Jon Snow
RTS Journalist of the Year posts from Iran. Part of the News from Iran Blog.

'Ba doorood-eh faravaan'

On the way back from Isfahan today once again we passed the Natanz enrichment facility. All the anti aircraft installations were manned, the site looked look busy with a huge construction crane - it certainly didn't look like it was about stop working any time soon.

An eventfully journey in which a huge cog fell out of the engine of one our vans, which still seemed to be able to go on speedily for another few miles before conking out altogether and in which our Iran outside broadcasting unit crashed, with the driver arrested.

Hard to tell quite what all that means, because the fine Iranians on the unit promised they would have us linked up to the satellite tonight nonetheless, fingers crossed.

There was a time when they tried executing them, but then the Mayor of Tehran (now President) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad set in motion an extraordinarily enlightened treatment programme. Our report visits the addicts in their crash pads and in their treatment centres. It's a side of Iran you would never have guessed.

Lindsey Hilsum has been looking at what affect any more sanctions against Iran would have. I say any more because America has had sanctions in place against Iran for 25 years. This economy, which lent so heavily on the US, has become remarkably self sufficient.

As an example she's been to a factory which makes valves for the oil fields in a joint venture with the Chinese.

Smart sanctions would be targeted at the ruling elite and truth to tell not many mullahs travel much and even fewer have any offshore bank accounts. So in one sense the Zimbabwe style sanctions would not have the slightest impact.

Indeed the danger is that the only people affected would be the very richest three or four million people here, who probably represent the keenest opposition to the government.

Finally, she and I will draw the strings together around this extraordinary week in which so much verbal warfare has been waged and we in turn have been able to learn and portray so much about this country that we never knew before.

Ba doorood-eh faravaan, Jon Snow. (With many best wishes, Jon Snow)

Eye of the storm

Well the clock is ticking here in Tehran. Looks like all our efforts to stave off a crisis over Iran's nuclear programme have failed.

Tomorrow the members of the IAEA meet in Vienna to almost certainly rubber stamp a referral of Iran to the UN security council, and dire warnings for Iran are issuing out from the United States.

America's ambassador to the UN has just said that they're prepared to 'use all the tools at our disposal' to stop Iran's nuclear activities. Strong words out of Washington, as they warn Iran she faces tangible and painful consequences. They speak of Iran's nuclear threat, and talk of beefing up America's 'defensive measures…'

So, what happens now? Nobody knows. But tonight, here in Tehran the government and most of the people that I've talked to are in a robust condition. The country's chief negotiator Ali Larijani has been saying that Iran's nuclear enrichment will continue to go ahead apace at the nuclear facility at Natanz south east of here. But how will they react to the US announcement, we've yet to hear.

Here I am, in the bustling shopping street shops, packed with produce, techno music blaring from passing cars. I could be in a Paris suburb and yet we are somehow in the eye of the storm. The storm whose full ramifications will only clear as this week unfolds.

Every night, we shall be live out of here with all the latest and trying to provide some fuller sense of what this country really is. Ranging as it does from the brilliantly scientific to the repressive.

It's a country full of colour despite the black chador and a country full of life and confidence. The winter snows are melting off the mountains sending surging streams down the irrigation ways either side of the main street, the neon advertising hoardings are fully lit - nobody here is battening down the hatches...

Axis of evil? Doesn't feel like it from here

All 13 of us are now on site in Tehran, some have been out to Qom to scout it out for a transmission from there next week.

We shall be going ourselves tomorrow, it’s where the tangle of religious leaders debate and teach and think about Islam, Iran and quite a bit more.

It’s a mammoth operation trying to set up next week’s live reports, it’s not an exercise which has ever been attempted before on this scale - and Iran itself is feeling its way in working out quite what we will be able to do.

So we are on a voyage into the unknown, our reason for being here centres on Monday’s nuclear report out of Vienna and we shall then tailor our coverage accordingly.

