Jan Oberg. You have certainly not heard much about this in the West. And it didn’t get a fraction of the media attention (and none of the hundreds of millions…
“Vartan didn’t Say a Word” is a political poem by Ahmad Shamlou that underwent censorship because of being addressed to a political prisoner who was tortured to death…
Emma Graham-Harrison. The death toll from two weeks of flooding in Iran has risen to 62 as frustration mounts inside the country at the government’s handling of the…
Ian Black. The meeting publicly showcased the remarkable fact that Israel, as Netanyahu was so keen to advertise, is winning acceptance of a sort from the wealthiest countries…
Rohollah Faghihi. The phenomenon of “dirty” or suspicious money appears to have increasingly found a new haven: Iran’s cinema and TV production industry. In 2015, Interior Minister Abdolreza…
Yassamine Mather. Friday March 8 is International Women’s Day, which this year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first major protest by Iranian women against the Islamic…
Maya Margit. Amid worsening diplomatic and economic isolation, Iran is continuing its crackdown on perceived dissidents. Among the targets: environmental scientists. A recent Amnesty International report claimed the…
Yassamine Mather. Commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the February 1979 uprising in Iran has been marked by dozens of scholarly seminars in Europe, numerous documentaries produced by…
Two poems by Solmaz Sharif Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned By Solmaz Sharif this mangy plot where by nowonly mothers still come, only mothers guard…
Behnam Gharagozli. Shortly after the horrific attacks on 9/11, it was discovered that there was an American plan to dismantle the regimes of seven countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,…
Nicolas J.S. Davies and Medea Benjamin A shorter version of this article was originally published by The Hill. When the Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the Iran…
Conn Hallinan. Keeping track of the Trump administration’s foreign policy is like trying to track a cat on a hot tin roof: We’re pulling out of Syria (not…
Kourosh Ziabari. Instagram, widely used in Iran among small business owners, students, influencers and even senior officials, is the latest social media application to come under scrutiny and…
Shemuel Meir The title of Ehud Barak’s recently published autobiography My Country, My Life declares that it is a book not just about Barak’s life, but also a…
Yassamine Mather. Iranian workers have been staging large protests since early November in two major industrial complexes: the Haft Tapeh sugar plant and the Foulad steel factory in…
Mina Yousefi. For a little over a year, Iran has witnessed a new wave of civil resistance, which had been brewing in various towns and cities around the…
Sahar Esfandiari. TAs Mehdi Khakyan’s hands move skilfully across the piano keys, the soft chatter in the room subsides to hone in on the melody of a well-loved…
Maysam Behravesh. US President Donald Trump’s abrupt announcement last week of the withdrawal of American troops from Syria caught many people off guard, including his own administration officials. It…
Paul R Pillar. The record of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) as de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia has included a trail of regional destabilization. Foremost on…
Aveek Sen, Mojtaba Mousavi, and Udayan Tandan. Zeinab, the mother of a four-year-old girl suffering from blood cancer, says that “Mina has been under medication for nearly five…
Douglas Gerrard. Of the four countries into which Kurdistan is divided, the region spanning Iran is the least prominent in western consciousness. Rojava is well known amongst leftists due…
Peter Corboy. Born in tabriz, iran in 1985 and 1991 respectively, street art siblings ICY and SOT began making work under less than hospitable conditions. initially influenced by…
Seth Ferris. The history of sanctions teaches us that they are like a pole – you can find a way around them, and in the process, find a…
Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East. David Kirkpatrick, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. From 2011 to 2015, David Kirkpatrick was the…
Bijan Khajehpour. The reimposition of US secondary sanctions has compelled Tehran to look for ways to reduce their negative impact. According to Iranian officials, one of the strategies is…
Vali Nasr. The Trump administration is not ready to admit it, but its Middle East strategy is in deep trouble, now compounded by the murder of the dissident…
Yassamine Mather. More than six weeks after the death of Jamal Khashoggi we know a lot more about his tragic plight after he entered the Saudi consulate in…
“Ahmad Shamlou, also known under his pen name, Alef Bamdad, is among the most influential Iranian literary voices of the twentieth century and widely known as the father…
Omid Shams. Iran witnessed a nationwide strike by teachers on October 14-15. Iranian social media exploded with photos and videos of the teachers’ sit-ins at elementary and high…
Cyril Widdershoven. The U.S. sanctions on Iran are not biting yet, as global oil markets are well supplied. In the coming weeks, Iranian crude volumes should show a…
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