I’m not a fan of the “even <Pravda Outlet X> was FORCED to report <good news Y>” types of stories.
Sure, these outlets are biased and often push hoaxes, but there is something kinda icky about saying they were “forced” to report something. As snide and cynical as I am, even I believe that when their ideological lenses get taken off at times they see reality.
Or not. In any case, we should take our wins when they come, and this one certainly fits the “win” category.
2. A Tehran resident told her “security forces started giving out free food next to checkpoints they’ve set up…they are deliberately trying to put civilians in harm’s way because these are checkpoints that Israel has been heavily bombing.” pic.twitter.com/dauqbnz8ga
— Karim Sadjadpour (@ksadjadpour) March 25, 2026
NPR ran a story from Iraq’s border with Iran, in which the reporter interviewed Iranians who crossed the border during the war. They, quite reasonably, wanted to know what Iranians thought about the bombing campaign, and the responses caught them off guard.
Almost to a person, they were glad that somebody was finally taking out the regime and hoped that the war would continue until that was achieved.
They worried that Trump would end the war with the regime still in place, as Bush I did in Iraq in 1991.
It is impossible to overstate how much they hate the regime, and want the deaths of Iranians from the war to mean something.
FENG: She’s saying, “we needed a foreign military intervention to save us. The U.S. and Israel already killed the former Supreme Leader Khamenei, and I hope they kill the rest of the leadership soon.” It was shocking to hear her bluntness and to hear people celebrating foreign governments killing Iranian leaders, and that stuck with me. And so I’ve been asking people all week to explain why they feel this way.
MARTÍNEZ: And why did they feel this way?
FENG: The simple answer is Iranians feel they have gone through a degree of suffering under Iran’s theocratic regime that is unendurable. And they say that they will risk death in order to see their government fall. Here is another man we spoke to whose hometown was really active in these anti-government protests in January.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking Persian).
FENG: He was telling us that everything has gone from his hometown. What is left is the bitterness of 47 years that is strangling us Iranians. He told us, for him, a turning point was the bloody government crackdown that came after the protests, which a U.S.-based human rights monitor confirmed, in which Iran killed more than 7,000 of its own citizens. Though, many Iranians like him believe the death toll is far higher.
Another man, a former technician who spent seven years in prison in Iran, says his entire family is still back in the country. But he supports the strikes. And he was trying to explain the kind of pain that could make one wish death on their own government. And when he was explaining this to me, he reached over, A, he pinched me. And he said, I know you know pain, but you don’t understand real pain.
None of this is a surprise to many of us, but it surely is to many NPR listeners who have been indoctrinated to believe that Israel and America are always the bad guys, and that anybody with a skin tone darker than a Starbucks milk-based drink hates us.
There’s a telecommunications blackout in Iran now. But a 42-year-old Iranian who lives just north of Tehran did send us a text last night saying people around him had endured so much because of Iran’s government. They were feeling really emotional about this war. And it would be unacceptable, according to him, for the war to end and then to leave Iran’s government in place. He told us that the war is something that they’re tolerating because they’re hoping that it’ll eventually lead to their freedom.
Too bad those Jewish space lasers aren’t real. I guess we will have to kill the regime the old-fashioned way.
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