Shahram Akbarzadeh, Benjamin MacQueen, eds. Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah. London: Routledge, 2008. x + 176 pp. $140.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-415-44959-5. Islam and Human Rights in Practice: Perspectives across the Ummah addresses a vexing theoretical issue: can contemporary human rights practically inform normative and political structures in the Muslim […]
Geography Archives: Iran
Mahmoud & Esfandiar’s Excellent Adventure
Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, whose daughter is married to a son of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is the President’s Chief of Staff. Mr. Mashaei is known for actions that have appalled certain conservative quarters of the Iranian political establishment, such as attending a ceremony in Turkey where women danced and hosting a ceremony in Tehran where women drumming […]
Open Letter to Iranian Authorities and World Community
As members of the Board of Iranians For Peace (IFP), we are deeply concerned about the events following June 12 election in Iran particularly the street violence, loss of life, and widespread arrests. One of the detainees, Dr Bijan Khajehpour Khoei, is a supporter of the IFP. We appeal to the Iranian authorities to […]
After the Orange Revolution: “Worldwide Low 4% of Ukrainians Approve of Their Country’s Leadership”
The Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which began with a dispute over the 21 November 2004 run-off vote between the leading presidential candidates, ended by installing Viktor Yushchenko, the Western favorite who cried fraud, into presidency on 23 January 2005. Ian Traynor of the Guardian put the price tag of the Orange Revolution at about $14 […]
U.S. Considers Cutting Off Iran’s Gasoline Supplies
Martin Savidge: What do you think will happen if the United States were to try to impose gasoline sanctions on Iran? Trita Parsi: I think, first of all, it’s going be very difficult to impose effective gasoline sanctions on Iran because you would have to get the cooperation of all the countries in the […]
Imperialism and Struggles for Democracy in West Asia
The history of the West Asia for over a century is one long history of how colonial and imperialist powers, both old and new, have arrogantly plundered, looted, dismembered, manipulated and raped a region for their unbridled self interests. It is a history of total disregard and callous disrespect for the peoples of this […]
Petroleum and Energy Policy in Iran
Iran, a major oil producing and exporting country, also imports gasoline because of inadequate refining capacity and rising petrol consumption. This article examines the problems faced by an economy dependent on the export of crude oil and gas that are compounded by the dilemmas of rising domestic consumption, a significant decline in productive capacity, […]
Who Wants Sanctions on Iran?
In a recent congressional hearing, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman called the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act “a sword of Damocles over the Iranians” that will soon come down if President Obama’s diplomatic overture did not show signs of success by the fall. That sword is no mere metaphor and might kill more […]
Contrary to Its Hard Line, EU Bends to Iran
Despite its criticism of Tehran’s handling of protesters, the EU shies away from a serious diplomatic conflict with Iran. Both the Swedish EU Council Presidency and individual EU member states will participate in the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that, “given the circumstances surrounding the controversial reelection” of […]
Mr. Mousavi’s Gas Embargo on Iran?
In serious contention for Dumbest Washington Consensus for September is the idea of cutting off Iran’s gas imports to pressure Iran to stop enriching uranium. A majority of Representatives and Senators have signed on to legislation that seeks to block Iran’s gas imports, a top legislative priority for the so-called “Israel Lobby.” But it’s a […]
“Human Beings Are Members of a Whole”: Protecting the Iranian Civil Society
Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain. — A poem by the Persian poet Sa’adi (1210-1290) gracing the entrance of […]
The End of Chimerica?
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics. It all began with United States Vice […]
Reply to the Campaign for Peace and Democracy
The Campaign for Peace and Democracy1 has chosen to interpret our “Riding the ‘Green Wave’” article2 as a “vitriolic and dishonest attack” on its authors, and an “offensive impugning of [their] integrity.” In fact, it is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is concerned with issues of central importance to the left in the United […]
The World Left and the Iranian Elections
The recent elections in Iran, and the subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world — a debate that threatens to linger for some time yet. One of its most fascinating consequences has been the deep divisions […]
Truth and Reconciliation for Iran
We are a group of university educators and antiwar activists with diverse political views who are based in Europe and North America. During the past few years we have been active in defending Iran’s national rights — particularly those relating to the peaceful use of nuclear energy — against the pervasive deception created by western […]
Iran’s “Leftist” Don Quixotes
In the 1970s, when Iran’s Fedayeen and Mojahedin1 groups were engaged in an urban guerrilla struggle against the former Shah’s dictatorial regime, a faction of the Iranian Student Association (ISA) in the United States called Ehyaa2 had managed to convince some in the US Left, in particular America’s Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), that a […]
Iraqi Government Moves against Iranian Mojahedin
Play now: Patrick Cockburn: I think the government would have liked to have done it earlier, but the Mojahedin-e Khalq, these dissidents, were protected by the Americans in Iraq really since 2003 because the Americans, one way or another, saw them as an ally against the Iranian government. Marco Chown Oved: And does this […]
Iran’s Quiet Revolution: Mohammad Javad Jahangir’s The Invisible Crowd
According to Ervand Abrahamian, a scholar of Iran’s contemporary history, George Rudé’s observation that “perhaps no historical phenomenon has been so thoroughly neglected by historians as the crowd” is particularly true about the Middle East.1 While European journalists have invariably portrayed oriental crowds as “xenophobic mobs” hurling insults and bricks at Western embassies, local conservatives […]
Independence Is a Hard-earned Reality in Iran
Iranians are writing their history. The pen of the revolutionaries of the 1970s has been supplemented by the keyboard of a new generation. Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters perfected clandestine pamphleteering and the distribution of audio cassettes to subvert the regime of the shah; today’s activists use Facebook and Twitter to get their message across. This is […]
How Many Leftists Are “United for Iran”?
So, how many leftists are United for Iran? “8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009. The low numbers1 (in […]
