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On Saturday, U.S. and Israeli strikes hit targets across Iran. The attack was a surprise to many, and for journalists trying to understand what is happening, the fog of war is compounded by Iranian censorship and an almost total internet blackout. This made independent verification near impossible even while the snippets of information coming out of the country were increasingly alarming—for instance, one of the first stories to emerge was of an elementary school in Minab that partially collapsed while in session, killing many children.

Nilo Tabrizy is a visual forensics reporter who specializes in open-source investigations on Iran—until recently, she was employed by the Washington Post, but was part of their recent enormous layoffs. Still, she has been tracking the strike from afar, and speaking in brief bursts with sources inside the country. I spoke with her about what we know about this strike, what we don’t, how Iranians are processing this war and the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and why the hardest questions right now may be the ones we can’t yet answer. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Aymann Ismail: How was your weekend?

Nilo Tabrizy: My weekend was—my weekend was awful. I think so many Iranians have been anxiously watching. It’s kind of our worst nightmare come to life: a direct involvement with the U.S. and Iran, with the U.S. and Israel as partners in this case. We saw a bit of a preview of that this summer with the U.S. getting involved with airstrikes. But the U.S.’s involvement was, as they said, just limited to nuclear sites. But this Saturday, among the first things I’m seeing is civilian infrastructure being hit. And it’s just awful. Seeing the images of people carrying loved ones out of rubble—I mean, these are just the scenes that I really hoped we would never see in Iran.

How close does this feel to you personally?

From Saturday onwards, Tehran has been under heavy airstrikes. I was born in Tehran and immigrated to Canada when I was in preschool. I went back once when I was 10 to meet cousins I had been separated from all my life. It’s such an indescribable feeling seeing buildings I’ve been inside reduced to rubble, or roundabouts that are gathering places being hit by airstrikes. Especially as someone who hasn’t been back in a long time—when I see these images, they almost make me hallucinate. It’s like, “Nilo, have you actually ever walked on these streets? Are you remembering a memory?” It creates such disorientation for me. That’s been really difficult to parse through.

Are you in touch with people on the ground right now? What are you hearing?

Connectivity has been almost entirely cut off since the airstrikes began. But I’ve had some sources get very limited moments of internet connection to reach out. When Khamenei was killed on Saturday—even before it was officially announced on Iranian state TV—people knew. Word got out that Trump had confirmed it. I got a crying voice note from a source whose voice was breaking. They said: “They killed him. He’s dead. He’s dead. The murderer of our youth is dead. The murderer of our dreams is dead.” Hearing that emotion in that person’s voice made me break.

I also have a source in Isfahan who was able to connect briefly. They said suppression is already starting. They told me that on the corner of every major street, they saw armed guards. By their interpretation, it wasn’t about military action—it was more an intimidation. One source received texts from a state-affiliated number warning people to stay home, warning them that they should not be taking to the streets to protest. So the repression from the state is already beginning, even under the cover of airstrikes.

Have you seen any evidence of people protesting? Not from what I’ve heard or seen. And I think that’s because there’s such heavy bombardment in so many places in the country at the moment.

What are you hearing about how Khamenei’s death is being felt inside Iran? There were videos posted to social media of people celebrating and dancing. I texted a source in Tehran on Saturday evening and asked about the mood. He said, “We are partying hard.” That was his exact phrase.

I think it’s understandable. This is a head of state whose legacy is one of murder, delusion, of refusing to respond to calls for reform from his citizens for decades. People have just lived through a massacre that he signed off on. So of course people are going to be rejoicing in the streets.

I spoke with my source in Isfahan and asked about the potential power vacuum. They said: “We have been calling for reform for so long — from different student protests I was involved in — and nothing has worked. This winter, we took to the streets and we were killed. We never wanted Khamenei to be taken out this way. We would have loved to see him stand trial, or be taken by the hands of people he personally harmed. But this was the only action left to take him out.”

President Trump called him one of the most evil people in history. It sounds like that language might resonate with people in Iran.

Absolutely. It makes sense why so much fury is directed at him. This is the man who signed off on all these horrible actions toward his own people.

Let’s talk about the girls’ school in Minab. What was your first reaction when you heard about it?

I first saw a tweet that said, “I heard a school was hit in Minab.” Minab is in Hormozgan province, a place with high rates of poverty, just inland from the Strait of Hormuz.I immediately contacted a citizen journalist who runs a Telegram channel, and they began sending me footage.

The footage was just horrific. Part of the school structure was gone. Smoke plumes were still coming off the concrete. What stayed with me were the aftermath details—a small child’s hand in the rubble, blood-stained backpacks, tattered school homework. And the audio—shrieks and screams of people trying to process the horror they had witnessed.

This is obviously something important that we all need to be investigating. Apparently, the U.S. has already said they are looking into what happened, because this is egregious, right? Why would an elementary school be hit? Targeting civilian infrastructure is not legal. I spoke to sources who have worked in a defense capacity, and they said most likely this was human error—that it’s right next to a barracks and it could have been an error in combat.

You co-wrote the book For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising. In a country that experienced the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, what does it mean when a girls’ school is struck? It shows that the most vulnerable are hardest hit. In 2022, women put their bodies on the line to protest and call for accountability for the unjust killing of Jina Amini. In this case, young children were just going to school.

I don’t think it was intentional. I think it shows how tragic potentially human error can be in war. It’s horrifying that young girls paid the price for going to school in the middle of a war they did not start.

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Are there other strikes on civilian targets you are looking into? There was a sports center that was hit. Even if these infrastructures are not directly hit—Tehran is a city of 14 million people in a densely populated urban environment. So when airstrikes are targeting things like state TV—which is ostensibly still a piece of civilian infrastructure—it’s going to hit surrounding buildings. There was a hospital hit because it was right next to a target. I also saw they tried to target the police headquarters in Tehran and all around it is residential buildings. So regardless of what the targets are, when you’re hitting a place that’s so densely populated by civilians, civilians are going to pay the price. It’s crazy to think about people celebrating at the same time they’re experiencing bombardment. It’s so hard to put into words because if you haven’t lived under this type of oppression, I think it can be hard to understand what’s pushing a population to be begging for airstrikes at this point. It’s because they’ve had the foot of the state on their neck for decades.

What mistakes are Western outlets making when trying to cover this war? It was disheartening to see the Washington Post publishing stories without Iranian reporters involved. Not to say you have to cover the community that you’re from, but you need fluent Persian speakers to be doing this reporting quickly and as effectively as possible.

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It was heartbreaking to see bylines without reporters like Yeganeh Torbati. I wasn’t contributing because I was part of the layoffs that included 47 percent of our reporters. And it’s disheartening seeing news organizations scramble for coverage when they laid off international staff who could have been doing this work.

Can you look into your glowing orb and tell the rest of us what’s coming? I have no glowing orb. But what I will say is: the Islamic Republic has been preparing for this moment for years. They’ve been preparing for the moment when kinetic military action will destabilize them. They’ve already been thinking about their succession process for the next supreme leader. Even after the airstrikes this summer where top military and IRGC commanders were taken out, they put in place one, two, three, four replacements for each high-level person that’s taken out. This is a regime built on shrewd survival. It’s designed to absorb shocks to the system like this. The power of the Islamic Republic was not held just by an 87-year-old supreme leader. This is a really entrenched security apparatus.

So for people watching this moment: we’re in it for the long haul at this point.

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