An American journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel newspaper was granted a visa to Iran this summer, and published his first report from the country on Tuesday – one month before the US congress is set to vote on the Iran nuclear deal.
Larry Cohler-Esses, the managing editor for news at the Forward, an influential national US newspaper, was the first journalist from a Jewish, pro-Israel publication to be granted a journalist’s visa since the 1979 Revolution, he wrote.
While he was in Iran, Cohler-Esses said he heard “high-placed dissent” against the country’s official policy against Israel. “Far from the stereotype of a fascist Islamic state, I found a dynamic push-and-pull between a theocratic government and its often reluctant and resisting people,” he wrote.
Cohler-Esses had tried to obtain a visa for the country for years, according to Forward editor-in-chief Jane Eisner.
Once the seven-day visa was granted, Eisner said, the newspaper was eager to report on issues divisive in the Jewish community – like the impact of the 14 July nuclear agreement and what Iran’s role is in the Middle East.
“I truly did not know what he would find – he did not know what he would find,” she said. “That’s why we’re journalists, not to do reporting to confirm our suspicions, but to do reporting that enlightens us, wherever it falls.”
In an editorial published on the Forward, Eisner assured readers that the debate over the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran “is of huge importance to American Jews”. The newspaper had no agenda, she said, “except to tell a sensitive story with accuracy, objectivity and historical context”. Cohler-Esses had to use a government-approved fixer, but said he was able to choose his interview subjects himself.
Cohler-Esses wrote that while there is widespread criticism in Iran of Israeli government policies in its relations with Palestinians, he found little evidence that the country and its citizens want to destroy Israel.
“No one had anything warm to say about the Jewish state,” Cohler-Esses wrote. “But pressed as to whether it was Israel’s policies or its very existence to which they objected, several were adamant: It’s Israel’s policies.”
Cohler-Esses had lived in Iran for a few years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when he worked as an English teacher. He is currently on vacation and could not be reached for an interview.
Eisner said it did not seem that the government had restricted Cohler-Esses’s access to interview subjects. “He really spent every waking hour and then some touring the country and interviewing as many people as possible,” Eisner said.
Cohler-Esses pursued the visa after Hassan Rouhani was elected president in June 2013. Eisner said that success had long been unlikely, but it became more feasible after the newspaper met with a UN representative in June, just as discussions about the nuclear deal seemed to be moving forward. While the newspaper doesn’t know how those developments affected the visa process, Eisner said that the organization was told a letter of support written by a Jewish community member in Iran was very influential.
“I, and so many of us, are eager to understand [Iran] better, and there is no other way to do that than to have someone on the ground asking the hard questions – sizing up people – talking to everyone from grand ayatollahs to butchers and waiters and trying to get a sense of what really they are looking for,” said Eisner.
To ensure Cohler-Esses’s safety, the Forward waited until he had returned to the US to make it public that he had been reporting in Iran. His first piece is being translated into Hebrew and will run in an Israeli publication on Friday.