But the idea is to try to get to grips with Iran’s perspective and what it feels like to be in the eye of the storm.

Strangely, axis of evil is not the first descriptive phrase one finds coming to mind.

Yet trying to understand the complex riddle that is revolutionary Iran is no easy task, perhaps we shall all be wiser next week.

A small dose of detention

This morning I was in one of Tehran’s amazing bazaars. Like everywhere else here, the bazaar felt safe, even mellow, once you got used to the human crush.

The bazaaris - the merchants - are a very influential group of people and they say the current nuclear issue is bad for business.

But as I was sitting sipping tea with a carpet dealer, I fell to thinking that this would be Tescos in Britain, Iran has not yet globalised so no Tescos and not much sign of any other multinational products.

Yet the bazaar is stuffed full of amazing merchandise from all over the world. You suddenly find that the army own a washing machine factory and another that makes batteries - privatisation hasn’t really kicked in here yet.

However, the internet and the mobile phone - the latter in particular - are changing Iran’s way of life almost overnight.

This afternoon we experienced the other side of the coin, a small dose of detention by the authorities at what once was the US embassy and now is the forlorn and vacant 'nest of spies'.

As so often, the guys doing the detaining were more frightened than we were, or should I say paranoid, while they sought a higher authority to check that our authority or permission was adequate.

Of course after two hours they found that it was and suddenly they transformed into charming, humorous characters without a care in the world.

We are making rapid progress towards live transmissions for our ‘News from Iran’ specials all next week.

Visions of the future

I'm sitting in a bumper to bumper traffic jam in one of Tehran's ring roads.

The next hour of my life will be devoted to negotiating this brake-lit paralysis. In the gathering dusk beyond the brake lights, the road is illuminated by a forest of advertising hoardings. Their fluorescent-lit message used to be one of God when I was last here, today it is of Mammon.

I see one tells me my future lies with Toshiba and yet there is one right next to it that tells me it is Casio. And that's the amazing thing about Iran - the revolution is still evolving.

I've been up in the middle class suburbs that fringe the mountains to the north of Tehran. There it is like Paris, some three and half million north Tehranistas live in exceptional luxury. Many of them returnees or with close relations in the US or Europe.

Interestingly the ones I spoke to were pretty fiercely in favour of Iran’s' right to develop nuclear power. If the west has succeeded in one thing it is that it has united this country behind a cause, not that anyone you speak to here is particularly worried about it.

Anyway, we are beavering away to prepare our nightly transmissions for next week's ‘News from Iran’.

I'll keep you posted

Beginning our odyssey

The snow hangs heavy on the hills above Tehran. The smog is not as bad as usual and hangs a couple of layers below. And below that, the most amazing sprawl of new concrete block flats, tens of thousands of them.

I mean this city, in the decade and a half since I was last here, has grown every which way. It still has that greyness that always characterised it and the traffic, which was always bad, is now infernal.

But it is an exciting place to be. I mean one of the other huge changes obviously is that all the woman now wear a scarf or a chador. But you soon get used to it, as I guess have they.

And the other extraordinary thing is despite the theocratic state, women play an extremely prominent role, one that they would never play in Saudi or any of the hard line states of the Arab world that Iran is most definitely not a part of.

And what of the nuclear issue that has brought us here for our live transmissions all next week?

Well nobody I've spoken to yet spontaneously raised it. Most of them see it as yet another stick to beat Iran with. While the politicians seem to see it as another tease to get America worked up. Only this time, they know Iraq has so disrupted matters that the other options for America and her allies have reduced very considerably.

It's a surprisingly ordered place and massively ordered by comparison with Iraq next door. The war - 700 kilometres away from Baghdad as we are - seems as remote as it does from Britain and that is strange too given the Shia aspect.

We're at the beginning of our odyssey which, with many crossed fingers, we hope will climax with a week of live transmission for Channel 4 News from Iran all next week, but I'll keep you posted in the meantime.