Writings

Published by CNN Denis Villeneuve is busy these days. His film, “Dune: Part Two,” just opened in the US, with a $190 million budget, ensemble cast of stars and loyal following of the franchise. It’s already one of the most talked-about films of the season and won the No. 1 spot in its opening weekend with $81.5 million in domestic sales (CNN and the film’s…

Published by the Atlantic Council Iran is set to hold elections for its parliament and its Assembly of Experts, the body tasked with supervising and picking the supreme leader, on March 1. But while the elections held under the Islamic Republic have never been free or fair, the 2024 elections are the most restricted polls…

Published by ISPI Online For the past quarter of a century, Iranians who demand sociopolitical change have often alternated between strategies of electoral participation and street protests. Closing of one avenue has often encouraged resorting to the other. We thus saw massive electoral participation of pro-change voters in parliamentary and presidential polls of 1997, 2000, 2001,…

Published by Spectator On Thursday, a 60-year-old Japanese crime boss appeared in a New York court to respond to charges that he helped traffic illicit material from Myanmar to Thailand. You might expect this to be a story about the Southeast Asian drug trade – it’s a vibrant business after all. In fact the supposed…

Published by the Wall Street Journal On Sept. 16, 2022, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Tehran after being arrested for allegedly wearing an improper veil. Her death sparked a wave of protests across Iran, the latest in a series of uprisings that have challenged the country’s Islamist regime over the past 15…

Published in the Atlantic Iran and the United States have been in a shadow war with each other for years. That the conflict has never spilled into all-out war is only because both countries have kept to certain unwritten red lines and rules of engagement. One such rule, rarely broken in recent years, is: Thou…

Published by IranWire The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have been engaged in an indirect conflict for years, with fire being exchanged between militias backed by Tehran and US soldiers based in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. But the Sunday drone attack that targeted US soldiers near the Jordanian-Syrian border is unique: It…

Published by Universal Cinema Caroline Lindy’s Your Monster rests on several distinct worlds, each with their own rich traditions. No wonder critics have been unsure how to categorize it. Is it a horror, a comedy or a rom-com? To boot, it is set in the dog-eats-dog world of Broadway musical acting, making it also a musical-adjacent film.…

Published by the Spectator About a month ago, a regional brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the militia that undergirds the power in the Islamic Republic of Iran, held a political conference in the port city of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. The keynote speaker was a surprise for most attendees: Salim al-Montasser,…

Published by the Atlantic Fridays are holy days of rest in the Middle East, but today the region braces itself for the awful possibility of broader conflict. Following repeated attacks on their warships, the United States and the United Kingdom have finally hit back at the Houthis, a Yemeni militia that holds power in the…

Published by the National The country has many enemies, but few capable of inflicting a tragedy of this scale For the past four years, January 3 has been a tense day in the Middle East. It was on this day, in 2020, that the US took a shockingly bold action by assassinating Qassem Suleimani, a…

Published by IranWire Co-written with Aida Ghajar Every year since 1988, the European Parliament has awarded its Sakharov Prize to a recipient who has dedicated themselves to human rights and freedom of thought. The prize is named after a legendary Soviet dissident and goes to individuals who, like Andreĭ Sakharov, showed remarkable courage against tyranny.…

Published by IranWire A quarter a century ago, in the fall of 1998, a series of murders rocked Iranian society. Iran was then already in a state of agitation and political fever. A year and a half before, reformist Mohammad Khatami had been elected president in an unexpected upset. Despite Khatami’s moderate, limited political program,…

Published by IranWire Millions of Iranians have spent the past several weeks marking the first anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death and the grand movement that resulted from her murder. It has been a somber occasion. The nationwide protest movement that began in September 2022 has evidently failed in its central goal of dislodging the Islamic…

Published by IranWire A recent article on the concept of the “Aryan Race” in Nazi Germany and why this racist and criminal regime didn’t consider Iranians to be a part of it generated questions and inquiries. IranWire is publishing this article to address some of them.   The views raised in this article are that of the…

Published by IranWire “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. This well-known saying in the English language is well-suited to the study of history. As dangerous as outright fabrications can be, partial and selective facts can sometimes be even more misleading. A case in point is in the Nazi conception of the Aryan race and…

Published by IranWire Tehran could be a jolly place in the summer of 1939; at least for those enamored with the Iranian royal family. Earlier that year, the young and handsome crown prince Mohammadreza had traveled to Cairo to marry 17-year-old Fawzia Fuad, the sister of the Egyptian king. Described as a union of two…

انتشار در ایران‌وایر در میان دشنام‌های سیاسی رایج در جهان‌، «فاشیسم» و «فاشیست» شاید از همه بدتر باشد. این واژه اولین‌بار در جریان جنگ جهانی اول، توسط بنیتو موسولینیِ ایتالیایی استفاده شد که چندی بعد در صدر حزب فاشیست ملی کشورش به قدرت رسید. بعدها اما این مسلک را بیشتر با بدنام‌ترین جنایتکار قرن بیستم…

انتشار در ایران‌وایر توجه به زبان بدن در دیدارهای دیپلماتیک در ایران مورد توجه افکار عمومی قرار می‌گیرد؛ به‌ویژه در دیدار مقامات مختلف ایران و روسیه. این توجه‌ها معمولا صرف پیدا کردن شواهدی می‌شوند که سرسپردگی جمهوری اسلامی به حکومت کرملین را نشان دهند؛‌ رابطه‌ای نابرابر که البته برایش آن‌ قدر شواهد گسترده در قراردادهای…