The night before I enter Iran, a sliver of a moon hangs suspended opposite the cloud-shrouded peak of Mount Ararat, barely illuminating the Turkish border town of Dogubeyazit.

Lourdres Garcia-Navarro is a Peabody award winning journalist who works for NPR as foreign correspondent. She recently relocated from the Middle East (where she had been covering the Arab Spring) to Sao Paulo, Brazil — a move she thought would be a relief because, after years spent living in conservative countries and…