Preview of a Journey Across Iran: Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof gives a first look at his road trip through Iran, as he talks to ordinary Iranians about their lives, their government and the United States. 
 
 To watch the video, press the play button in the bottom-left corner of the image. 
 
 MASHHAD, Iran 
 
 My 1,700-mile road trip across Iran began with a giddy paean to America, reinforcing my view that at the grass-roots level, this may be the most pro-American nation in the Middle East. 
 
 “We love America!” gushed a former military commando, now a clothing seller, my first evening in the spiritual center of Mashhad. He was so carried away that I thought he might hug me, and although he acknowledged that his business was suffering greatly from Western sanctions, he said he blamed his own leaders. 
 
 “I can’t blame America,” he said. “I love America too much.” 
 
 That was far from a universal view. I encountered many Iranians — especially in the countryside — who strongly support the Iranian authorities and resent what they see as American government bullying. But while Iranians are far from monolithic, one feature was ubiquitous: the warmth of Iranians when they discovered I was American. 
 
 We passed occasional “Death to America” signs, but our trip was slowed by hospitality, for Iranians kept giving us presents or inviting us into their homes. And in the security line to board a flight from Tehran to Mashhad, a Revolutionary Guard said genially, “We’re not supposed to let batteries through, but we’ll make an exception for you since you’re a foreigner.” 
 
 The Iranian government gave me a very rare journalist visa, along with permission to drive unescorted across the country on a government-approved route from Mashhad in the east to Tabriz in the west, and back to Tehran. I interviewed people at random along the way, and as far as I could tell I was not tailed. 
 
 Compared with my last visit, in 2004, people seem more discontented — mainly because of economic difficulties caused in part by Western sanctions. Those sanctions are causing bitter pain, yet a surprising number of Iranians seem to largely blame their own leaders for the woes. 
 
 Another difference from my last visit: People are more scared now. Iranians feel fairly free to gripe about their leaders, even within earshot of others, yet since the 2009 crackdown there has been a red line: anything approaching activism, including public criticism. One blogger is serving a 15-year prison sentence, and Iranians have been jailed just for giving interviews to foreign journalists. As a result, Iranians are more wary now of being quoted or shown in videos. 
 
 “Please don’t use the video,” implored a young man living near the Caspian Sea, after I interviewed him. “I want to have a future.” 
 
 One businessman was scathing about the government when we were speaking casually. “We have a terrible economy, all because of our president,” he said. Once we pulled out notebook and video camera, however, he began to praise the government. With the camera turned away again, I asked him why he had switched 180 degrees. 
 
 “It is not possible to tell the truth in Iran,” he said, shrugging. 
 
 It is very difficult to gauge public opinion in an authoritarian country, but it’s clear that there are many government supporters, especially among farmers and less educated workers. 
 
 “Iranian people are happy with their leaders,” Monad Omidvar, a 38-year-old farm laborer, told me as he played marbles with his friends beside the road near Mashhad. He has a ninth-grade education, and his only source of news is the government media. 
 
 When I asked about human rights activists and members of the Bahai faith who are in prison, he shook his head skeptically. “I don’t think that in our country innocent people go to jail,” he said. “They must have done something.” 
 
 At the other end of the country, a shopkeeper — also with limited education, also reliant on government television for news — told me that “all the nation backs the leader.” 
 
 Yet more common were those like the businessman in Adidas sandals and Ray-Ban sunglasses who scoffed, “The Iranian revolution was a mistake.” Or the separatist in Tabriz who has given up on Iran and wants the northwest of the country to join Azerbaijan. Or the man at a roadside rest stop who sharply criticized America for bullying Iran, but added, “our leaders have lost their marbles.” Or the woman who has abandoned prayer and religious fasting, explaining, “The biggest factor that has turned people against Islam is this government.” 
 
 Indeed, I think that the expressions of love for America reflect, in part, the intuitive embrace by many Iranians of whatever the state media condemn. 
 
 To me, Iran feels like other authoritarian countries I covered before they toppled. My guess is that the demise of the system is a matter of time — unless there’s a war between Iran and the West, perhaps ignited by Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. That, I sense, would provoke a nationalist backlash and rescue the ayatollahs. More on what I found on my journey in forthcoming columns. ||||| Video 
 
 To watch the video, press the play button in the bottom-left corner of the image. 
 
 MASHHAD, Iran 
 
 My 1,700-mile road trip across Iran began with a giddy paean to America, reinforcing my view that at the grass-roots level, this may be the most pro-American nation in the Middle East. 
 
