a journalist filing on a daily or near daily basis now for the New York Times. We see headlines every day about the economic impact of the war. It's harder to get a sense of what that impact is inside Iran. What have you been able to learn through your reporting?
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Yegana Torbati
It's been pretty devastating for Iranians, both the war itself and kind of the strikes on infrastructure, the strikes on major steel plants which feed factories. The blockade that the US Is imposing is, you know, making it difficult to get raw materials into the country. And so factories are starting to lay people off. But a huge impact has also been the government's response to the war and its decision to shut down the Internet.
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Mary Louise Kelly
I mean, just to note, the economy was in dire shape before the war in Iran. So we're going downhill from that's going.
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Yegana Torbati
And we saw protests that launched in December and really grew in size in January. And those were a direct result of complaints over the economy, inflation, price of food in particular going up. And so all of those problems have gotten worse. And also now there's this wave of layoffs and that pressure exists on, on the Iranian people. It doesn't seem to affect the government's decision making in the same way that, for instance, you know, President Trump might have to worry or the Republicans might have to worry about they're showing in the midterms because people are upset about the price of gas.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Yeah. I saw a story you wrote recently about a sense of hopelessness in Iran. Tell me how you went about reporting that and, and what people told you.
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Yegana Torbati
So I've done, you know, obviously I can get in touch with people in limited fashion. I also, with colleagues, went to the border, Turkey's border with Iran, and talked to folks who were coming through the land border and then also through the train. This was before civilian flights had really resumed in a robust way. And I think, you know, it's a complicated issue. I will say that, you know, last year during the 12 Day War and after and at the beginning of this round of conflict, I did hear from a lot of sources that they were happy that this was happening or that they were at least hopeful for it. That in their view, they have tried a lot of different things. They tried electing moderates and reformists in the 90s. And as you kind of see, in the book, that effort is stymied. The regime refuses to change in a significant way. They again, you know, they come out to protest in 2009 and have very minimal demands, which was just, we want our vote to be counted. In 2013, they vote again for a moderate candidate that also, you know, significant change is not allowed to happen. And then there's these subsequent rounds of protests from 2017 onwards that get kind of more and more almost desperate in terms of people's demands and the situation that they're facing. And for a certain subset of Iranians, they feel like they've tried everything. Nothing has worked. The regime, the government, like, refuses to make significant changes. And therefore, maybe a military attack is the only way to dislodge external pressure
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Mary Louise Kelly
is the only way that we're gonna.
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Yegana Torbati
Exactly.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Anything changed.
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Yegana Torbati
And I think, you know, for some of the. I'd say many to most of the people that I've spoke, that I've spoken with who had that view, they've been quite disappointed by what this war has brought them. They see the regime as kind of hardening, even. There are nightly street rallies of supporters which are kind of meant as a show of force and sort of meant to send the signal. At least they think that, you know, don't even dare to come out into the streets. We have the numbers to. To come out against you. There's no signal to them that this regime is changing or, you know, leaving the scene. Quite the opposite. And so I think people just feel like, well, nothing has worked and what do we do from here?
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Mary Louise Kelly
You in that same story, though, write about a rock concert in Tehran that has just sold out and about, you know, the hipsters, young hipsters in Tehran who are still hanging out at cafes and having fun. It's fascinating to read. Joy continues. Hope does continue. Even amidst a wider sense of hopelessness, life goes on.
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Yegana Torbati
You know, I think even people in war zones figure out ways to have those moments of joy, because you sort of have to. To keep going. And I do think, you know, my job as a book author and my job as a newspaper reporter can sometimes be a little bit intention, because reviewing all this history, I sort of got a sense that, like, nothing is permanent. Like, things change and movements can arise out of nowhere, and people learn to kind of deal with things and maybe come up with sol, and they manage to find ways to keep contesting power and to keep asserting themselves over time. And so, you know, for a news story, you kind of have to, like, have an angle and a conclusion. But It's a snapshot in time. And in a year or in five years, we may look back and, you know, see all of this as a prelude to something or kind of be able to identify the threads that then led to something bigger. And we sort of have to be patient and also keep, keep watching.
