2025-12-13
48 分钟In the summer of 2019, Nick Pelham, the Economist's Middle East correspondent,
was given a rare journalist's visa to Iran.
I don't remember being aware of his departure,
but I did rapidly become aware that Nick hadn't returned.
In our London office, there were hushed conversations.
I observed serious-looking meetings with slightly surprising groups of people in them.
Then someone told me, Nick had been taken.
He'd been captured, not by the Iranian government, but by the revolutionary guards,
who answered directly to the country's supreme leader, the Ayatollah.
The seven weeks Nick was kept in the country were hellish for Nick's family,
and for our colleagues in London,
who were desperately trying to negotiate his release through back channels.
On advice, the economist made the decision not to publicise the arrest,
no one thought the headline would be useful.
Journalist trapped in Iran.
I'm Rosie Bloor and today on The Weeknd Intelligence, what happened next?
I know a lot of this story because at the time I was editing 1843,
the economists home for long-form journalism.
After Nick was finally let go, a senior editor asked me to talk to him about a piece.
I was expecting a traumatised captive.