O n January 9, anti-regime protests gripped Iran, and President Trump declared that the northeastern city of Mashhad had “fallen” to the opposition. I happened to be in Mashhad from December 26 to January 14. What I witnessed in those weeks was far more complex—certainly more complex than the American president’s pronouncement, but also than the narratives originating either with state propaganda or opposition media. Mashhad has never felt foreign to me. I come from Herat, in the west of