 “We love America!” gushed a former military commando, now a clothing seller, my first evening in the spiritual center of Mashhad. He was so carried away that I thought he might hug me, and although he acknowledged that his business was suffering greatly from Western sanctions, he said he blamed his own leaders. 
 
 “I can’t blame America,” he said. “I love America too much.” 
 
 That was far from a universal view. I encountered many Iranians — especially in the countryside — who strongly support the Iranian authorities and resent what they see as American government bullying. But while Iranians are far from monolithic, one feature was ubiquitous: the warmth of Iranians when they discovered I was American. 
 
 We passed occasional “Death to America” signs, but our trip was slowed by hospitality, for Iranians kept giving us presents or inviting us into their homes. And in the security line to board a flight from Tehran to Mashhad, a Revolutionary Guard said genially, “We’re not supposed to let batteries through, but we’ll make an exception for you since you’re a foreigner.” 
 
 The Iranian government gave me a very rare journalist visa, along with permission to drive unescorted across the country on a government-approved route from Mashhad in the east to Tabriz in the west, and back to Tehran. I interviewed people at random along the way, and as far as I could tell I was not tailed. 
 
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 Compared with my last visit, in 2004, people seem more discontented — mainly because of economic difficulties caused in part by Western sanctions. Those sanctions are causing bitter pain, yet a surprising number of Iranians seem to largely blame their own leaders for the woes. 
 
 Another difference from my last visit: People are more scared now. Iranians feel fairly free to gripe about their leaders, even within earshot of others, yet since the 2009 crackdown there has been a red line: anything approaching activism, including public criticism. One blogger is serving a 15-year prison sentence, and Iranians have been jailed just for giving interviews to foreign journalists. As a result, Iranians are more wary now of being quoted or shown in videos. 
 
 Photo 
 
 “Please don’t use the video,” implored a young man living near the Caspian Sea, after I interviewed him. “I want to have a future.” 
 
 One businessman was scathing about the government when we were speaking casually. “We have a terrible economy, all because of our president,” he said. Once we pulled out notebook and video camera, however, he began to praise the government. With the camera turned away again, I asked him why he had switched 180 degrees. 
 
 “It is not possible to tell the truth in Iran,” he said, shrugging. 
 
 It is very difficult to gauge public opinion in an authoritarian country, but it’s clear that there are many government supporters, especially among farmers and less educated workers. 
 
 “Iranian people are happy with their leaders,” Monad Omidvar, a 38-year-old farm laborer, told me as he played marbles with his friends beside the road near Mashhad. He has a ninth-grade education, and his only source of news is the government media. 
 
 When I asked about human rights activists and members of the Bahai faith who are in prison, he shook his head skeptically. “I don’t think that in our country innocent people go to jail,” he said. “They must have done something.” 
 
 At the other end of the country, a shopkeeper — also with limited education, also reliant on government television for news — told me that “all the nation backs the leader.” 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Yet more common were those like the businessman in Adidas sandals and Ray-Ban sunglasses who scoffed, “The Iranian revolution was a mistake.” Or the separatist in Tabriz who has given up on Iran and wants the northwest of the country to join Azerbaijan. Or the man at a roadside rest stop who sharply criticized America for bullying Iran, but added, “our leaders have lost their marbles.” Or the woman who has abandoned prayer and religious fasting, explaining, “The biggest factor that has turned people against Islam is this government.” 
 
 Indeed, I think that the expressions of love for America reflect, in part, the intuitive embrace by many Iranians of whatever the state media condemn. 
 
 To me, Iran feels like other authoritarian countries I covered before they toppled. My guess is that the demise of the system is a matter of time — unless there’s a war between Iran and the West, perhaps ignited by Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. That, I sense, would provoke a nationalist backlash and rescue the ayatollahs. More on what I found on my journey in forthcoming columns. ||||| My Iranian Road Trip: A short documentary follows the Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof as he travels across the country talking to ordinary citizens about their lives and the effectiveness of American sanctions. 
 
 To watch the video, press the play button in the bottom-left corner of the image. 
 
 TEHRAN 
 
 WHEN I decided to bring two of my kids with me on a reporting trip to Iran, the consensus was that I must be insane. And that someone should call Child Protective Services! 
 
 That anxiety reflects a view that Iran is the 21st century’s Crazy Country, a menace to civilization. That view also animates the hawks who believe that only a military option can stop Iran. 
 
