Iran

David Nejadi’s Iran Chrymez Rock band plays “Fight for your Rights” for more see Reverbnation

Bringing medieval Persian verse to the West: Dick Davis Interview

PBS Newshour’s Jeff Brown interviews Dick Davis, among the foremost Persian scholars and translators of our time, on the delights and glories of Persian poetry. Davis is the translator of Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz For Barnes and Noble fans the book is here. And here it is at the indie […]

Bahrain

America’s Foreign Policy Challenges in the Middle East, 2014

Juan Cole

Those who suggest that the United States as a superpower is weaker in the Middle East today than nine years ago overestimate the impact on the region of the Bush administration’s frenetic invasions and occupations. Iraq and Afghanistan were off in corners of the Middle East, and the US clearly got bogged down in them […]

Iran

Increasingly, all Roads run through Iran (Damascus, Baghdad, Asia)

contributors

(By Marianna Charountaki) “While Iran’s importance for regional politics was always there, it has only now become apparent, especially for the foreign policies of international players, writes Dr. Marianna Charountaki.” In the aftermath of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s unsuccessful ‘zero problems’ policy with his neighbours followed by the rapprochement between the KRG and Ankara, […]

History

Chief Rabbi of Yazd, Iran, 1903 (Photo of the Day)

Juan Cole

The Chief Rabbi of Yazd, Iran, in the center Iran’s population in 1900 was around 10 million. There were roughly 100,000 Jews in Iran at that time. Lord Curzon wrote in the late nineteenth century of different treatment of Jews in different parts of the country: “In Isfahan, where they are said to be 3,700 […]

China

Coleridge, Kubla Khan (Poem of the Day)

contributors

(By Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there […]

Iran

Iranian-Armenian Nurse taking an X-Ray in Isfahan, 1900 (Photo of the Day)

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) This amazing photograph probably dates to 1900. Taken in at the Christian Mission Society hospital in Julfa, the Armenian neighborhood of Isfahan, it shows a nurse taking an x-ray of a patient. The use of x-ray technology was still relatively new even in the US and Europe, and that the medical missionaries […]

Featured

Obama will Veto new Iran Sanctions, Israel War Mandate pushed by AIPAC Senators

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) In his end-of-the-year press conference, President Obama had to defend his Iran negotiations in the face of a revolt within his own party. Thirteen Democratic senators and thirteen Republican senators banded together to try to derail President Obama’s negotiations with Iran by slapping new sanctions on that country in the middle of […]

Iran

How to get an Iran Nuclear deal: Top 7 Confidence-Building Steps

Juan Cole

(By Bijan Khajehpour, Reza Marashi and Trita Parsi) [Excerpts from a new report from the National Iranian American Council:] Upon assuming the presidency in January 2009, Barack Obama told the world that if Iran were willing to unclench its fist, it would find an extended hand of friendship from the United States. Nearly five years […]