Video taking off 12x its usual first day

Robert Tait's memory of an Iranian hanging meets Hegseth's livestream plan

The Guardian correspondent goes back to the 2005 story that began his foreign reporting, after the US briefly considered broadcasting the execution of the Fort Hood shooter.

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The Guardian Story of October 17, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 47,680 views a day, 12 times a normal first day on this channel (3,910).

I saw Iran execute a man in public. Why was the US considering the same thing?

Robert Tait's career as a foreign correspondent began with a story he still struggles to put down. In March 2005, reporting for The Guardian from Pakdasht, Iran, he watched a convicted serial killer being publicly lashed and then hanged from a crane in front of a crowd.

"It was a searing and unforgettable experience," he says at the start of this short video. He also remembers asking himself at the time: "Am I doing the right thing here? Is this the right thing to be doing?"

What brought the memory back was Pete Hegseth's plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. Donald Trump has since said the execution will not be broadcast, and the video shows his post along with the headlines about worldwide condemnation. Tait's point is that the idea got as far as it did. The video's description quotes him calling it "an extraordinarily uncivilized action for the administration to consider."

Over archive footage from that day in Iran, Tait describes public executions as a display of state power that turns onlookers into spectators. He says he once saw them as the opposite of Western values. Now, he says, the plan "raises questions as to whether Washington's and Tehran's values are really so different after all."

The Short reached about 35,000 views in its first 13 hours, while a Guardian Short usually draws around 4,000 in a full day. Its comment section has been far busier than usual. Viewers debate whether the courts would have stopped a broadcast, and several point out that the president had already ruled it out. Others argue that the case is a military matter and should not be compared with Iran.

Published on Trari