 Look, I have no illusions about Iran. On my last trip here, in 2004, I was detained and accused of being a spy for Mossad or the C.I.A. I’ve talked to people who have been brutally tortured. I think that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity and that, if it were to deploy those weapons, this would be a huge and possibly fatal blow to global antiproliferation efforts. 
 
 But we need a dollop of humility and nuance, for Iran is a complex country where we’ve repeatedly stumbled badly. For starters, consider for a moment which nation assisted Iran the most in the last dozen years. Not Russia, not China, not India. No, it was the United States under President George W. Bush. First, we upended the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s enemy to the east, and then removed the Saddam Hussein government from Iraq, Iran’s even deadlier threat to the west. Look at the Iraq-Iran relationship today, and it seems we fought a wrenching war in Iraq — and Iran won. 
 
 Now we may be heading for another war — perhaps triggered by Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites — and this might well help the ayatollahs as well by igniting a nationalist backlash that would bolster their rule. 
 
 On my road trip across Iran, the regime seemed on the defensive, its base corroding. In Mashhad, I interviewed a grand ayatollah, Sayid Muhammad Baqer Shirazi, and he didn’t want to talk about politics at all. That seemed to me an acknowledgment that the regime now sometimes embarrasses even the mullahs who created it. 
 
 Americans think of Iran as a police state, but that overstates its control: Iranians are irrepressible. While interviewing people on a lovely Caspian Sea beach, a plainclothes policeman bustled forward. At first, I thought that the young woman I was interviewing was in trouble for criticizing the regime — but, no, her sin was rolling up her sleeves. 
 
 The policeman shouted at her. She shouted at him. Neither was intimidated. Finally, she covered her forearms a bit more, and he accepted a truce. 
 
 The confrontation was a reminder that Iran is a complex and contradictory country, in ways that don’t register at a distance. Iran imprisons more journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, yet it has a vigorous Parliament and news media with clashing views (within a narrow range). Some ethnic Turks seek to secede and join Azerbaijan, but the country’s supreme leader is an ethnic Turk. Iran’s regime sometimes embraces anti-Semitism, yet Parliament has a Jewish member. 
 
 Iranians gripe about their government without worrying about being overheard, yet participants in protests are tortured, gays can be executed and the Bahai religious minority endures mind-boggling repression. Iranian women constitute almost 60 percent of university students and hold important positions in the country, yet, under a new law, a woman can’t even go skiing without a male guardian. 
 
 My daughter dressed primly in a head scarf and manteau because the police sometimes haul off women who are insufficiently covered (not foreigners, usually, but still). Iranian women we met spent their time helpfully rearranging her scarf. 
 
 “She has much better hijab than most girls these days,” one matron told us approvingly, even as she tugged it over a few escapee strands of hair. 
 
 Elsewhere, young women told my daughter to be more revealing. “Come on, you’re young,” declared one young woman, and she pulled the head scarf back so that it covered almost nothing. “Show it!” 
 
 We sometimes think that Iran’s leaders are impervious to public opinion, but women’s clothing reflects social pressures that have led them to back off in some areas. Women are still required to cover themselves, but many women in Tehran do so with gauzy, come-hither scarfs rigged to blow off in the slightest breeze. 
 
 Hard-liners shudder, but they have long since given up flogging women for bad hijab. In some areas, the regime can evolve. 
 
 We can’t do much to nurture progress in Iran, but promoting Internet freedom, shortwave news broadcasts and satellite television all would help. A war would hurt. 
 
 Our long-term aim should be the kind of “grand bargain,” however unlikely, that some Iranian officials floated in 2003 to resolve all issues between our countries. 
 
 Iran looks childish when it calls America the “Great Satan” or blusters “Death to America.” Let’s not bluster back or operate on caricatures. And let’s not choose bombs over sanctions and undercut the many Iranians who are chipping away at hard-line rule in tiny ways — even by flashing their hair.
– It's been eight years since Nicholas Kristof last visited Iran, and this time around, people "seem more discontented," he writes in the New York Times. Kristof blames that on economic troubles—and while Western sanctions are partially to blame, a "surprising number of Iranians" hold their own government accountable. Indeed, many are comfortable complaining privately about their leaders. "The biggest factor that has turned people against Islam is this government," said one woman. Despite the anti-government sentiment, Iranians in general now seem "more scared" of activism and don't want to be quoted on their views. "It is not possible to tell the truth in Iran," said one interviewee. And while there are "Death to America" signs to be seen, Kristof argues that "at the grass-roots level, this may be the most pro-American nation in the Middle East." Click here for Kristof's full article, in which he writes of the "warmth" people showed him when they learned he was American.