Public Trust

Yeganeh Torbati on Iran and the layoffs at The Washington Post


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Which headline on Friday does the best job clearly communicating what may happen in just a few days:

The New York Times: “President Acknowledges That He Is Weighing Limited Strike on Iran”;

The Wall Street Journal: “The U.S. Military Hardware Pouring Into the Middle East”;

The Washington Post: “Trump appears ready to attack Iran as U.S. strike force takes shape.”

If you said the Washington Post, I’d agree.

What’s perhaps most notable about that story is that The Post’s Persian-speaking correspondent who they sent overseas to cover Iran didn’t help write it. That’s because the correspondent, Yegenah Torbati, was among the more than 300 journalists The Post just laid off.

“Bewildering” Torbati said when I asked her what it was like to get that news while in Turkey, where she had just moved four months earlier. We discussed her reporting on the uprising in Iran, the regime’s deadly response to it, and how, despite some surface similarities, this is unlike anything Americans are seeing in the clashes between protesters and government agents in Minnesota, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Follow Yeganeh Torabi on Substack, and you can reach her on Signal: yjtorbati.94

And you can pre-order her forthcoming book, with journalist Bozorgmehr Sharafedin: “Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran,” [June 2 with Penguin Random House]

$18.99 eBook [BookShop]

$18.99 eBook [Barnes and Noble]

$32.62 Hardcover [BookShop]

$35 Hardcover [Barnes and Noble]

$35 Hardcover [Books A Million

$35 Hardcover [Powell’s]

Tell me what you think of this interview.

And recommend a guest or a topic for a future episode.

My email is [email protected]

Links from the show

President Acknowledges That He Is Weighing Limited Strike on Iran

The New York Times

The U.S. Military Hardware Pouring Into the Middle East”;

The Wall Street Journal

“Trump appears ready to attack Iran as U.S. strike force takes shape.”

The Washington Post

The Islamic Republic’s Broken Promises of Economic Justice

New Lines magazine

Iranian forces massacred protesters fleeing burning market, witnesses say

The Washington Post

“Trump promised Iranians the U.S. would rescue them. Some feel betrayed.”

Washington Post

“Videos show security forces firing into crowds in at least six cities across Iran”

The Washington Post



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Public TrustBy Azi Paybarah