Monthly archive : "September, 2020"

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Iran’s unpopular quest for nuclear energy has dominated news headlines for decades. This has left little room for reporting on less-discussed topics about the country. One of these is tourism. At a time of a pandemic, Iran continues to face grueling international sanctions and domestic divisions. But it is an uncontested fact that the country has a long revered civilization, and getting to know the nation with all its intricacies and complexities is a challenging task. Universities around the world offer Iranian studies courses so students can learn about Iran and its history.  In recent years, growing demand to explore Iran has led to more travelers visiting the country, which is not a popular...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise globally. Let’s call a spade a spade. Islamophobia, even though some people prefer to tiptoe around using the term so that they don’t acknowledge the gravity of this gruesome form of racism, is an undeniable reality in the 21st century, casting a dark shadow over the lives of the nearly 1.8 billion Muslims dotted across the four corners of the globe. From burning down and vandalizing mosques to physical attacks on people appearing to be Muslims walking down the streets, hate crimes against Muslim students on university campuses, verbal abuse and death threats directed against Muslim citizens and the Islamic faith being constantly slandered in the media,...

Kourosh Ziabari: Climate change is a complex threat to life on Earth, driving countless shifts worldwide, and it is only through collective action on the individual, national, regional and international levels that it can be addressed meaningfully. The provision of food, fibre, fuel and freshwater, without which human society and its economy cannot survive, is jeopardized by the rising global temperature and record levels of land and freshwater exploitation. The UN Secretary General António Guterres has termed climate change the “defining challenge of our time.” Some experts talk of climate change as a “threat multiplier” that even has the potential to increase the risk of political instability and terrorism. Climate change...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the United States seeks to ramp up economic pressure on Iran via renewed economic sanctions, the nation’s already slipping currency, the rial, has gone into a virtual free fall. New reports suggest that Iran’s rial has lost at least 49% of its value so far in 2020, a devastating collapse of the local unit. As such, the rial is now effectively one of the most worthless currencies in the world, inferior even to the Iraqi dinar and Pakistani rupee. As of September 24, the rial traded on unofficial markets at 277,900 to the US greenback while the official rate was 42,276. In July, the government approved plans to remove zeroes from the currency to ease making transactions, something locals have...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A contentious interview by the Persian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran and one of the country’s most polarizing public figures, broadcast on September 17 rekindled an almost muted debate on the ambitions and motivations of a leader whom former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had derided as a “bellicose peacock strutting on the world stage” who had “insulted the West at every point.” Nearly eight years after departing from office as the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad still harbors an unquenchable thirst for being a political celebrity dominating the headlines, entertained by the global media for his deliberately...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It has been a tumultuous and restive week in Iran. The country has been gripped by consternation, and social media were inundated with angry reactions to yet another execution ordered by the judiciary. This time, the convict was Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler in the southwestern city of Shiraz who was charged with murdering a security guard during the 2018 protests in Iran against economic hardships and inflation. Pleas by global public figures such as celebrated artists, athletes and academicians, as well as international organizations, human-rights advocacy groups, sporting bodies and governments, to secure clemency for Afkari recast his case as a high-profile affair, grabbing the headlines of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As US President Donald Trump’s administration tightens incremental sanctions on Iran to impair the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, derail its regional escapades and bring it back to the bargaining table, citizens of Iranian origin living overseas including expatriates and international students are collaterally feeling the sting of the punitive measures against their country of birth. The US sanctions regime against Iran is now a multi-layered, sophisticated constellation of embargoes expanded over time through numerous Congressional acts and executive orders by the US president. It targets any sort of trade and banking transaction with the beleaguered nation and extraterritoriality applies to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: September 11, 2001, was one of the darkest days in US history and a watershed moment in the global consciousness around the West’s relations with the Muslim world. The terror attack on that day, which The New York Times once called “one of the most audacious attacks ever against the United States,” sabotaged the notion of the impregnability of America and violated the honor of a nation envied by friends and foes for its economic strength, political stability, military might and technological supremacy. The images of the 9/11 attacks, seared into the national collective memory of Americans, immortalized by detailed chronicles of investigative journalists and documentary photographers, might...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Relations between Iran and the United States have followed a bumpy course since the 1979 revolution that set the stage for a metamorphosis of Iran’s foreign policy premised on the mantra of “neither Eastern, nor Western.” As the Islamic Republic gained more statecraft experience, that adage surrendered its sanctity, and it is now fine to be pro-Eastern, even though unexplained hostility toward what is geopolitically identified as the West, as a whole, remains in currency. Unlike the second term of Barack Obama as the US president, when Tehran and Washington made major strides toward resolving some of their many differences, culminating in the monumental Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is in the final year of his administration and speculation is rife about figures from across the political spectrum lining up to replace him before next year’s polls. Whether Rouhani’s successor will be a moderate like himself who will tread the tortuous path of reform in a conservative society or a hardliner who will radically transform the nation’s trajectory in the realms of economy, foreign policy, defense, security and its social outlook in a marked departure from Rouhani’s modus operandi is a valid question, but needs to be debated closer to the campaign season. What is of substance at this moment is critical scrutiny of President Rouhani’s...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: To Shia Muslims scattered across the world, the first month of the Islamic calendar, Muharram, is a fateful time. Whether they are young or old, Shiite adherents set in motion the preparations of the mourning ceremonies of Muharram at least a couple of months in advance, drape entire cities in black and gear up for commemorating the martyrdom of the third Shia Imam Hussein, a grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who was killed by the second Umayyad Caliph Yazid in the Battle of Karbala on October 10, 680. The mourning rituals of Muharram are perhaps the most pronounced manifestations of the communal consciousness of Shiites, who currently make up around 15% of the global population of Muslims. Iran,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A tidal wave of shocking revelations made by Iranian women about their experiences with sexual abuse and harassment has overwhelmed social media platforms in recent days, as calls for busting taboos on speaking out about rape and abuse in a conservative society have given impetus to a Persian-language #MeToo moment. The names of several prominent Iranian artists, university professors, TV personalities and even parliamentarians and government officials are implicated in the new disclosures, and allegations are floating around public figures who were long presumed to be decent individuals. One of the first allegations was made by Sara Omatali, a former journalist and now an educator based in the...