Geography Archives: Iran

International intrigues and eventually war — with all its now daily horrors — flow partly from the highly unstable economics of global oil.  Not only has this been true for a long time, it promises to continue that way unless and until some mass movement ends it.  The report of US planning to bomb Iran […]

I received the following open letter from Yassamine Mather, signed by seventeen activists and intellectuals in the Iranian diaspora including herself, and with her permission, I am publishing it here.  Among activists and intellectuals on the Left committed to the advancement of women in particular and the working class in general, as well as to […]

Caracas, 28 Jun. ABN. — Con la finalidad hacerle seguimiento a las relaciones bilaterales y discutir sobre el tema energético, los presidentes de la República Islámica de Irán, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad y la República de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, se reunirán en Teherán a finales de julio. Haga click en la foto para agrandar. Hugo Chávez […]

The depth and breadth of bipartisan commitment to the US empire among America’s political elite is best seen in the House vote on HR 282, the “Iran Freedom Support Act,” essentially a bill to “make U.S. sanctions against Iran under ILSA permanent unless there is a change of government in Iran”1:   YEAS NAYS PRES […]

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Iran must really adore the American model of state conduct.  Contrary to popular perceptions, the decision-makers in Tehran agree with their nemesis, Akbar Ganji, who recently told the Voice of America that the West was “the cradle of civilization.”  Two recent moves by Iran are especially noteworthy […]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOLIBERALISM by David HarveyBUY THIS BOOK Neoliberalism has left an indelible, smoldering mark on our world for the last thirty years.  Eminent Marxist geographer David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), spoke earlier this year to Sasha Lilley, of the radical radio program Against the Grain, about […]

  My father’s travels ended in 1980. We came back to live the Iran-Iraq war. Zinnah, my sister, was a child of ten when she attended the Dijla (Tigress) Primary School. One day she returned to ask my mother, “Are we Sunni or Shooyouii (Arabic for Communist)?” a word she had most probably picked up […]

Even before Iran was rocked by the mass uprising of 1978-79, I understood that moralists of all stripes shroud certain tragedies with unique reverence as a means of discouraging dissent.  Three decades later, Iran’s opposition movement — and occasionally Human Rights Watch — are grounded in orthodoxies of their own even as they struggles against […]

I watched the World Cup match of Iran and Mexico — two peoples with whom Washington is at odds! — on 11 June, with my Iranian friends (mainly men).  So I adopted Iran as my team for the day. Knowing little about Iranian footballers, before the match began, I told my friends to point out […]

2,500 US known dead, give or take a corpse or two  Untold tens of thousands of Iraqis. A new and more repressive crackdown in Iraq’s capital city titled, rather lamely, Operation Forward Together.  No Iron Fist this time.  No Desert Storm.  Just Forward Together into the fog or perhaps the abyss.  No one really seems […]

[Since the initial publication of this essay in The Electronic Intifada (6 June 2005), Mahmoud Abbas has set a date for a “referendum”: 26 July 2006; and Hamas has called for its boycott.  After an Israeli attack that killed eight Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Hamas ended the truce mentioned below that had lasted for sixteen […]

On May 26, 2006, a representative of the violent Iranian fugitives based in Iraq, known as MEK, addressed a forum  — an anti-war forum — sponsored by the liberal Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists in Berkeley, California, as he had done the year before.  Introduced as Ali Mirardal, the speaker lamented human rights abuses in Iran […]

[The following profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first appeared in Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com) on 19 May 2006.  It shows that the President of Iran is winning the right friends (the economically disenfranchised, ambitious men and women of younger generations who are denied political power by the current clerical rulers, ordinary Iranians of middling sorts who […]

Erik C. Nisbet & James Shanahan, “MSRG Special Report: Restrictions on Civil Liberties, Views of Islam, & Muslim Americans,” Media & Society Research Group, Cornell University, December 2004 Actual mass murderers are higher on my watch list than those who just think or shout hateful beliefs.  But you would be mistaken if you thought the […]

Back in the good old days, the regal Shah served as the poster boy for US power companies selling nuclear reactors TO A SKEPTICAL AMERICAN PUBLIC! Click on the image for a larger view. Based in Washington, DC, Rostam Pourzal writes about the politics of human rights for Iranian expatriate journals. MRZine has published his […]

The present crisis concerning Iran’s nuclear program cannot be reduced to merely the ongoing rivalry between Tehran and Washington.  Rather, it reveals all the new parameters of the post-Cold War world order that American strategists want to avoid. Iran’s Machiavellian diplomatic brinkmanship has succeeded so far, not only because the Ahmadinejad administration is exploiting the […]

May 18, 2006 To: The Honorable Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations Re: The Iranian threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Your Excellency, Iran’s nuclear projects acquire an alarming significance with Iran’s recent threat to withdraw its acceptance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Middle-East is a volatile region. […]

Dear New Yorker Magazine: You’ve got your nerve, printing Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Iran Plans: Would President Bush Go to War to Stop Tehran from Getting the Bomb?”  I have just thrown my April 17 issue of your so-called publication across the room, breaking the little shepherdess in my Hummel collection — so you owe […]

“I don’t think the issue of enrichment right now, emotional as it is, is urgent. . . . So, we have ample time to negotiate a settlement by which, as I said, Iran’s need for nuclear power is assured and the concern of the international community is also put to rest.” “We have done our […]

How stupid do they think we are?  The administration has been on the road these past few days trying to package the war in Iraq as a success.  Bush insists that the war is going well and that the US will stay on until final victory and eternal democracy.  Dick Cheney told the world that […]