Yeganeh Torbati, the newly appointed Iran correspondent for The New York Times, has been filing stories from abroad since Israel’s missile campaign began in June 2025. barred from entering Iran since 2010, he relies on fleeting internet windows, WhatsApp and Telegram to reach ordinary citizens and dissenting voices. This workaround lets him document civilian suffering despite a nationwide blackout.

During the first weeks of the conflict, Torbati produced a profile of Tehran poet Parnia Abbasi, killed in a strike targeting a nuclear scientist. He pieced together her life from voice memos, text messages and friends’ recollections, illustrating how even mundane details—like the price of milk—require multiple calls. Such granular reporting fuels international scrutiny of Iran’s civilian casualties.

Even as the regime imposed a strict internet blockade in March, Torbati managed to capture how Iranians marked the Iranian new year, a holiday usually associated with renewal, amid the darkest period in recent memory. By aggregating brief voice clips, social posts and state media, he delivered a vivid picture of public sentiment, proving that remote journalism can still hold authoritarian systems accountable.