Geography Archives: Iran

  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week that Iran’s latest statements and actions were compelling the United States “. . . and other countries” to resort to stiff sanctions.  Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Vladimir Nazarov said in his turn that Moscow might support sanctions but that they must be “adequate to […]

When the ceasefire went into effect on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006, nobody believed — not for a moment — that this was the end of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.  After all, none of Israel’s objectives were met in 2006: Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers were still held captive in Lebanon; and far from being […]

The Arab International Forum to Support the Resistance concluded in Beirut on January 17, 2010, followed by a proclamation of its final appeal in Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon, directed via loudspeakers toward the Palestinian people in occupied Palestine 48.  In its closing statement, the forum called for resistance to occupation and aggression, stressing the […]

Yesterday, President Obama declared that the international community is “moving along fairly quickly” toward imposing new multilateral sanctions on Iran.  Today, the Obama Administration followed that up by announcing new unilateral financial sanctions against individuals and corporate entities associated with the Revolutionary Guards.  The Administration proclaims that its “engagement” policy has been successful, after all, […]

Until today, the Obama Administration and much of the foreign policy punditocracy in Washington have been overflowing with observations that recent statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki reiterating the Islamic Republic’s interest in a deal to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) were just another example of Iranian efforts to […]

Born in Iran and now based in London, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, an anthropologist by training, is one of the most well-known scholars of Islamic Feminism.  She is the author of numerous books on the subject, including Marriage on Trial: A Study of Family Law in Iran and Morocco (l.B.Tauris, 1993) and Islam and Gender, the Religious […]

ما بیشماریم! “We Are Countless!” Destabilization Programs: 13 Aban (4 November, Anniversary of the US Embassy Occupation), 16 Azar (7 December, Student Day), 6 Dey (27 December, Ashura)?! Minus H نمودار هواداران موج سبز به مرور زمان Chart: Green Wave Supporters Over Time From Election Day, 25 Khordad (15 June) Rally, Quds Day (18 September), […]

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has been enthusiastically spinning its progress in winning Russian support for prospective new sanctions on Iran.  We have cautioned that, while Russia may, in the end, support a new UNSC sanctions resolution, it will not support broad-based sanctions against major sectors of Iran’s economy or measures that would get […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently claimed at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Germany has always called for transparency and cooperation with Iran, but unfortunately Iran has not responded.  Merkel also made it clear that her government will pursue unilateral economic sanctions in case China blocks an otherwise unanimous Security […]

The new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev, said at a news conference in Beijing earlier this week that the conflict in Afghanistan and expanding the SCO’s members to include Iran and Pakistan were the top issues on the SCO’s agenda in 2010.  Certainly, these issues are likely to dominate […]

Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than $2 billion by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists have revealed. A new report, “State Robbery,” to be published later this month, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian […]

Is Iran capitulating to pressure or was the uranium transfer deal never the issue in the first place? It’s been a busy few weeks on board the bomb-Iran bandwagon. It wasn’t quite gunboat diplomacy, but President Obama sent missile “defence” equipment to the Persian Gulf, a move Iran dismissed as a “puppet show.” The Pentagon […]

I studied with Howard Zinn at Boston University. He was my dissertation advisor, mentor, friend, tennis partner and a pillar of support for me during the eight grueling years when I fought a civil rights battle with Harvard University. Zinn’s passage is a great loss to all who knew him directly or indirectly, including the millions of people in America and around the world who were impacted by his revisionist American history written from people’s rather than elite’s point of view, his exemplary peace activism, as well as his literary works. The “old solider of the left,” as he was once described by the New York Times, was a hero of the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement who spoke at thousands of rallies and sit-ins against the war in Vietnam, as well as America’s invasions of Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., always at the forefront of American peace movement.

Indications of fraud in the June 12 Iranian presidential election, together with large-scale street demonstrations, have led to claims that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not actually win the election, and that the majority of Iranians perceive their government as illegitimate and favor regime change. An analysis of multiple polls of the Iranian public from three different […]

Leaders of the Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities. The warning came after Said Nafaa, a Druze member of the Israeli parliament, was stripped of his immunity last week, clearing the […]

+ Iranians Remember Khomeini’s Iran Ruhollah Sanati was born on what many called the night of victory in Iran’s Islamic Revolution.  Named after the founder of the Islamic Republic, he runs an electrical hardware shop with his father in Tehran.  Coming from a religious family, he appreciates the changes 1979 brought. . . .  “The […]

Back in May 2009 — before the Islamic Republic’s June 2009 presidential election — we took a lot criticism for our view in a New York Times Op Ed that “President Obama’s Iran policy has, in all likelihood, already failed.”  In particular, we argued that Obama “has made several policy and personnel decisions that have […]

Despite the systematic efforts of many commentators and media outlets to represent what is happening in Iran as a wholesale revolt against everything the Islamic Republic stands for, a sober analysis reveals that we are witnessing the renegotiation of political power in the country.  The protagonists represent different wings within the system; the contours of […]

In a State of the Union address that devoted less time or attention to foreign policy than any recent counterpart, President Obama provided disturbing evidence as to the ongoing strategic regression of his administration’s Iran policy. Obama has moved, during just one year in office, from relatively forward-leaning expressions of interest in engaging Iran on […]

Mir Hossein Mousavi’s 17th statement can be considered his most influential in the seven months since the green movement was born.  After its release, prominent political figures, groups, and organizations in Iran reviewed and evaluated its content from their own angles and highlighted various aspects of it. The signatories of this statement — who desire […]