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
Commissioned by IranWire, I had the honor to translate the tributes written to the victims of PS752, a passenger airliner shot down by Iran in January, 2020. Here are links to these tributes: Reera Esmaeilion … Remembering the PS752 Victims
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”
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!
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.
Published by Tel Aviv Review of Books
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 do you remember from sixth grade? A funny drawing in a chemistry textbook or a math problem no one could solve?
If you went to a primary school run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, chances are one thing would stick out: the hatred of Jews.
Hezbollah Teaches Antisemitism to Early Teens, Report Reveals
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
Among the absurdly bad faith (or shockingly ignorant) arguments made to justify the occupation policies of Israel toward the Palestinian people are those that point out at how vibrant and fun can life be in many of the Palestinian cities under Israeli occupation. How could it be so bad if they post so many cool pictures on Instagram?
You don’t need to buy the racist, pro-occupation arguments to marvel at the vibrancy of life in Palestinian cities. This urban energy is only one aspect of Palestinian resilience in face of adversity and occupation, immortalized in a refrain of a poem by Rafeef Ziadah: “We teach life, sir.”
The Middle East is perhaps the least integrated region in the world. Two of its biggest countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, are involved in a cold war, and numerous blocks pit countries big and small against each other, making inter-state trade difficult. Where there are close economic ties, the relationships are often massively unequal, one-sided and based on war-driven needs.
A case in point is the economic relationship between Iran and Syria. Before 2011, there were very few economic ties between the two countries despite their 30-year-long strategic alliance. But as Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad brutally cracked down on a nationwide uprising and led his country into a civil war, Iran became his main regional supporter — and economic ties began to develop on that basis.