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Outrage After Iran Erases Girls from a Math Textbook Cover

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Published by IranWire

When Mohammad Taha Zanjani, a third-grade student in Iran, came home and showed his father the textbooks for his new school year, his father soon became livid. A quick check confirmed the rumors that had been swirling online. There was a major change in the design of a third-grade math textbook: all the depictions of girls had been removed from the cover. Previously, the cover to the textbook had shown five kids playing under a tree, including two girls, donning the Islamic veil and playing separately from the boys. In the new edition, the girls had simply been taken out. Now there were only three boys.

Mohammad’s father, Mohsen Bayat Zanjani, is the son of Ayatollah Zanjani, an influential cleric in the holy city of Qom and a former deputy speaker of the parliament. His response shows that the zealotry displayed by Iran’s Islamic Republic now enrages not only the secular-leaning sections of the population, but many of the devout. The livid father took to Twitter to complain.

Outrage After Iran Erases Girls from a Math Textbook Cover

Iran’s #MeToo Moment: First Steps of a “Long March”

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Published by IranWire

It all started with a cringe-worthy tweet.

“Kiss her lips on the first date and if she didn’t protest that means she’ll let you fuck her,” an Iranian man tweeted in Persian on August 6. “If she did protest, tell her ‘I was lost in your beauty and didn’t know what I was doing.’ This way, she’ll still let you fuck her.”

Iran’s #MeToo Moment: First Steps of a “Long March”

Barred from Iran, Baha’i scientist takes a quantum leap with Google

Published by IranWire 

Pedram Roshan has not lived in Iran for about 20 years. Memories of his country of birth are “fading,” every day, he says. But he vividly remembers the best definition of physics he ever heard in his life. It came not from a top Ivy League professor in the US but from Mr Dehqan, his high school teacher in the northern Iranian city of Sari.

Barred from Iran, Baha’i scientist takes a quantum leap with Google

Iranian State Media Decries Biblical Animated Film as “Zionist Infiltration”

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Published by IranWire

There is no shortage of front page-worthy news in Iran these days. The country is in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history, it is battling a horrendous pandemic, it has weathered a series of mysterious explosions and continues to hang political prisoners, leading to protest and dissent.

But a leading news agency linked to the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has chosen to run a 1600-word story on a wholly different topic: the online streaming of a children’s animation film, featuring anthropomorphic vegetables and a biblical story taking place in ancient Persia.

Iranian State Media Decries Biblical Animated Film as “Zionist Infiltration”

More than Four Million Twitter Users Say: Don’t Execute These Three Iranian Protesters!

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Published by IranWire

Twitter is well-known for acrimonious debate and Iranians on Twitter exemplify just how contentious the platform can get. Issues great and small often deeply divide Iranians, with the blue bird logo coming to be a symbol of these harsh divisions.

Rarely does a political issue unite large swathes of Iranian public opinion. In the last 24 hours, though, one such issue has arisen: the demand to halt the impending execution of three young Iranian men, all born in the 1990s, who are in danger of losing their lives just because they followed hundreds of thousands of others in joining the November 2019 protests.

More than Four Million Twitter Users Say: Don’t Execute These Three Iranian Protesters!

Iran’s Sorely-Missed Top Pop Singer Loses Beard for Charity

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Published by IranWire

All the catastrophic consequences of the coronavirus lockdown aside, it has led to some amusing moments. Millions of people having to avoid hair salons for months resulted in our timelines being filled up with signature quarantine beards or amateur spouse-inflicted haircuts. With the gradual easing of restrictions, barbershops were Destination No 1 for many.

Iranian singer Ebrahim Hamedi, usually known as Ebi, was also unhappy with his quarantine beard. He has been known to several generations of Iranians by his bushy beard, but the untrimmed lockdown version was starting to make him look more like a Taliban minister than a pop star.

Iran’s Sorely-Missed Top Pop Singer Loses Beard for Charity

What Happened to Us?

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Published by Tel Aviv Review of Books

The story of the modern Middle East seen through the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

n the fall of 2017, I moved to the United States to start a PhD in History and Middle Eastern studies. I loved my department and had many friends, but my closest friendship was with a Turkish student. My bond with Eylul (let’s call her that) was based on our common allegiance to the traditions of the socialist left in our region. I had grown up in Iran and she in Turkey; the former the most stringent theocracy in the world, the latter the most constitutionally secularist regime in the region. Despite this obvious divergence, the histories of our respective nations were intertwined. Iran’s 1979 revolution had led to an oppressive Islamist regime that murderously suppressed the left and curtailed liberties. The 1980 coup in Turkey was a strong blow to the left and helped cement the rise of the unholy alliance that has come to rule Turkey ever since: the pact between Islamist conservatism and free-market capitalism best represented by Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

What Happened to Us?

Iran Says He is an Israeli Spy. His Former Cellmate Says He is Innocent

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Published by IranWire

The name Mahmoud Mousavi-Majd wouldn’t have rung a bell for most of us until a few days ago. That is, until the Iranian judiciary published a picture of him and claimed that he had been working with US and Israeli intelligence spy on General Ghasem Soleimani: the former commander of Iran’s external operations who was assassinated on January 3 by a US drone. Mousavi-Majd is now on death row.

But Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese IT specialist and internet freedom advocate who spent almost four years in arbitrary detention in Iran, has known Mousavi-Majd for a long time. They met in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.

Iran Says He is an Israeli Spy. His Former Cellmate Says He is Innocent