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Writings

  • Communism, Cold War, and the 1953 Coup

    Published in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Even as it passed its seventieth anniversary, the 1953 coup in Iran has remained a hotly debated political topic. This is true in the public spheres of Iran, which saw its last democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, overthrown in the coup, and in those of…

  • Who will lead Hamas now?

    Published by the Spectator It took more than a year of waging war, but Israel has finally succeeded in killing its top target in Gaza: Yahya Sinwar. Alongside Mohammad Deif, who is thought to have been killed by an Israeli strike in July, Sinwar was the man most responsible for organising the horrific attacks of…

  • Hassan Nasrallah: Orator, cleric, militant

    Published by Al Majalla As leader of a militia that has been at war for every day of its existence, Hassan Nasrallah was no stranger to danger. But one summer night in 2006, he must have felt death to be particularly close. He was in southern Beirut, in a command building of Hezbollah, with two…

  • Iran Is Not Ready for War With Israel

    Published by the Atlantic Iran’s attack on Israel yesterday evoked a sense of déjà vu. On April 13, too, Iran targeted Israel with hundreds of missiles and drones—at that time marking a first-ever in the history of the two countries. The latest strikes were notably similar: more show than effect, resulting in few casualties (April’s…

  • Iranian politicians rallying around the flag should listen to the growing anti-war voices

    Published by the National In the days leading up to Iran’s missile attacks against Israel on Tuesday, the country’s political class was polarised along predictable lines. Centrists and reformists urged caution and pleaded with the government to not fall into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trap by getting drawn into a war with his government. Hardliners, on…

  • Israel Has Called Iran’s Bluff

    Published by the Atlantic At the center of current conflicts in the Middle East is a long-running staring contest between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. And Netanyahu seems to have calculated that, even if Israel moves ferociously against Khamenei’s so-called Axis of Resistance—the region-wide network of militias arrayed against…

  • Iran’s Russia Problem

    Published by the Atlantic Iran’s newish president and foreign minister could hardly be more different in demeanor. President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks informally, often goes off script, and loves to crack jokes. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, a career diplomat who earned his Ph.D. in Britain, chooses his words with painstaking precision. But the two men have been saying…

  • Pezeshkian’s Iraq visit was rich in symbolism, but what did it amount to?

    Published in The National For any newly elected leader, picking a country to make his or her first official visit holds great significance. It’s no exception for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who assumed office in July. There was much chatter around which country he would visit first and what that might say about his administration’s foreign policy…

  • The Dangerous Rise of the Podcast Historians

    Published in The Atlantic Even by the standards of the American far right, Tucker Carlson’s airing of Holocaust-revisionist views on his popular show on the platform X seemed to hit a new low. On an episode that streamed September 2, Carlson gushed at his guest Darryl Cooper, introducing him as the “most important popular historian working in…

  • UN to Iran: Stop “racial discrimination”

    Published on IranWire By any fair measure, the Islamic Republic of Iran is among the worst human rights violators in the world today. It executes more people than any country except China and it came 176th out of 180 in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, to mention just two examples. This is reflected in…

  • Is a New Palestinian Movement Being Born?

    Published by the Atlantic In the months before the Democratic National Convention came to Chicago, the city prepared for massive protests against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Pundits raced to draw parallels with 1968, when anti-war protesters overshadowed the Democratic convention and helped hand the White House back to the GOP. But history…

  • Tehrangeles: No Browsing Please

    Published in Liberties In the western region of Los Angeles a long boulevard stretches from the main local campus of University of California in the north to the residential quarters to its south. If visitors to LA make it to Westwood Boulevard at all, it would probably be for a visit to UCLA and its…

  • Does Kamala Harris Have a Vision for the Middle East?

    Published by the Atlantic The administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have all shared one common foreign-policy desire: to get out of the quagmire of the Middle East and focus American attention on the potentially epoch-making rivalry with China. Even in fiendishly polarized Washington, foreign-policy hands in both the Republican and Democratic…

  • Haniyeh’s killing in Iran embarrassed the country. Can Tehran fill its intelligence gaps?

    Published in the National On July 24, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was asked about the achievements during his tenure since 2021. He pointed to Iran’s most immediate security problem, repeated operations by Israel on Iranian soil and its assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists, and claimed he had solved it. “With the grace of God,…

  • Iranian Insiders Warn That Attacking Israel Is a Trap

    Published in the Atlantic Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in April in the hope of changing the rules of engagement: Israel had struck an Iranian consulate in Damascus, and Tehran sought to deter any further such direct actions against its interests. Those hopes were shattered last week when an operation attributed…

  • A Wake-Up Call for Iran

    Published by the Atlantic Ismail Haniyeh should have known that Tehran wasn’t a safe place for him to be. What has Israel ever wanted to do on Iranian territory that it hasn’t been able to accomplish? In 2018, it stole the country’s entire nuclear archive. In 2020, it killed Iran’s top nuclear-weapons official. In 2022 and 2023, it reportedly abducted, interrogated,…

  • Pezeshkian’s push for a diverse cabinet has exposed divisions in Iran

    Published in the National Every time former Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appears on television, it’s fair to expect some drama or controversy. Such is the nature of the combative career diplomat. Mr Zarif, who has been tasked with picking cabinet ministers for President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian’s incoming administration, ruffled many feathers last week when…

  • Netanyahu’s speech proved it’s time for the U.S. to stop enabling him

    Published in the Forward If you want to know why so many ordinary people feel cynical about politicians, go no further than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Wednesday address to the U.S. Congress, the fourth in his lifetime. It was a rambling repetition of his familiar themes, particularly that of Israel and the U.S. standing as…

  • The Left’s Self-Defeating Israel Obsession

    Published in the Atlantic Ask most Americans what DSA stands for and they are unlikely to know the Democratic Socialists of America, the country’s largest leftist organization, with about 92,000 members. But ask about AOC and they are likely to be familiar with DSA’s most famous member: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx-born socialist firebrand known for her fierce advocacy…

  • Flaneur: “The Lie We Love”

    Published in the Liberties We tell ourselves myths in order to live with ourselves. Historians have the unpleasant responsibility of making that a little more difficult for us than it would otherwise be. This is a story about such a myth, and about the truth it obscures. Guatemala was not a country at peace in…