On Sunday, the Speaker of the Iranian majlis (parliament), Ali Larijani, met for two hours with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo. Ostensibly, Larijani was in Egypt to attend a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which includes Turkey, Kuwait, Niger, Azerbaijan, and Uganda in addition to Egypt and […]
Geography Archives: Iran
Notes on Swim Politics in Iran
A fascinating social history of swimming pools in northern United States that was published in 2007 deserves attention from Iran researchers. Contested Waters showed how, between the World Wars, middle class expansion/empowerment in general and eroticization/gender de-segregation at public pools popularized swim facilities that excluded African Americans. Earlier in the century, women, not Blacks, had […]
When Threats Are Counterproductive: The Iranian Nuclear Issue in 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday — in an interview given to AFP while he was attending the climate change summit in Copenhagen — that “Iran is ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the United States and the West respect the Islamic Republic and stop making threats.” Referring to proposals to refuel […]
Iran’s Health Houses Provide Model for Mississippi Delta
A rocky, remote region of southern Iran may not seem the most likely place to look for a health care delivery model that would work in the U.S. But the remarkable success of Iran’s health house concept — in which small primary care centers are located in each community — is providing hope and […]
SMS Iran (after Gilles Peress)
Every gathering with a foretold script. The security barriers mark a neutered zone for dissent. Finally though, there is this one day in Brooklyn. The air is traversed (by bridge) and the marchers walk from one bank to another. It isn’t a miracle but it is beautiful. x number of women and men for […]
Going Underground
Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, known for making slow-moving, heart-rending films along the western border of Kurdistan (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly, Half Moon), shifts to the heart of the capital in his latest feature to give us a glimpse of Tehran’s underground music scene. Making a self-reflexive appearance in the opening sequence […]
Iran’s Foreign Policy Strategy: Implications for the United States
We want to draw your attention to a brilliant piece, “Iran’s Foreign Policy Strategy After Saddam,” just published by Kayhan Barzegar, an Iranian scholar and foreign policy analyst currently at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. We have previously posted about an Op Ed that Barzegar published on Iranian perspectives about […]
The Manama Dialogue and Iran’s Pivotal Regional Role
But for Iran, the 6th Manama Dialogue would have failed to achieve its very objective, namely serving as a forum for debating regional security. Held in Bahrain from 11 to 13 December, the occasion attracted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki following a two-year absence from the annual event. Senior Iranian officials shunned the 2007 […]
Washington’s Two Lost Wars
The United States has already lost the war in Afghanistan, just as it has lost the war in Iraq. President Barack Obama’s vast expansion of the Afghan war announced Dec. 1, and the extension of the violence into neighboring Pakistan, are intended to camouflage the reality of defeat, as was the Bush Administration’s “surge” in […]
Poverty: A Political Football in Iran among Rival Factions
Iran is not going to the 2010 World Cup, but there is another football being kicked around in the domestic Iranian media: the extent of poverty in Iran. Last month, the Statistical Center of Iran reported that 70 percent of Iranians earn less than a monthly income of $450 for a household of five. This […]
When Will the Obama Administration Try Actually Engaging Iran?
Western media commentary continues to depict Iran as having “rejected” the Baradei proposal for refueling the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), thereby setting the stage for the Obama Administration to pursue, at a minimum, tougher multilateral and unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. As we wrote about in The Race for Iran, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr […]
US-Iran Talks: The Road to Diplomatic Failure
The talks between the G5 plus 1 and Iran are careening toward a premature breakdown. If they do fall apart, it will be due in large part to a serious diplomatic miscalculation by the Obama administration. Along with its European allies, the Obama administration seized on a plan that cleverly asked Iran to divest […]
Iran: Six Months Later
It has been a hell of a year for Iran. Just last winter the nation’s elites were basking in 30 years of revolutionary triumph, launching satellites, enriching uranium, and holding neocon hawks at bay. Then, weeks of fervent presidential campaigning drew out the best and worst of Iranian society’s antagonisms, culminating in a poll exactly […]
Bassidji: Talking to the Other Side
A young boy sits on rusted tank tracks in the desert bordering Iran and Iraq. His head is bowed, and he’s sobbing. A few yards away, a dozen bearded men gather around a Shiite cleric. The men weep as the cleric recounts the story of a fearless martyr killed during the Iran-Iraq war. He […]
Christian Communists, Islamic Anarchists? Part 2
In Part 1 of this article we argued that Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou’s account of the foundation of Communist universalism in the event of Christianity signals a number of inconsistencies immanent to their respective ontologies (Coombs 2009). For Žižek it appears difficult to reconcile his touted open interpretation of Hegel with the ontological significance […]
The Idea of Iran
Michael Axworthy. A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind. New York: Basic Books, 2008. 352 pp. $27.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-00888-9. After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, a large number of Iranians joined the ranks of expatriates living in Europe and the United States. Suddenly uprooted and finding themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, some of […]
Memories, Nightmares, and Hopes
Eric Davis. Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 397 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-520-23546-5. This review has been a long time coming, but during this time, Davis’s book has become the subject of extensive comment, achieving an almost iconic, certainly landmark, status in […]
A Middle Way: The Best Solution to the Nuclear Crisis
Explaining about a draft agreement on nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki noted: “The two sides decided to review the draft. It is being reviewed in Vienna, and Iran will soon declare its viewpoint.” However, some officials have already voiced their opposition to the recent nuclear […]
Barack Obama’s Myopic Iran Policy
By giving Israel veto rights and threatening more sanctions, the U.S. is squandering the best chance we have for a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ordinarily, it would have been easy to dismiss the latest resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency censuring Iran as a text, drafted by idiots, full of sound […]
On Iran’s Plan for New Nuclear Enrichment Facilities
Daljit Dhaliwal: What do you make of Iran’s announcement to build ten new nuclear enrichment facilities? Ervand Abrahamian: It sounds impressive, but it should be taken as grandstanding for internal public opinion. Iran is trying to look tough: it’s going to stand up tall against the United States. The question is what Iran actually […]