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Mary Louise Kelly
I think, of course, we don't know when this current war will end or in what way or any of what may be to come. What are you hearing about what ordinary Iranians want their future to look like?
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Yegana Torbati
It's a country of 92 million people.
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Mary Louise Kelly
So there's a huge range, a huge
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Yegana Torbati
range in this book. We try to find people who had different, you know, expectations or hopes for the future as well. I think there is a subset of people who would like some kind of democratic system, some sort change. There's people who, you know, I think the war has convinced them, like, change can't come from outside. And maybe our best hope is to try to create some kind of pressure on the system from. From inside. And then there are folks I've talked to who want kind of a benign dictatorship that just allows for economic growth. I mean, I think the economic pressure on people and the way that they've seen their buying power diminish over the last 10 to 15 years is really real, and it's in, in the forefront of their minds. Everyone I spoke with at the border immediately raised the economy as a big issue for them. And so I like, as long as
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Mary Louise Kelly
I can buy gas, I don't care who's leading the country. Almost.
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Yegana Torbati
Yeah. Or like, can. Can we have a leader or a government that prioritizes economic growth and stability so that my kid can get a job here and not have to leave the country, you know, so that I can just have a normal life? I think that is the biggest. The through line that we hear is that people just want to have kind of a normal existence, nothing super, you know, even prosperous or anything like that, but just be able to have a normal life where they can afford a car and eventually maybe a house and just kind of plan for the future. And that really has been taken from Iranians over the last few years to
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Mary Louise Kelly
bring it back to the six people that you center in your book. You write that they have diverging visions for Iran's future, from the total overthrow of the Islamic Republic to, as you just noted, its reform from within to the. The return of the monarchy. I read that and I thought, how fascinating, how surprising is it that given how dramatic the events of this spring have been, including the Killing of the Supreme Leader. It's resulted in none of the above, none of those things have happened.
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Yegana Torbati
Most of the Iranians I speak with are quite disappointed with where the country is at this point. And, and it's like all these dramatic things happen. There's been such a year of tumult, two foreign attacks, you know, back in June and then starting in late February. And we've ended up with a Supreme Leader who's also named Khamenei. And you know, very much the same system, perhaps even kind of more hardened and willing to kind of exact revenge from those that it sees as its internal enemies. And I think, you know, these, these authoritarian systems are very powerful. It's not 1979 anymore. They have tools at their disposal that the Shah didn't have, including surveillance and technology. And just in a, you know, this, this, this regime has proven quite adept at controlling its populace, maybe co opting some populations, at times pressuring others. And the opposition movements inside have been quite repressed. Outside, it's been difficult to kind of form a united front. And so, you know, I, I think at this moment it feels quite a lot of the people I speak with are quite despondent.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Just one last question and it's on sourcing. How helpful were Iranian officials in responding to your questions?
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Yegana Torbati
Not very helpful. You know, so the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, of course he was killed in February, but he had not, not sat down with a reporter since becoming Supreme Leader. He had not answered reporters questions. That's quite unique. Never, not once since becoming Supreme Leader. I, I don't know when, when he was president. He might have done newspaper interviews in the 80s, but that's quite rare for a head of state. Even, you know, Putin answers reporters questions. He was adept at deflecting accountability onto the elected portions of government. So the elected president, but that's someone who doesn't have the same power that the Supreme Leader has in the wrong system. And that kind of lack of accountability we found sort of was an example that was followed by other officials within the government. So we reached out to every person or institution that's named in the book. We asked, you know, very in depth questions. We reached out to kind of the point of contact for foreign journalists writing about Iran. We sent them a very detailed description of our reporting and we, we didn't hear back. And so we tried where it was appropriate to add in kind of Iranian officials views on events. And I think when you read the book you find that it's a fairly nuanced depiction of this government and some of the good that it tried to do and why those efforts were stymied and by who. But we unfortunately, for the most part, we did not hear directly back from government officials. There were a few very small exceptions to that, and we put those responses in the book.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Yegana Torbati, thank you.
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Yegana Torbati
Thank you so much for having me.
- [27:06]
Mary Louise Kelly
She is Iran correspondent for the New York Times and co author of the new book Stolen Revolution. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. We are back with our regular episode on Thursday. Until then, thanks for listening to sources and methods from npr.
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