EMILY FENG, HOST:
It's been more than two months now since the war in Iran began. Thousands of people in Iran, Lebanon, Israel and in the region have been killed in the war and subsequent regional conflict. But a tenuous ceasefire in Iran is still in effect, which means some humanitarian organizations have been able to enter Iran recently. One of those organizations is headed by our next guest, Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Welcome.
MIRJANA SPOLJARIC: Hello. It's nice to be here.
FENG: It's lovely to have you. You just returned from a trip to Iran earlier this week. What was the goal of your trip?
SPOLJARIC: I returned last night. I spent a week traveling through parts of the country because we came by car through Azerbaijan. And what I saw in Iran were, apart from a vast country and a large population, large sites of essential provision of electricity, water. We passed by dams. We passed by power plants. We passed by railway. And every time, people told me, this is going to be the next target, potentially. So what I felt was a constant anticipation of the next war and this becoming a condition for the people, influencing their choices, influencing their thinking.
FENG: How extensive was the devastation that you were able to see?
SPOLJARIC: I wasn't able to see devastations outside of Tehran, due to the limited time I could spend in the country. Thousands of people were impacted. And what is particularly haunting for the people are the - still the images of the girls killed in a classroom. Kids have not returned back to school. They will remain, for large part, still closed.
FENG: The Pentagon is currently investigating that tragedy that you just mentioned, investigating whether it was a U.S. missile that hit a girls' school in Iran and killed hundreds of students there earlier this year. And Iran has accused the U.S. and Israel hitting civilian areas, including universities and homes. Did you see evidence of that?
SPOLJARIC: We saw evidence of homes being destroyed and universities being destroyed or hit in the hostilities, but the ICC would not substantiate where these shellings came from or who's responsible for them. We don't do this publicly. We have our own confidential way of working.
FENG: One of the meetings that you had during your trip was with Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. What did you learn from that meeting or other meetings you might have had with government officials in Iran?
SPOLJARIC: What I learn from these conversations is a high-level of preparedness, both for negotiations and continued negotiations but also for resuming defense activities. So if there were a resumption of hostilities, Iran would be able for a long time to defend itself, given the asymmetric situation and given their dominant position and capacity to continue escalating.
FENG: I'm curious how you approach a discussion with senior officials like that because Iran undeniably faces humanitarian challenges, but it's also a warring party in the region. And just this past winter, you have human rights organizations saying that Iran's government killed thousands of its own citizens to shut down antigovernment protests. Do these issues come up in your conversations with officials?
SPOLJARIC: I will not detail what we discuss in these conversations, but what you can be assured of is that they are very frank, very explicit and very detailed. And it's not the first time I spoke with the foreign minister. He knows me. He knows the ICRC, and he knows how we operate, and our authority for issues around the rules of war and respect of the rules of war. That doesn't mean that governments do what we ask them to do, but they listen to us, and they know what our legal reading is.
FENG: Were you able to meet with ordinary Iranians and speak to them about the impacts of this war? And I wonder if there's a person or an experience that sticks with you from your trip.
SPOLJARIC: What stays with me always when I talk to the population and especially to women, people don't want to live in fear. They don't want situations of war. They want to have options. They want to have jobs. They want their children to be safe at school. They want a future for their children. If the population were listened to, kids would be heard that they want to go to school, mothers would be heard that they want safety and security for their children. I never hear from the population that they want a war to continue. I've never encountered that.
FENG: Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, thank you.
SPOLJARIC: I thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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