One often hears proclamations, or perhaps hopes, that the success of the Green Movement is linked to the decline of the Iranian economy. The logic is that an economic collapse would bring informal workers, bazaar merchants, wealthy businessmen, once comfortable pensioner widows, perhaps even Afghan migrants, all into the streets along with the current membership […]
Geography Archives: Iran
On the Liberal Hope for the New Middle Class’s Capitalist Revolution in the Muslim World
Vali Nasr. Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World. New York: Free Press, 2009. 320 pp. This empirically informative yet analytically defective book labors to dissect the complexities of political and economic development in the Muslim world, strongly focusing on Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, […]
Colored Revolutions in Colored Lenses: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Russian Press Coverage of Political Movements in Ukraine, Belarus, and Uzbekistan
This study compared The New York Times‘ and The Moscow Times‘ coverage of the political movements in three former Soviet republics. Data analysis revealed a clear pro-movement pattern in The New York Times’ reporting. The U.S. newspaper used more pro-movement sources than pro-incumbent sources. Overall, The New York Times depicted the protesters favorably and […]
The Oliver Kamm School of Falsification: Imperial Truth-Enforcement, British Branch
An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind. This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]
Iran: Where Is the Obama Administration Going?
Not surprisingly, Saturday’s meeting of representatives from the P-5+1 countries reached no agreement about further sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities; as we pointed out in a post on January 14, China’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, He Yafei, who has been representing his country in the P-5+1 political directors’ meetings, declined to […]
US: From Sanctions to War against Iran?
Kenneth Katzman: Certainly, as long as the floor is open for talks, there is always a hope for a deal. But I think, from the US standpoint, the United States is certainly not counting on a deal. Obviously, the thrust of US policy, I think, is starting to shift, from a focus on getting […]
Debating the Strategic Significance of Iran’s Natural Gas
Following on from our recent post, “Iran, the Competition over Eurasian Natural Gas, and the Revival of Classical Diplomacy in the 21st Century,” we want to draw readers’ attention, first of all, to a very thoughtful comment on that post from Ed Chow, our friend and colleague at CSIS. Ed generously notes his agreement with […]
Iran: A Good Time for Goodbye to Subsidies
See the Oil Wars blog for a similar perspective on the contradictions of populist political economy (especially the difficulty of making a sensible trade-off between consumption and investment) in Venezuela. How do you respond to the kind of perspective represented by Djavad Salehi-Isfahani (regarding Iran) and Oil Wars (regarding Venezuela)? Thoughts on this question will […]
China to Send “Lower-level” Envoy to P5+1 Talks on Iran Sanctions
In yet another demonstration of the (in)effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s quixotic quest to get China on board for what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used to call “crippling sanctions,” the Chinese foreign ministry announced that Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who has been representing Beijing at meetings of the P5+1 political directors regarding […]
The Obama Administration Moves toward Regime Change in Its Iran Policy
In one of our posts surrounding our January 6, 2010 Op Ed in The New York Times, we noted that “analytic views of Iranian politics since the June 12 presidential election have important implications for the debate about U.S. and Western policy toward Tehran.” In particular, buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is […]
Iran: The Green Movement and US Foreign Policy
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich: . . . I think there’s nothing new that the West is painting a distorted image of what’s going on in Iran. I also want to mention that it’s very normal to have political dissent in any country. Iran is not unique in that sense. But what’s happening is by distorting the […]
Bend It Like Iran (with Hooman Majd)
“The Iranians have always figured out how to beat the system. . . . Even Iranians who are opposed to this government, even Iranians who are opposed to the Islamic Republic, don’t really wanna return to being a client state of the United States.” — Hooman Majd
The Future of Iran
Steven Scully: How serious a threat do we face from Iran’s nuclear capabilities? Flynt Leverett: I don’t view it as a serious or imminent threat. It is a problem that needs to be managed and dealt with, but it is not a threat. What we know about the Iranian nuclear program is that Iran […]
Mousavi Makes Five Proposals
Former presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi has issued a statement in which he condemned the disrespect of religious sanctities by some protesters on Ashura day (December 27) and made five proposals for resolving the current issues facing the country, the Tabnak website reported on Friday. The reformist politician also criticized some of the actions taken […]
Venezuelan Government Condemns Attempt at Destabilization and Violence against Government and People of Iran
Communiqué The government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela expresses its most energetic condemnation of the attempts at destabilization promoted by the United States government against the government and people of Iran. The Bolivarian government is surprised that a group of governments, led by the US Empire, is repeating a campaign of violence to divide […]
Iran: Pro-Government Demonstrations All over the Country
“One thing is clear: the developments in Iran today are not comparable to the time before the downfall of the Shah. Back then, the country was united against the Shah. There were no two sides to speak of. If there had been two sides, the US would have conveniently arranged for a coup. Today in […]
“Terrorists” in the Eye of the American Beholder
In the early 1970s the shah, via his intelligence organisation SAVAK, the CIA and the Israeli MOSSAD, sponsored a sustained “covert war” of Iraqi-Kurdish factions under the leadership of Mustafa Barzani against the Ba’thist leadership in Iraq which led to bombings of oil installations in Kirkuk and other infrastructural facilities with civilian use and subsequently […]
And the Drums Get Louder . . .
I noted a couple of weeks ago the urgency of the condemnations being levelled at Iran (what The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss called the beginning of “the stupid season”). The hysteria appears to be mounting. Just a few of the latest incidents: We’ve been leaked the news that Barack Obama is almost powerless to stop Israel […]
Iran’s Independence and the Nuclear Dispute
The nuclear dispute between Iran and the United States is heating up. Iran made its proposal on December 12, having been in negotiation with the US and other powers since October 1. Iran proposed exchanging 400 kilograms of its 3.5 percent enriched uranium for an equivalent amount of 20 percent enriched uranium to be used […]
No Military Solution to Conflicts in West Asia
The nature of the current wars in the wider western Asian area reveals a disturbing trend: next to sources of conflict between states there are an increasing number of conflicts within them. In Yemen, the civil war has had a ripple effect throughout the Persian Gulf region provoking the military intervention of Saudi Arabia and […]
