What a Times Reporter Saw in Iran, and Takeaways from Trump’s Speech on Election Security

**David Sanger** (0:01)
I'm David Sanger. I cover the White House and National Security of The New York Times, and I try to explain what decisions made in Washington mean for you wherever you live. This is why The Times sends me to the Oval Office when the president is making a major decision or has me ride along on Air Force One on critical trips.
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**Tracy Mumford** (0:33)
From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Friday, July 17th. Here's what we're covering.

**Abdul Latif Dahir** (0:44)
My name is Abdul Latif Dahir. I'm a Middle East correspondent for The New York Times. I just got back from spending over a week in Iran.

**Tracy Mumford** (0:53)
Iran recently allowed The Times into the country to cover massive funeral ceremonies for the former supreme leader. And my colleagues got a rare look at the country under war.

**Abdul Latif Dahir** (1:03)
As part of the trip, we did have a guide and a translator that was assigned to us by the Iranian government. But despite these restrictions that were put on us, I was able to get a glimpse into what everyday life was for many Iranians.
During our trip, we were able to see some of the sites that were struck during the American and Israeli strikes in the country, we saw a university campus that was hit, so there was a lot of damage. The other thing that we saw was the slices of life, particularly how as much as there were women and men who dressed conservatively and were supportive of the government, we were also able to see the flip side of that, which is young men in shorts, pierced ears, women with dyed hair, driving motorcycles. We were able to get a sense of these two Iran's that coexist on a day-to-day basis. We were also able to talk to people on the streets, in markets who talked a lot about the economic hardships that the war had brought on, the challenges that they were facing, feeding their families, running their businesses. The theme of economic hardship was top of mind for so many people.
When it comes to the ongoing war, I heard two different messages from the Iranian people. One is, of course, the supporters of the government. They were very angry about how the United States and Israel had attacked their country, and they basically also talked a lot about revenge, right? Like they wanted revenge for all the things that were done to them over the last few months. On the flip side of it, when we spoke to some of these people on the streets who did not like the government, who are not supportive of the Iranian theocracy, they were very much also still against the war. They were like, it's the duty of other Iranians to bring down the government and it's not just a job of foreigners to come in and do that on their behalf.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:07)
Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.

**Tracy Mumford** (3:18)
Last night at the White House, President Trump gave a primetime address, making at times outlandish claims about the integrity of US elections and saying his administration was releasing the documents to prove it.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:30)
This vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you. The American people are beautiful, are great American people, but that all changes right now.

**Tracy Mumford** (3:42)
The documents relate to claims of election interference, non-citizens voting and alleged fraud.

**Nick Corsini** (3:48)
He billed these documents as having revelatory information about multiple scandals in American elections.
But when we took a much closer look at these documents, we found that not to be the case. And in fact, much of this information was already known.

**Tracy Mumford** (4:03)
Nick Corsini covers elections for The Times. He says, for example, Trump brought up a case from 2020, when election officials in Michigan flagged irregularities in voter registrations.
But when the FBI then investigated, it found no fraudulent votes were cast. And Nick says the documents released yesterday offer no new information about anything going wrong.

**Nick Corsini** (4:25)
Another claim the president made on Thursday that he portrayed as a historic scandal was this attempt by China to acquire American voter data.

**SPEAKER_4** (4:34)
Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history.

**Nick Corsini** (4:47)
But China's efforts to collect that data has been known for years. It's been detailed in intelligence documents and a lot of voter information is publicly available.