\n<\/p>\n
F<\/span>rederik Pleitgen, CNN\u2019s senior international correspondent, had a pretty normal Thursday evening \u2013 at home in Berlin with his family, he walked his two Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs and spent some time with his two teenagers.<\/p>\n That return to normalcy came after spending a week in war-torn Iran as the only western television correspondent given a visa to report from the country.<\/p>\n While Pleitgen is no stranger to reporting from hostile territories such as Iran and Russia, where he also serves as a Moscow correspondent, the 49-year-old journalist said his wife had a \u201cbad feeling\u201d about this particular trip to Iran.<\/p>\n But, ultimately, he said it was too great of an opportunity to pass up \u2013 though he did have a close call on Tuesday, when he and his producer, Claudia Otto, were forced to flee a site after hearing anti-aircraft fire and an explosion.<\/p>\n At a time of immense media scrutiny and clear hostility from the White House, CNN faced some snide remarks and suggestions that Pleitgen was doing propaganda for the Iranian regime \u2013 including a dismissive tweet from a member of the Trump administration \u2013 because he was in the country with the permission of the government, something CNN reminded viewers when he appeared on air.<\/p>\n \u201cI can take the criticism. I think it\u2019s fine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Pleitgen spoke to the Guardian about the experience from Germany.<\/p>\n This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.<\/em><\/p>\n How did it feel to be the only Western TV network journalist in the entire country during a war?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s obviously a big responsibility, and the government there knows that you\u2019re the only ones there, so they try to take you to places where stuff\u2019s happened or to things they want to show. But on the other hand, I was keeping an eye also internationally \u2013 you obviously get trash-talked a lot as well by people who don\u2019t want you to be there, or who don\u2019t like your coverage.<\/p>\n <\/span>Frederik Pleitgen.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of CNN<\/p>\n Why do you think Iran granted you a visa?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been going there for a long period of time, so I have known these people for years, and the moment it started, I put in a visa request and I contacted the culture ministry, which is responsible for foreign media and I told them that we really want to come in, and I told them that it\u2019d be important to have international media there. And then they granted the visa.<\/p>\n Did you have a minder? Were you taken around by someone?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, we didn\u2019t. So, we don\u2019t have a minder. We have a translator who\u2019s a guy that we hire and we pay, but he obviously \u2013 the culture ministry asks him to not take us to places that are sensitive. And they also told us that when we go around this time, we needed to inform them before we went anywhere because if you go to strike sites, the aftermath of strike sites, there\u2019s a lot of Revolutionary Guard Corps security officials there. And if they don\u2019t know that you\u2019re coming or if you don\u2019t have someone who will mitigate the fact that you\u2019re there or mediate between you and them, then that can be a big problem pretty quickly. And then also for larger events and stuff like that, you had to sign up before going there. It was more restrictive this time than it had been in the past, but still, by and large, we could do everything that we wanted to do.<\/p>\n Were you surprised by the online discourse <\/strong>\u2013 and criticism from some <\/strong>\u2013 about your presence in the country with the government\u2019s permission and decision to interview the supreme leader\u2019s foreign policy advis<\/strong>er?<\/strong><\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t. I was sure that that was going to happen. I think right now, especially in the US, the debate about almost anything that the Trump administration does usually falls along party lines, and so you\u2019re going to get trashed by people who don\u2019t like \u201cliberal media\u201d or whatever. So I wasn\u2019t really surprised about that. And quite frankly, I don\u2019t take offense to it, either. I think it\u2019s a natural thing that happens, and I think a lot of it is more words than anything else anyway \u2026 Even if there are restrictions, it\u2019s always better to be on the ground than to not be on the ground \u2026<\/p>\n One of the things that I always have in mind is that this is a particularly high-stakes thing for a lot of people. This is not just about the Trump administration, this is about the Iranian diaspora and things that they\u2019ve been hoping for for decades \u2026 I can take the criticism. There was a lot of stuff that was over the top. But I can understand people are charged up.<\/p>\n <\/span>Frederik Pleitgen and Claudia Otto in Iran.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of CNN<\/p>\n Do you feel like your coverage was truly independent, considering the limitations?<\/strong><\/p>\n I felt good about the coverage. I think that as far as the ongoing war was concerned, we definitely did what we\u2019d set out to do and what we wanted to do. One of the things I would like to delve into more, which we didn\u2019t get to do to that extent, was to what extent the government still has the support of the people. Because there were very few people who were still out on the streets, and a lot of people are afraid to speak to you.<\/p>\n Amid the bombing campaign by the US and Israel, how did you know where was safe to report from?<\/strong><\/p>\n We stay in a hotel in Tehran that\u2019s sort of in the northern part of the city. It\u2019s in a fairly safe area now because all of the police stations and stuff there have already been bombed. So, the only thing that you can really do is whenever we heard jets overhead, when there was bombing going on close to us, which happened several times a day, we would go to the bottom floor of the hotel to bring as much hotel between us and anything that might drop on it. That\u2019s really all you can do. They don\u2019t have any air raid sirens. They don\u2019t really have any hardened shelters. So, that\u2019s basically it. And then we tried to stay out of areas that frequently saw bombing \u2026.<\/p>\n The difference that you have here between this war and the war in Ukraine is that this war is one where the US and Israel have the strongest and most modern air forces in the world. They use precision munitions and gigantic precision munitions. So, if something goes wrong, there can be two reasons in my mind: one of them is they put in the wrong coordinates, or the coordinates are old, and the other one is that they use gigantic munitions and create collateral damage.<\/p>\n Would you say your family has fully acclimated to you working from war zones?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been doing this for 18 years now, so they\u2019ve gotten used to it. I was in Ukraine a lot. I was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, so they\u2019re kind of used to it. This time my wife told me she had a bad feeling when I went, which doesn\u2019t happen very often, but I think a lot of that was just because it was so unclear what the situation was on the ground. But once we got there and I was still able to communicate, it was OK.<\/p>\n Would you have stayed longer than eight days if you could have?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, sure. Absolutely.<\/p>\n Are you planning to go back or put in another visa request?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, definitely going to try to go back. I\u2019m going to put in another visa request as soon as possible and try to go back. Definitely. I think it\u2019s important to be there and to see what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Frederik Pleitgen, CNN\u2019s senior international correspondent, had a pretty normal Thursday evening \u2013 at home in Berlin with his family, he walked his two Rhodesian Ridgeback dogs and spent some time with his two teenagers. That return to normalcy came after spending a week in war-torn Iran as the only western television correspondent given a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1285,18682,23806,84,8288,23807,5875,23465,261,1036],"class_list":{"0":"post-46795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-cnns","10":"tag-frederik","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-journalist","13":"tag-pleitgen","14":"tag-responsibility","15":"tag-usisrael","16":"tag-war","17":"tag-western"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}