Rostam Pourzal | MR Online - Part 2

About Rostam Pourzal

Rostam Pourzal grew up in an ultra modern milieu in Cold War-era Iran, where he learned a great deal about his parents' suffering in early 20th Century revolutions in Iran and Soviet Azerbaijan. He studied social anthropology (University of Pennsylvania, 1980) and has for decades keenly studied events in Iran, including 18 months on the ground from 2019 to 2011. Pourzal worked full time without pay as an antiwar activist in the mid 2000s to counter the demonization of Iran's "hardliners." Around the same time he co-organized (with Fellowship of Reconciliation) several citizen diplomacy delegations to Iran, and helped organize (with Physicians for Social Responsibility) a U.S. speaking tour for Iranian victims of chemical weapons and their attending doctors. A year later, that group founded the Tehran Peace Museum.

Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate: Part 2

Rostam Pourzal

Dear Ms. Ebadi: Rostam Pourzal, “Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate: Part 1 “ (27 February 2006) Poet Khosro Naaqed, a prominent promoter of your reformist coalition, demonstrated in a published commentary last summer why a majority in Iran is now disillusioned with your “democracy” project. As you know, he speaks for almost all Iranian […]
Open Letter to Iran’s Nobel Laureate

Rostam Pourzal

Dear Ms. Shirin Ebadi: The appeal you and Mohammad Sahimi addressed to “Western democracies” in the International Herald Tribune on January 19 disappointed this former admirer of yours. Your invitation to the current and previous imperial powers to intervene for human rights in Iran fails precisely on grounds of the noble principles you invoked to […]
Market Fundamentalists Lose in Iran (For Now)

Rostam Pourzal

The prevailing spin on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rise to Iran’s presidency wrongly suggests that a win for his rivals could have ushered a dawn of enlightenment. The mainstream press has largely described Iran’s competing factions as little more than vote-rigging theocrats arrayed against tolerant modernizers. In particular, strong support for Ahmadinejad among the Basij militia and […]