CNN journalists Frederik Pleitgen and Claudia Otto were the first western team to enter Iran after Israel launched an attack on the country in June. For 12 days they had unrivaled access to people and places that suffered the consequences of this conflict.

Tehran

CNN journalists Frederik Pleitgen and Claudia Otto were the first Western reporters to enter Iran following Israeli airstrikes. Their journey to Tehran was challenging, involving closed airspace, long drives, and communication blackouts. Upon arrival, they witnessed the aftermath of strikes, including damaged infrastructure such as the state TV channel IRIB, and spoke with civilians affected by the conflict.

Iranian authorities reported over 400 deaths and thousands wounded from the strikes, with hospitals preparing for further casualties. The team observed large public protests against Israel and the United States, and documented the sense of national unity in Iran during the crisis. Iranian officials denied firing missiles at Israel after a ceasefire, and the leadership framed the ceasefire as a victory, vowing to rebuild the country's nuclear program.

CNN in Iran: Behind the scenes with our team

Train sounds... Stop! Train sounds... The entire airspace was closed so we had to fly into Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey. We then had to drive another 8 hours overnight to the Turkish-Iranian border and then had another I would say about 14 hour drive to Tehran and unfortunately during that drive our car broke down in the middle of the mountains between Tabriz and Sanjan. And we had no communications at all. No phone was working, no sat phone was working, no nothing. As we were getting closer to Tehran we saw first of all air defense at work, we saw the Iranians fire into the air and we also saw what we believe to be a ballistic missile launch by the Iranians. And that's when we really noticed that things were getting real here. It was really surreal. It was like normally Tehran is full of traffic, like you can't move anywhere easily. We just could drive on to our hotel which was also completely deserted. The state TV channel IRIB recently bombed by two Israeli airstrikes. An anchor had been reading the news as the building was hit. This is that studio now, burned out with only a skeleton of the charred anchor desk left. I think that definitely we felt a big sense of responsibility being the first ones to go in there to just show the suffering on the other side. Because of course there were a lot of people who were reporting at that point in time from Israel and very few, certainly no Western reporters, who were reporting from Iran. And so I think that the main responsibility was to show what people were going through in Tehran on the ground. My kitten went to the window and I went to grab it and there was a blast, Nasrin says. I was thrown and hit the wall. The whole building was empty. I just barely made it to the door. Iranian authorities tell us well over 400 people have been confirmed to have been killed in Israel's strikes and thousands of people were wounded. They also say because the conflict is still ongoing and there could still be mass casualties, that they're actually freeing up additional capacities in their hospitals of hospital beds. Okay, yeah? Yeah. Okay, so we've just witnessed a massive airstrike here on the area of sort of northern central Tehran. We actually went downstairs into a shelter once we heard planes overhead and then we heard explosions. You can see now the sky over the northwest of Tehran is completely filled with smoke. And at that point we were like, you know, it's an airstrike that's unfolding. And then the jets streaked over us and there was a massive impact. We didn't know where it was, but it was close enough to rattle our entire building. And so we ran downstairs to the lower floors of the building. They had sort of a basement floor that was designated as a shelter. And we heard the jets overhead. We heard several more impacts. So about one block down. And then when we came up to our rooftop, we saw the entire western half of Tehran completely engulfed in smoke. Massive crowds have turned out here in central Tehran to protest against Israel's strikes against Iran, but also against the policies of the Trump administration as well. Many of them were chanting death to America, were chanting death to Israel. We saw them burn American flags and burn Israeli flags. I did notice, you know, that people were looking at us maybe a little bit different than usual. Not that anybody was openly averse to us, but the whole mood was like that. Trump, you are threatening my leader, this woman says. Don't you know my nation believes death is sweeter than honey? I just told him we got Fred Pleitgen, who's on the phone in Tehran right now, so I got to go to him. I don't know how long this call will last. What have you seen? What have you heard? Hi there, Anderson. Well, what's going on right now is that the Iranians are having trouble confirming whether or not these strikes really took place. I was asleep because it happened in the middle of the night. And all of a sudden, our driver, Bijan, was knocking on my door, ringing the doorbell. And I opened the door and he said that the U.S. had hit Iran. And then later that day, there was a huge demonstration in Tehran where the