LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump's military campaign against Iran has not gone the way he promised it would.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Iran's government survived weeks of all-out war, and it's still refusing to give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. The administration now says it's getting ready to wage economic warfare. Iran's economy was in dire straits even before the war started, with ordinary Iranians bearing the brunt of that pain. Now they are bracing for that pain to deepen.
FADEL: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi has been speaking to Iranians in the city of Van, Turkey. It's a place many Iranians visit because of how close it is to the border with Iran. Hadeel, good morning.
HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So you've been talking to Iranians, spending time in Van. What are you hearing?
AL-SHALCHI: So the main thread of what I heard is that things are super expensive. While you can find goods in stores to shop and you can still fill up your tank with gas, many people aren't doing either. A 30-year-old woman who works in a beauty salon and who had been back in Iran just a week ago told me that the price of eggs was going up day by day. I was told a tray of 30 eggs is now about $5, double what it was a month ago. Cooking oil is about $3 for a 30-ounce bottle. That jumped about 30% in a month. Yesterday, a train from Tehran brought dozens of new visitors, and I met a woman at the station who's a personal trainer. She says she just can't afford many things now.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER: Like travel, like buying clothes. Like, for example, I eat a lot of protein a day. Now I have to limit that.
AL-SHALCHI: She says life is still oppressive. Iranian authorities forced her to take down her personal training Instagram page after questioning her because they deemed it provocative. And both women told me that the atmosphere was tense in their cities. People were stressed. They were on edge because of the uncertainty. Here's the beauty salon worker.
UNIDENTIFIED SALON EMPLOYEE: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "People are constantly checking the news," she says. "What has been targeted? What is happening to the price of the dollar?"
FADEL: What's it like being in Van for some of these Iranians?
AL-SHALCHI: So Van is dusty and crowded. People bump into each other on the sidewalks. You hear a lot of Persian on the streets. A lot of the store signs are in Persian also. Many Iranians come here for a respite from the war. They can shop, party. They can go to Lake Van. I met a 53-year-old commercial manager who came here to meet a friend. He described Van this way.
UNIDENTIFIED COMMERCIAL MANAGER: A pill, you know? You just have a pill, and it's no more pain for just two, three, four days.
AL-SHALCHI: No more pain, he says. But the beauty salon worker I spoke to says the situation in Iran was becoming so desperate for people that she knew some women here who had been forced into prostitution.
FADEL: How do Iranians feel about their government surviving?
AL-SHALCHI: There were some who struck a defiant tone. Here's a woman I met resting while taking a shopping trip.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: She says, "people are willing to put up with the war or even a famine, if that's what it takes to bring the regime down." But she did say that as the U.S. puts more pressure on the Iranian government, it meant more pressure on the Iranian people. The personal trainer I talked to said there was a glimmer of hope, and now young people who see no future in Iran.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSONAL TRAINER: (Non-English language spoken).
AL-SHALCHI: "Things have gotten worse and worse," she says," and now we have to emigrate." In fact, she said she was in Van to take a personal training test to hope to emigrate to Australia. So, you know, Iranians are paying the price literally for the broken promises of this war at the grocery store, surviving bombings and now a more paranoid and repressive regime.
FADEL: NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi in Van, Turkey, on the border with Iran. Thank you.
AL-SHALCHI: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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