BENGALURU/BEIJING – Mountaineer Falguni Dey’s solo expedition to Asia’s highest volcanic summit, Mount Damavand, in Iran has turned into a battle for survival, as the 40-year-old tries to find a way to leave the country now battered by Israel’s missile strikes.

A blizzard had forced him to descend from the summit on June 10. Returning to the capital Tehran, he was shocked to find a bombed city and Iranian airspace closed.

Stuck in a transit office in the Iranian town of Astara that borders Azerbaijan, Dr Dey told The Straits Times over a patchy WhatsApp phone call that he is desperate to get back home to his parents, wife and daughter, but is stuck in a web of cross-border bureaucracy.

“I am being told that Azerbaijan requires a special migration code to let me cross the border. It will take 15 days for that to be processed,” said the geography professor from Kolkata after a sleepless week, and he is now fast running out of cash.

“I am surrounded by people from a lot of countries. Everyone is trying to get home,” he said in one of several WhatsApp voice messages, against a backdrop of panicked voices and what appeared to be prayers.

With Israel-Iran hostilities escalating into a second week, the embassies of China and India – Asia’s two most populous nations, each with many citizens in the Islamic republic – are among several racing to evacuate their nationals, especially from Tehran.

Thousands of tourists, pilgrims, students and businessmen are trying to escape, but with Iranian airspace shut, many are turning to land ports with neighbouring countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

China has evacuated 791 of its citizens from Iran, with more than 1,000 others in the process of leaving, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun at a press briefing on June 18.

Chinese embassies and consulates in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have dispatched teams to assist Chinese citizens with customs clearance at border crossings, as well as with subsequent accommodation and transit back to China, he added.

Dr Dey left for Astara by road after India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) advised its nationals on June 16 to evacuate Tehran, and for those with access to private transportation to move to safer locations.

The ministry said it had facilitated many Indian students leaving Iran via Armenia, and that it remains “continuously in touch with the community with a view to extending all feasible assistance”.

Mr Nasir Khuehami, national convenor of the Jammu and Kashmir Students Association, said: “When the conflict began in Iran, we started getting calls from fearful students and terrified parents. So we wrote to the MEA requesting help to evacuate people.”

Around 250 Indian students were moved from Tehran to safer places before “the Indian government took some of them by bus to Armenia, which took 15 hours”.

At noon on June 18, at least 110 students of Urmia Medical University, including 90 from the Kashmir valley, boarded a flight from Yerevan, capital of Armenia, to Mumbai.

Media professional Abbas Muzaffar and his mother Kaneez Haider were in Qom for a pilgrimage at the important Shia religious site, but were stuck with 91 people from their hometown in Uttar Pradesh after hostilities with Israel. PHOTO: COURTESY OF ABBAS MUZAFFAR/THE STRAITS TIMES

Analysts said India might face diplomatic challenges in its evacuation operations.

While it had good relations with Armenia, Iraq and Turkmenistan, New Delhi does not have amicable ties with other countries bordering Iran – Turkey, Azerbaijan and Pakistan in particular – after May’s India-Pakistan cross-border firing. Ankara and Baku were seen as supporting Islamabad in this conflict.

In Israel’s first round of attacks on June 13, some 200 fighter jets are said to have targeted dozens of military and nuclear targets across Iran, including its main nuclear facility in Natanz.

These attacks triggered Iranian retaliation against Israel, with the crisis threatening to spiral as the US reportedly mulls over direct involvement in strikes on Iran.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his first public comments on the conflict, said on June 17 that China is “deeply worried” about Israel’s military operation against Iran, adding that Beijing opposes any actions that infringe upon the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of other countries.

Mr Xi, who spoke on the sidelines of a summit with five Central Asian nations in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, said: “All parties should work to de-escalate the conflict as soon as possible and prevent the situation from worsening further.”

A Chinese citizen, who runs a hotel in Tehran and has lived there for more than 10 years, told the Global Times, a Chinese media outlet, that more than 100 Chinese people left his hotel on four buses on June 16, headed for Azerbaijan.

Others said they had wanted to wait to see how the situation developed, but changed their minds after seeing people leaving Iran in droves.

A Chinese woman, who has been travelling alone in the Middle East since May, posted on social media platform Xiaohongshu that she decided on June 15 to buy a bus ticket to flee Tehran, instead of continuing to Isfahan in Iran as she had originally planned.

The woman, whose bio said she was from China’s Guangdong province, said she and her fellow passengers were startled by a large explosion as their bus left Iran.

She reached the Iran-Turkey border only about 48 hours later on June 17, and is now in Van, Turkey.

“After two days of constant travelling, my mindset remains positive as it’s important to stay optimistic and not panic. There are always more solutions than problems,” she wrote.

Another Chinese woman from Henan province vlogged her car journey out of Tehran with her Iranian husband and young daughter.

“My husband said he and his father can die here, but my daughter and I should not die in this land, so we quickly packed up to leave in case the borders close,” she said in a calm voiceover in Mandarin, as she documented their 13-hour-long drive towards the Iran-Turkey border and their eventual settlement in Turkey.

As tens of thousands of foreigners await evacuation, many are posting on social media and talking to journalists in the hope of getting their messages across to their governments.

“The situation here is getting intense. So far we are safe,” media professional and teacher Abbas Muzaffar texted ST over WhatsApp from Qom in north-central Iran, where he and his 83-year-old mother were stuck.

They were in Iran with 90 others from Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, for a pilgrimage.

Despite the unreliable internet connectivity, Mr Muzaffar, 48, kept in touch with friends, family and journalists.

As ST tried to call him on June 18, he sent a rushed voice message: “I have just received a frantic last-minute phone call from the embassy to board a bus for Mashhad (international airport in Iran). So me, and my old mother, we have boarded the bus.

“We are on the way. Battery is dying… There is a long way to go.”

Asia News Network/The Straits Times