anger was really unloaded towards President Trump. We are the people, we are the people, we are the people. There were a lot of people making really angry statements, just blunt anger at the fact that their nuclear installations had been attacked. Because also President Trump had said that he was going to wait around two weeks before making a decision. And then it happened only a couple of days later. And so a lot of people on the ground felt that Iran had essentially been betrayed twice in this conflict. Let's get to Fred Pleitgen in Tehran for what is the perspective from there this morning, Fred? Hi there, Kate. Yeah, and after the Israelis made that claim that Iranian missiles were flying towards Israeli territory, I actually got in touch with a senior Iranian official who flat out denied that the Iranians had fired any missiles toward Israel after the ceasefire went into effect. We've been going to Iran for a very long time. And normally our Western SIM cards work in Iran. So you have phone coverage, you have internet coverage. None of that was working. Our biggest challenges were getting our video out. It was really difficult. And so we, you know, we kept a lot of the reports a bit shorter. The next thing was like to get us live. And this was, I tried the whole time with all different types of apps and all different types of equipment. When the ceasefire was put into place and a couple of hours afterwards, the Israelis were accusing the Iranians of firing missiles at Israeli territory. And the Iranians were telling us it's not true. They were denying all of that. And getting that on air in a live capability, I think at that point in time was really, it was really important for CNN to be CNN there and get the news on as fast as possible. So Iran's leadership is hailing the ceasefire between Israel, Iran and the United States as a victory for Iran. The ceasefire has not been something good or profitable for us, he says, because we should have finished the story. We should have totally wiped out Israel. One of the things that we have to keep in mind about Iran is that there are quite frequently demonstrations in Iran, not about, not only about issues like, for instance, the hijab, but there's local uprisings in places like Balochistan. There's there's local demonstrations because of water shortages in places like Ahvaz. The Kurdish areas, of course, have demonstrations all the time. None of that was happening at this point in time. It seems as though all of that was dormant for this period as people were rallying around the flag. Our opinion is always peace, she says. Now it depends on them how they behave. I think what touched me most was the mothers that lifted up their babies. The story of the martyr baby. So we went there and we were not quite sure what this is going to be and how it's going to look. And then we saw this incredible amount of mothers with their babies. This goes back to the early days of Shiite Islam, where Imam Hussein, when he was besieged in Karbala, he held up his newborn baby and asked the enemy that was besieging Karbala to give the baby water. And instead, the enemy killed the baby. It's a very important story here in Iran. I have to say that that report was one of the ones that I was most concerned about doing to not have that be seen in a false light. And also maybe used in a false light by people who have a certain agenda. So that was definitely very important for us to get that one right. And I obviously informed myself about what exactly all of this means. That's one of the things I think that the Iranians were extremely angry at. They obviously acknowledged that some of their top generals were killed, that some of their nuclear scientists were killed. But the thing that really angered a lot of people was the collateral damage that was caused in all of that. And some of the strike sites that we visited, we did see a place where, you know, possibly there was a high value target, but there was like an entire residential building that was flattened all the way to the cellar. One of the nuclear scientists had been the target there, and that 60 people had been killed on top of that because a whole residential building had collapsed. I think if anything, right now, they feel that their power base is solidified more than it was before, because also they can say they stood up not just to the Israelis and to a really modern military, but they stood up to the Israelis and a nuclear superpower in the United States, bringing its most potent and cutting edge military technology to the battlefield. And still they stood and they were able to fire back until the very last minute. There are 60 coffins in total that are going through this city, among them Iran's top military leadership. I think that that's something that's very important to the leadership. But I do also think that that's very important to a lot of Iranians as well, that their nation did not surrender and that their nation, you know, did not get destabilized. So maybe the next iteration would be that diplomacy in action and possibly there being some sort of agreement. The Iranians, of course, are vowing very much that their nuclear program will be rebuilt, will continue, and that enrichment will continue as well. I'd like to CNN Tehran.

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