On the Ground in the Middle East

Jen Rubin chats with The Counteroffensive reporter Alessandra Hay about how the war in Iran is affecting the wider region.

I spoke with Alessandra Hay, a reporter with The Counteroffensive With Tim Mak, on Thursday. May has been reporting on the ground from the Middle East. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Jen Rubin (left) and Alessandra Hay chat by Zoom.

Jen Rubin: Tell us where you are.

Alessandra Hay: I’m in Yerevan, which is the capital of Armenia. It borders Iran to the north and Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Are you seeing people coming across the border from Iran into Armenia now?

Yeah. Actually, it’s really interesting. You would expect that you would see a lot more. We’ve spent so much time interviewing these people. They all have incredible stories. Often what you hear is that they tried to cross into Turkey, and then they tried to go from Turkey to Europe. They’re political refugees. Almost everybody we’ve met is wanted for arrest for protesting or for doing something that would be totally allowed in a different country.

What areas seem to be most impacted? Is this a regional war, or is it more isolated in terms of the counterstrikes?

It’s so difficult to tell right now. It really is just the first few days. I feel like everyone’s trying to get their bearings, and I really do think that the war each day has changed so much. Each day our expectations are being shattered.

We’ve heard about Kurds amassing on the border. Do you have any information whether that’s accurate?

Yeah, I had an interview today with somebody who works in Komala, which is one of the Kurdish parties, and there’ll be an article about it on Saturday at Iranwar.news. He lived for 10 years in Iraqi Kurdistan, right on the border with Iran, and was kind of involved in this political party and always talking about his home but obviously was not allowed to go back. He didn’t deny that the U.S. was arming the Kurdish, but he also didn’t confirm it. So, I don’t have any specific inside information on that.

What is the reporting in the region about the Gulf countries’ reactions? Are they angry? Are they looking for an off-ramp? Or is it too early to say?

I’ve read and heard that they have not really been reacting to Iran. They have been reaching out to foreign partners, asking for help with air defense and military weaponry. The sense that I’m getting is that they are not looking to react, and they have been kind of pushing [U.S. President Donald] Trump toward an off-ramp.

Are the neighboring countries expecting this to go on for days, for weeks, for months?

It’s just impossible to tell. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with, especially because we don’t really know what the war is about.

Obviously, air travel has been affected. Are people canceling trips? Are people not able to reach family? What’s the level of disruption?

I had just flown home the night before. I woke up and saw the news, and within an hour and a half, I was on a plane out. They did a full security check of our plane. It was a very, very anxious atmosphere. They checked through all our luggage after we had boarded because people decided they didn’t want to fly because people were genuinely worried about what could happen on the flight. And, yeah, the airport was in chaos. There are all these reports of people being stuck in Dubai, people who would not usually get caught in these situations.

Ukraine was a war of aggression. Is it a different sense in Iran that this is now a war of aggression by the United States, or do Iranians feel that their own government put them in this predicament?

That that’s a very, very interesting question. The people that we’ve talked to in Yerevan, Armenia, have all been like, “this is amazing, like, you know, [Ayatollah] Khomeini’s been killed, all of these political leaders have been killed.” We had a really interesting article by my friend Jackie Cole about this man who’s basically planning his return home. People are thinking about going home for the first time in such a long time. There haven’t been that many people who put the blame on the U.S, but it’s only been a few days. From my experience with the war in Ukraine, the narrative changes really quickly. You develop different enemies. It also might be a coping mechanism. We have heard of people dancing in the street. The day after Khomeini died, there was a celebration in Yerevan with the Iranians. It was incredible.

I’m interested in the impact on Ukraine. Obviously, we’re using up a huge amount of munitions, and there is some concern about what’s left over. How is this impacting the war in Ukraine?

That’s also an interesting question. I guess it’s impacting it in several ways. There is a concern about munitions and the U.S. getting drawn into a war and that impacting its ability to fight off other enemies and support Ukraine with munitions. I think the big question with munitions is interceptors and missiles. There’s kind of this idea that whoever runs out first loses. Is it going to be the person shooting off the missiles or is it going to be the person attacking?

One thing we’ve seen is that Russia has again completely failed to show up for its allies. It failed in Syria. It’s failed numerous other times, and I think that that is something that has gone under the radar. This is really chipping away at its credibility as an ally. And that is pretty important. There was a partnership, very strong military and defense ties between Russia and Iran, and where is Russia? Not on the scene, really.

In the United States, there’s extreme confusion about what the purpose of the war is, why we’ve gone in, how long it’s going to last. Do people there have a better sense than we do about what the endpoint is?

I don’t think so. The people we’ve been talking to are refugees who really want to go home, and they really want their country to be free of the authoritarian regime. And so that that is really the endpoint that we’ve been hearing. I feel like everyone is just trying to get their bearings. Like, in America, in Iran, all around the world, everyone is just trying to understand what is going on.

The people you’re meeting are, as you said, political refugees. These are people who are wanted, they’ve been protesters, or they have connections. But they also seem to be deeply patriotic. They love Iran, and they want Iran to become something else. When the war ends, if there is some kind of change of government, do you imagine that these people could return or would they become permanent exiles?

I know multiple people that are planning their routes as we speak. They all talk about wanting to return home. I imagine it would be a really different place. One likely candidate is Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince, who is the son of the former Shah from before the Iranian regime took over. And I think maybe there’s a sense of familiarity, that this is something that was there before, and we can have this again. Pahlavi has positioned himself as someone who wants to transition the country to democracy, not that he wants to establish a monarchy. So, that’s also important.

So, what are your plans in the short term? Are you going to be based in Armenia? Are you going to be able to travel around the region, or is that impossible at this point?

It seems like we’re going to be based in Armenia. If the opportunity presents itself, of course we’ll go to Iran. That would be incredible, but that doesn’t seem on the horizon yet.

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