“I was told if I went out, I would be shot by snipers.”

This was the threat New York Times Iran correspondent Nazila Fathi recounted Tuesday night to a Stanford audience — a threat she received before her exile from on-scene reporting in Iran.

Fathi spoke to a captivated audience at Pigott Hall as part of the Iranian Studies Lecture Series, and students and Palo Alto residents quizzed her on the challenges of journalism amid violent protest — as well as the future of Iran’s relations with the United States.

Before beginning regular work with The New York Times, Fathi worked her way up the ladder, stringing stories without a press pass because she was too young and a woman.

Working in Iran, Fathi made the kind of name for herself that got her blacklisted by the local government, and she was forced to move to Canada after the government crackdown on press following the June elections. Today, she continues to report on Iranian politics for The Times.

“I was absolutely devastated when I was leaving,” she said.

Although initially concerned that exile would remove her entirely from earshot of the sweeping protests that followed June’s contested re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fathi described her surprise when she discovered the overwhelming network of exiled activists and Iranian bloggers abroad.

“People were much more willing to share the nation,” Fathi said.

People on the ground in Iran helped Fathi continue reporting from miles away. Many Iranians went out of their way to phone Fathi in Toronto. Self-appointed journalists acted as “soldiers armed with their own weapons,” she said, capturing critical photos and camera footage. Fathi plugged into the heart of Iran’s struggle through the Internet and phone calls. The well-captured videos and photographs streamed online by locals over live-feed blogs almost made distance immaterial to her reports, she said.

Fathi sought to highlight the fearlessness of many Iranian women, who she said have pioneered peaceful, silent protests.

“Three decades of suppression against women made these women very brave.” Fathi said. According to the journalist, men and women alike were fed up with government control. Older women became self-proclaimed “mothers of the martyrs.”

“It appeared that fear had evaporated,” Fathi said.

The so-called overwhelming victory of Ahmadinejad announced by election officials just hours after polls closing was “so unacceptable, that people felt that their intelligence was insulted.”

Responding to a question about the shaky relations between the U.S. and Iran, Fathi suggested how quickly Iran’s attitude has changed since Obama came to office. Iranians, she said, fear the U.S. president will strike a nuclear deal with an illegitimate government.

“They do not want a foreign country to come and give legitimacy to a government that lacks legitimacy at home,” she said, adding that she believed Iranians are eager to find their own place on the world stage — with the help of a leader they support.