ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Earlier today, President Trump said the U.S. will blockade the Strait of Hormuz. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he, quote, "instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in international waters that has paid a toll to Iran." He added, "any Iranian who fires at us or at peaceful vessels will be blown to hell." The threatening post comes after high-level talks on Saturday failed to bring an end to the war in Iran. The conflict has left thousands dead and sent oil prices soaring. It's also led to censorship. I spoke about this with NPR's Aya Batrawy and Geoff Brumfiel. Geoff began by explaining how censorship is taking shape in Iran.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Believe it or not, Iran did not have the most restrictive internet in the past, even though it was a pretty theocratic state. People could still go online. But since the start of this war, there's effectively been a blackout. It's been very hard for people in Iran to know what's happening and hard for them to share their experiences of the war. That is something really new for the country. There was some censorship after the 12-day war last year and more after the civil unrest earlier this year, but this war has really sort of caused the government to shut down the internet.
SCHMITZ: And, Aya, what are you finding in your reporting?
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: So we did see some images able to get out from regular people through some intermittent internet access and text messaging, but it was dangerous if you get caught. Iranian media reported that hundreds of people had been arrested during the six weeks of the war for sending information to the enemy and enemy media. But we also saw government officials able to get online, like the foreign minister constantly posting on X, and state media and the media aligned with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had active Telegram channels so we could get state information.
SCHMITZ: You know, and it's not just Iran. I understand that there's been a big change here in the U.S. as well. Geoff, tell us about that.
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, that's right. The U.S. government has requested that commercial satellite providers here stop sharing images with press and the public, and this is a really big change for reporters like myself. Let me give you an example of why.
So there was a strike on a school in southern Iran on the opening day of this war that killed around 170 people, most of them children. And NPR was the first to report that the school bombing was part of what appeared to be a precision airstrike on an adjacent base that was run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Now, that reporting was possible thanks to images from a company called Planet. We could use them to actually see the strike points. Subsequently, the U.S. government admitted that they were behind the strike, and they're now investigating that.
So the news that Planet and another company called Vantor have cut off access to those images is really a blow to those of us trying to verify what's been hit. But Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at Middlebury College, says there's another issue.
JEFFREY LEWIS: The big problem is that it becomes very hard to fact-check things like the videos that we're seeing coming out of the region.
BRUMFIEL: And that's because satellite images are used to verify on-the-ground videos and make sure they're not, you know, fake or from another conflict or something else.
SCHMITZ: You know, and when we look across the region, Aya, what are you seeing - or maybe I should ask, what are you not seeing?
BATRAWY: We can start in Israel where censorship laws there prohibit the press and journalists from reporting on attacks on military sites and bases, limiting the reporting to the attacks on civilian areas. And that can give a skewed view of what's happening and shape public opinion of the war with incomplete facts.
Also, we did not get a full picture about U.S. bases and energy sites that were hit across the Gulf, neither from the Pentagon nor from these Arab Gulf states. And Bellingcat, a group that uses open source data for investigations, published a report showing that the United Arab Emirates was downplaying or mischaracterizing some of the attacks here. They gave an example of a video shared by a migrant worker, who was later arrested, they say, for a video that appeared to show an Iranian drone directly hitting a fuel storage area. But official statements said a fire had resulted from debris from an interception, though no interception could be seen in the video. I did ask the United Arab Emirates for comment on that report, which gave several examples, and I did not receive a response.
SCHMITZ: And these are all Gulf states that are sort of sensitive to this stuff. Why?
BATRAWY: You know, a big part of it has to do with their reputation, whether it's Riyadh or Dubai or Doha, these are financial hubs. These are places that are trying to attract tourism and diversify their economies. So images of incoming drones and missiles is not good for business. You know, the main hotel and the main airport in Dubai were hit, and they were only referred to as incidents, not as actual drone strikes in official statements. And as a result, we saw hundreds of people across the Gulf being arrested for sharing images online of interceptions or of strikes.
In Abu Dhabi alone, in just one emirate of the United Arab Emirates, nearly 400 people were arrested, according to police there. And people are facing up to two years in prison, $55,000 in fines in the UAE. We've seen people lose their jobs and visas across the Gulf because of this. And so as a result, we're starting to see - I saw people self-censoring themselves in community WhatsApp groups, even afraid to just ask about certain attacks or to say what they think they saw out of fear that that could be seen as, you know, spreading rumors.
SCHMITZ: Wow. And, Geoff, let's turn to you. You know, you've been talking to researchers who use these videos and images to chronicle war. What are they telling you?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. I mean, as I mentioned, Jeffrey Lewis said this is making things harder. Another researcher I spoke to is Jake Godin, a senior researcher with Bellingcat, which Aya mentioned earlier, that open source investigations group. He says without current satellite images and fewer on-the-ground videos, he's having a harder time telling what's going on in places like Lebanon.
LEWIS: You know, it's not great that these things are happening, but we're a resilient bunch.
BRUMFIEL: I think that really is the message. The people who are used to evaluating this stuff online are good at finding workarounds. So Bellingcat, for example, recently figured out how to use data from a really old satellite to detect when buildings in an area were destroyed. So despite this blackout, there still is a lot more penetration of what's happening in the region than you might expect.
SCHMITZ: That is NPR's Geoff Brumfiel and Aya Batrawy. Thanks to you both for your reporting.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you.
BATRAWY: Thanks, Rob. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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