Expatriate Dreams

“It was out of estisal that some Iranians chose war,” writes Nahid Siamdoust in the NYR Online. Estisal, which, loosely translated from Persian, means “having no options” or a state of helplessness, is also, she contends, what has made some Iranians vulnerable to the disinformation being spread by both state and private media—a perhaps more familiar concept to American readers. When the Iranian regime’s state-controlled “static” disrupts the airwaves and blocks out all other networks, Iran International, a pro–regime change satellite channel based out of London and backed by Saudi money, fills the vacuum with monarchist propaganda. With homegrown media largely censored, most Iranians are trapped in an information environment manufactured by either right-wing shah supporters—mostly expatriates and foreigners—or the brutal Islamic Republic’s state media.Born in Iran, Siamdoust is now an assistant professor of media and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin and, for 2026, a Humboldt Foundation fellow in Berlin. Previously, she was a foreign correspondent, reporting from Iran and the Middle East for Time magazine, Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel, and the Los Angeles Times...