President Trump has launched a war he cannot win after miscalculating the strength of Iranian resistance to air bombardment, according to Sky News reporter Dominic Waghorn.
The first UK journalist to report from inside the country since the conflict began, the International Affairs Editor spent a week in Tehran, sheltering alongside a “terrified” Iranian population.
Waghorn said that America’s hopes that decapitating the Iranian regime’s leadership would spark a popular uprising lay in tatters.
Instead, Iranian civilians bearing the brunt of the “precision bombing” campaign are blaming the US for the death and destruction surrounding them.
“I’ve seen what weeks of bombardment can do to a people,” Waghorn told The i Paper. “If you’re an ordinary Iranian, not knowing if the building next door to you is going to be a target on some list in Tel Aviv or in Washington, it’s terrifying.”
“People told me, off camera more willingly, that the Iranian regime is extreme and has to change. But in any air war, you blame the enemy,” said Waghorn, who reported scenes of a four-year-old girl lying in intensive care in a hospital, with head injuries believed to be fatal, after a missile attack.
“If you’re terrified and not being able to get the food you need, and not knowing if your children are going to wake up the next morning, you blame the enemy attacking you, more than your own government. I got in a lift with a woman whose hands were literally shaking.”
Waghorn found children seriously injured during missile strikes when he reported from a Tehran hospital (Photo: Sky News)‘Resistance’ central to Iran’s culture
Waghorn, who has reported from the front line of wars and revolutions in Syria, Israel, Egypt and Libya, said the US had under-estimated that “the culture of resistance is historically central to the Persian culture. They are resistant to any change being imposed from outside.”
Speaking from eastern Turkey, after leaving Iran, Waghorn said: “It’s also clear that the Iranian leadership had been planning for this for a long time. Every time they kill an official, another one takes their place.”
“They were ready to attack the Qatar gas facility. They’ve been able to jack up the oil price. As long as they hold the Strait of Hormuz, they hold a big card.
“American analysts were expecting a Venezuela-type situation, a short war and the regime to fold. They don’t seem to have a plan B. Now they’re trying to work one out, or Donald Trump is trying to find an off-ramp.
“What Trump says has been totally contradictory. He’s dressing it up as victory, saying we’ve achieved regime change, even though the change they’ve achieved is producing an even more hardline regime, which clearly wasn’t the intention at the beginning.”
Waghorn says getting Iranians to speak openly on camera is a challenge (Photo: Sky News)Reports ‘not censored’
The Iranian regime has cut off the internet and feeds its citizens propaganda on the war through state TV, the award-winning Waghorn said.
But he says his reports aren’t censored and declines to follow other broadcasters by telling viewers that he is reporting under Iranian media restrictions.
“In every war there are constraints on you. In Russia in Ukraine, in Israel or Gaza we don’t say it in those conflicts. We don’t believe we are reporting in Iran under restrictions.”
Waghorn said his team requests permission from the Culture Ministry to report from sites such as the hospital or the funeral of security chief Ali Larijani, where he spoke to mourners. “We found no hostility to us, Iranians are generally very polite.”
He has no “minder” but works with a translator and is allowed to talk to whoever he wants – though the journalist accepts that people are less likely to speak critically about their leaders on camera. Sometimes the ministry will call to chide him about a report that displeased the authorities.
Waghorn rejects critics who say he is amplifying Iranian propaganda by broadcasting only scenes it wants the world to see.
“It comes with the territory. I was Middle East correspondent for five years,” he said. “I think some of it is bad faith actors and some of it is confected and calculated to put pressure on you.
“A lot of it is genuine and very heartfelt. And it’s a region that generates passion and strength of feeling. You have to know your own worth.”
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