Iran

By Farhang Jahanpour | – Oxford (Special to Informed Comment) – Various Iranian and foreign news agencies have reported that Iran’s Prosecutor General has announced the shutting down of the. Guidance Patrol (often referred to in the West as the morality police). In response to a question about the dismantling of the Guidance Patrol, Prosecutor […]

Feminism

Headwear and Hegemony: how ‘Turban Tossing’ Protests are threatening Iran’s ruling Clergy

The Conversation

By Negar Partow, Massey University | – (The Conversation) – The ongoing protests in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country’s “Guidance Patrol” (or morality police) have made world headlines. But there is another form of protest that has received less mainstream attention in Western media. Whereas […]

Featured

Could Iran’s Kurdish Protests and the Ayatollahs’ Determination to Crush Them Destabilize Neighboring Iraq?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The protests roiling Iran this fall have had an epicenter in Iranian Kurdistan in the west of the country. The death in the custody of the Shiite morality police of Tehran of a Kurdish young woman, Mahsa “Zhina” Amini, rallied Kurdish-Iranian subnationalism. Cities like Mahabad, Saqqez, and Sanandaj have seen […]

Culture

The Other Iran: Veiling and Puritanism vs. the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The ongoing rallies and demonstrations that have wracked Iran since mid-September have been many things. It is a women’s protest against severe patriarchy It is a Gen Z youth protest demanding greater personal freedoms from their 85-year-old Theocrat. It is an ethnic protest by Sunni Kurds and Baluch against Shiite […]

Authoritarianism

‘A Nightmare’: Iran Intensifies Deadly Crackdown In Kurdistan Region As Protests Rage

Golnaz Esfandiari

( RFE/RL ) – Iranian authorities have intensified their deadly crackdown in the country’s western Kurdistan region, which has been the epicenter of the anti-establishment protests that have raged for months. Human rights groups say government forces have killed more than a dozen people in predominately Kurdish cities in the past 24 hours. The bloodshed […]

Authoritarianism

Iran’s Creative Resistance: From Hugs and Kisses to Tossing Turbans

Global Voices

By Fred Petrossian | – ( Globalvoices.org ) – It has been eight weeks since protests erupted across Iran on September 16 in response to the death of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, who was detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating hijab regulations. Despite harsh repression, the killing of at least 360 people, including […]

Authoritarianism

Iran’s Athletes, Including Soccer Players at World Cup, are Boycotting National Anthem to Support Protests

Golnaz Esfandiari

I’m RFE/RL correspondent Golnaz Esfandiari. Here’s what I’ve been following during the past week and what I’m watching for in the days ahead. ( RFE/ RL ) – A growing number of Iranian athletes are refusing to sing the national anthem or to celebrate their victories in solidarity with the months-long anti-establishment protests that have […]

Arms Sales

Ukraine war ignites the Arms Race in the Middle East

Middle East Monitor

By Ibrahim Nawar | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – The Ukraine war has cast a shadow over the arms race in the Middle East and ignited it. The Iranian weapons supplies to Russia, the Turkish and Israeli weapons to Ukraine, and Germany’s request from Israel to provide it with a system of Arrow-3 […]

Authoritarianism

Social Media shows Iranian Crowds setting fire to Khomeini’s House, in Generational Rejection of Islamic Republic

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Reuters reports that social media sites carried video allegedly from Thursday night in the small town of Khomein in Iran, which appeared to show protesters setting fire to the childhood home of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khomeini died in 1989. The house had […]