This week on the podcast I’m joined by Nilo Tabrizy, a Canadian-Iranian open source intelligence journalist, and one of the first to confirm the dreadful news that a U.S. missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Southern Iran, killing at least 160 people, many of whom were children.

I was curious to ask Nilo about her approach to covering the Iran war; open source intelligence reporting (often just abbreviated to OSINT) requires Nilo to watch hours of footage, often of devastating harms against civilians, in order to hold authority figures accountable. Her work is laborious and painstaking, pouring over satellite imagery, combing metadata, cross-referencing social media posts and public records; it may sound overly technical, but it’s grounded in humanity.

“ I can’t see or feel or put together the feelings of 90 million people, but I can verify a video of an airstrike at a school of Minab, or on an EMS base in Shiraz. I’m just trying to think how can I be the most additive in the most ethical way?”

~ Nilo Tabrizy, author and open-source intelligence journalist

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A lot of our conversation is about finding your place in the world. For Nilo, that started young when she arrived in Canada from Iran as a preschooler, and continued as she navigated often gatekept institutions like Columbia University, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Nilo was frequently called upon to report on painful events happening to her (and my) ancestral homeland, and we discuss that duality of being so close to the story but physically far from the events on the ground.

Nilo has of course also covered atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic Republic, including the IRGC downing of flight PS752, a Ukrainian airlines passenger plane bound for Kiev from Tehran, which included many Canadian-American citizens. All 176 people on board the flight were killed. The work looking into who shot the plane down was particularly painful work for Nilo as she knew several people on the flight. We talk about how to process trauma when you’re witnessing it and living it in real time on the podcast.

On a personal note: I’ve known Nilo for well over a decade (we’ve been friends since grad school) and in the episode we reflect on immigrant upbringings, the pain of covering a conflict when you’re so viscerally and emotionally connected, and the strength of Iranian women. During the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, Nilo and her collaborator Fatemeh Jamalpour would exchange updates on what was happening inside the country via Telegram, Signal and other encrypted channels; the result is a beautifully poignant book ‘For The Sun After Long Nights,’ with first-hand accounts from many women who were on the front lines of that uprising peppered with personal reflections from both women. I highly recommend.

 “These grievances that people are taking to the streets for like women life freedom — it’s not as if something was solved and they kept going. That undercurrent of people calling for an end to the Islamic Republic remains, and remains in every protest movement that we’ve seen in the past decade.”

~ Nilo Tabrizy, Author ‘For The Sun After Long Nights’

On the pod, we talk about where the feminist movement inside Iran stands today, amidst the ongoing war being waged by Israel and the U.S. We also discuss the absurdity of often being asked to try and boil down the feelings of Iranians (90+million people of different ethnicities, religions, outlooks, etc!) on live television, and how best to amplify the situation inside Iran when reporting in-country is out of reach for many of us; our good friend Jason Rezaian is a cruel case in point, he was arrested while on assignment for a U.S. outlet, and jailed by the Islamic Republic for 544 days. A similarly grim fate is often levied against Iranian journalists who live inside the country. Their bravery is absolutely unmatched.

My thanks to Nilo joon for her candor and thoughtful commentary. As always, you can reach out to me with thoughts, comments or suggestions.

Thanks for listening, until next time.

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