Writings

Published in the Atlantic Iran has taken a turn that hardly anyone could have seen coming a few short months ago. For years, Iran’s reformist faction has languished in the political wilderness, banished there by hard-liners more aligned with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and by a disillusioned electorate convinced that its votes did not matter.…

Published in Majalla Earlier this year, Iran was headed to its scheduled parliamentary elections. As has become common in recent years, the elections were severely restricted. Under the Islamic Republic, polls have never been free and fair, and a vetting body called the Guardian Council, whose members give their primary fealty to Supreme Leader Ayatollah…

Published in the Atlantic Since the death in May of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran has been in the throes of a surprise electoral contest. Not for the first time, one of the loudest campaigns has belonged not to any of the candidates, but to opponents of the regime who advocate boycotting the vote. Among those…

Published in the National Iranian hardliners, known for their devotion to the Islamic Republic and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sometimes like to accuse their opponents of being modelled after westerners. But last week, it was a hardliner presidential candidate, who on a televised debate, praised a European head of government and called for…

Published in the Atlantic A specter is haunting Iran’s presidential election—the specter of Donald Trump’s return to office. Although Trump has been out of the White House for more than three years, he seems to come up more than Joe Biden, and more than other foreign politicians, in debates among the six candidates in the…

Published in Al Majalla When a country’s head of government dies in a dramatic helicopter crash, one naturally expects a bit of shock and changes to the schedule. Yet nothing, it seems, can stop the bureaucratic clock of the Islamic Republic. On 21 May, Iran’s Assembly of Experts began its meeting as scheduled, but in…

Published by the National Iran has been in the throes of a presidential election campaign since Sunday, when the Guardian Council announced the final slate of candidates to run for the second-highest office in the land. The Guardian Council, a panel of jurists and clerics appointed by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decides who is allowed…

Published by the Atlantic Council With the dramatic death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19, much attention is being paid to the race to replace him. But the chopper ride included another high-ranking official: Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the foreign minister who has now been replaced with his deputy, Ali Bagheri…

Publish in the National The death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash this month shocked the nation. But this shock has quickly given way to an intense struggle between various political factions vying for the second-most powerful job in the country, after that of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. With an election to pick…

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 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…