Published by the Atlantic There’s rarely a dull moment in Iranian affairs. The past few months alone have seen clashes with Israel and Pakistan, and a helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president and foreign minister. But spectacular as these events are, the most important changes often happen gradually, by imperceptible degrees. One such change took …
Published in the Atlantic Accidents happen everywhere, but not all accidents are equal. Many hours after initial news broke about an “incident” involving a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s state media has still not confirmed whether he is dead or alive. Various state outlets have published contradictory news—Was Raisi seen on video …
Published by the Atlantic Council When pro-Palestinian student protests on US campuses led to instances of disciplinary action and police violence, one thing was immediately predictable: the repressive Islamic Republic of Iran will use this news to make two claims. First, it will argue that the United States and other liberal democracies are hypocrites who …
Published by the New Statesman Iran’s large drone and missile attack on Israel on 15 April was as shocking as it was unprecedented. But almost as noteworthy a development was a certain neighbour of Israel rushing to the latter’s defence: the Kingdom of Jordan, an Arab state with millions of Palestinian-origin citizens, helped shoot down Iranian …
Published by the Atlantic On April 21, a week after Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with his military commanders to gloat. The assault had failed to cause much damage in Israel, but Khamenei claimed victory and tried to give it a patriotic color. “What matters most,” he said, …
Published by Chronicle of Higher Education have a tradition of turning the last week of classes into an open discussion. When I did so recently, a student inevitably wanted to know what I thought about the protests and arrests at Columbia. It was as if she was asking: Would you ever call the cops on us if we held …
Published by New Lines Iranians today, both in Iran and across the diaspora, are reckoning with two intricately related questions: How has the Islamic Republic survived, and why did the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, despite all of its momentous and meaningful achievements, fail? These questions have become even more salient and urgent as the regime’s …
Published by Haaretz By now, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that there are those on the Western left who openly support the attacks of October 7 on Israeli civilians. The past six months have produced a long list of examples. The latest came when Verso Books, easily the most renowned left-wing publishing house in the English-speaking …
Published in the National Anarrative that has persisted throughout the decades-long cold conflict between Iran and Israel is that, before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the two countries had excellent relations that only soured after the Islamic Republic’s establishment. Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s last crown prince, himself has repeatedly espoused a version of this narrative in his …
Published by the Atlantic The moment we were all afraid of finally arrived yesterday evening. For me, it was announced by a phone call from a terrified teenage cousin in Iran. Had the war started? she asked me through tears. Iran had fired dozens of drones and missiles on Israel, hitting much more widely than most of …