CNN‘s Frederik Pleitgen filed his first report on Wednesday after arriving in Tehran, reporting on hearing anti-aircraft gunfire as well as the sounds of potential Israeli airstrikes or some sort of interceptions.
“There’s very few people actually though here. A lot of people appear to have left,” Pleitgen said of the streets of the city. In his report on The Lead with Jake Tapper, he reported that there was “a good amount of traffic” going out of the city and stores that were closed.
He said that they drove through Iran, “the mood there is fairly calm. Not a lot of panic.”
In a digital video, Pleitgen, traveling with his producer, also described driving through a “substantial part” of Iran to get to Tehran, where it “appears to be almost business as usual.”
The network said that Pleitgen is the first Western journalist to enter the country since the conflict with Israel started. President Donald Trump said earlier Wednesday that he had not yet decided on whether the U.S. would take part in further efforts to dismantle Iran’s nuclear arsenal.
Pleitgen is CNN senior international correspondent and anchor.
Networks have been mobilizing crews and coverage in the region since the Israeli airstrikes started on Thursday.
Much of the reporting from the Middle East on broadcast and cable networks has been from Israel, as journalists have been reporting on Iran’s retaliatory strikes and the damage in Tel Aviv and elsewhere.
CNN has been providing images from Tehran from Iran’s Mehr News Agency. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that the conflict with Israel has already increased media censorship among Iranian journalists, in a country where the government already controls broadcasting.
CNN earlier in the day featured Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, who told her, “If the Americans decide to get involved militarily, we have no choice but to retaliate, wherever we find the targets necessary to be acted upon.”
