Iran

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Joe Biden and his administration believe that they can support the extremist Israeli government in its genocidal assault on the innocent noncombatant Palestinians of Gaza without a political cost at home. They also believe that they can manage the conflict, so that it does not spiral into a wider Middle […]

Feminism

Iran’s “Women, Life, Freedom Movement” is still Resilient

Roodabeh Dehghani

Ottawa (Special to Informed Comment) – The term “social movements” typically evoke the idea of political activities in a sphere separate from culture, but social movements are closely related to values, ways of living, ethics, and more broadly culture. Among new social movement scholars, there is a growing recognition that social movements have more cultural […]

Iran

Muslims and Jews: Remembering Jewish School Days in Pre-Revolutionary Tehran

Nassrine Azimi

( The Chukogu Shimbun ) – HIROSHIMA —The elegant art deco building of Ettefagh, Iran’s famous Jewish school, still stands on a leafy avenue adjacent to Tehran University. Originally established by prominent Iraqis who had settled in Iran following Jewish pogroms and expulsions of the 1940s and early 50s in Iraq, Ettefagh started as a […]

al-Qaeda

Bin Laden’s Curse: Gaza, Iran and the Reemergence of ISIL

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The responsibility for the bombing in Kerman, Iran, on Wednesday that killed at least 84 people and wounded another 284, has been claimed by the ISIL (Daesh, ISIS) terrorist group. The worst terrorist bombing in Iran since the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) blew up the Iranian leadership in 1981 struck at […]

Climate Crisis

Iran’s Climate Migration Crisis Could Turn Into National ‘Disaster’

Golnaz Esfandiari

By Golnaz Esfandiari and Mohammad Zarghami | – ( RFE/ RL ) – Record temperatures, prolonged droughts, and the drying up of rivers and lakes are displacing tens of thousands of Iranians each year, experts say. Many of the climate migrants are farmers, laborers, and fishermen who are moving with their families from the countryside […]

Featured

How Israel Sabotaged U.S. Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran

Marc Martorell Junyent

Critical Review of Ilan Evyatar, Yonah Jeremy Bob and Jonathan Davis, Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023. Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The book starts with a heist […]

Iran

Can US Threats Prevent a wider War in the Middle East?

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink ) – While Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been frantically shuttling around the Middle East trying to stop the Israeli coflict in Gaza from exploding into a regional war, the United States has also sent two aircraft carrier strike groups, a Marine Expeditionary Unit and 1,200 extra troops to the Middle […]

Foreign Policy

Iran and America: They weren’t Always Enemies

Fariba Amini

Review of Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Heroes to Hostages America and Iran, 1800–1988 (Cambridge U.P., 2023) When the subject of Iran and America comes to mind, two eventful episodes are often invoked by Iranians and Americans. The first is the CIA-led coup d’état of 1953, which toppled Mohammad Mossadegh’s democratically elected government; and the second is the […]

Houthi

Yemen’s Houthis enter the Israel-Gaza Conflict: What Impact on US and Saudi Arabia?

The Conversation

By Mahad Darar, Colorado State University | – Yemen’s Houthi movement launched missiles and drones at Israel on Oct. 31, 2023 – provoking fears of a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict. With the militia – which controls part of the Arabian Peninsula state – vowing further attacks, Israel countered by sending missile boats […]