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Writings

  • What If Iran Already Has the Bomb?

    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…

  • Who Would Benefit From Ebrahim Raisi’s Death?

    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…

  • The Islamic Republic claims to support US student protests, but it crushed its own student uprising

    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…

  • The Arab “democracy dilemma” is a fallacy

    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…

  • Is Iran a Country or a Cause?

    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,…

  • Protect the Student Protesters. Don’t Idealize Them.

    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…

  • The Fiasco of Iranian Diaspora Politics

    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…

  • Why America’s Leftist Literati Loves to Fetishize Hamas Brutality

    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…

  • Were Iran and Israel really friends before 1979? It’s complicated

    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…

  • Ordinary Iranians Don’t Want a War With Israel

    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…

  • Persecution and The Art of Filmmaking

    Published in the Liberties Iran today may be best known for two things: one of the most repressive regimes in the world and one of the most remarkable cinemas in the world. The coexistence of the two is a conundrum that perplexes many people. How does a country known for ferocious repression of dissent and…

  • Flaneur: My Enlightened Tehran

    Published by Liberties “Were you culture-shocked?” is the question people often ask upon discovering that, at  the age of twenty,  I moved from Iran to the West. “Of course I was,” I usually say. “I still am.”  But I suspect they mis-imagine the tribulations of that transition. Exchanging the Tehran of the 2000s, where I…

  • Iran’s Deadly Message to Journalists Abroad

    Published by the Atlantic On March 29, a friend of mine, the Iranian journalist Pouria Zeraati, was crossing the road outside his Wimbledon home in southwestern London, to get his car. A man approached him and asked for change; then another man, with his face covered, gave Zeraati a bear hug while the first man…

  • Will Iran attack Israel?

    Published by the Spectator The Middle East is bracing for an attack whose exact source, targets, method, timing and scope are unknown. On Monday, a suspected Israeli air strike targeted a group of Iranian officials in Damascus, Syria, and citizens of the region are now waiting to see how Iran’s regime will respond. Israel has…

  • Too Much Purity Is Bad for the Left

    Published by the Atlantic American leftists are facing a question that has become a perennial bugbear. Come November, should they support the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump? Or, given their profound reservations about both candidates, should they abstain from voting at all? Biden’s support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza has given…

  • This Persian New Year means disappointment for Iran’s beleaguered workers

    Published by the National Late March is a festive occasion for Iranians and many others, as we celebrate the beginning of Persian New Year, coinciding with the beginning of the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. Known as Nowruz, the festival has gained global recognition in recent years and even got its own Google doodle…

  • What do the archives tell us about Iranians and the Holocaust?

    Co-written with Didi Tal for IranWire In their attempt to reconstruct the past, historians often rely on archival documents. But these documents never tell the full story and we often have to work through the gaps. Looking at some of the major archives related to the Holocaust, we sifted through official documents, lists, registrations, and…

  • The Arolsen Archives: Keeping Holocaust History Alive

    Published by IranWire Floriane Azoulay, director of an archive dedicated to documenting Nazi crimes, is used to dealing with harrowing material. But many of her stories from her eight years at the Arolsen Archives are also incredibly touching. Take the story of Thomas Buergenthal, the famed Czechoslovak-born American international lawyer who passed away in May…

  • Change Is Coming to Iran, Just Not the Change We Hoped For

    Published by the New York Times On March 1, Iranians went to the polls for the first time since the protest movement of 2022 and the war in Gaza. The vote, for the Parliament and Assembly of Experts, which appoints the supreme leader, was far from a referendum on current leaders, though. The big result…

  • The paradox of Iranian film: Greatness out of repression

    Published by the Washington Post Arash Azizi, a professor of history at Clemson University, is author of “What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.” This piece is adapted from an essay in the spring 2024 issue of Liberties, a journal of culture and politics. Iran today might be best known for two things: one of the…