Monthly archive : "June, 2022"

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: The Paris climate agreement, despite all sorts of criticism it receives for its loopholes and flaws, is an unmistakable manifestation of collective determination on behalf of the world nations. It is a solid step towards addressing a crisis that is not only harming people around the world and jeopardising the inhabitability of the planet, but also creating a grim future for the posterity. With its legally-binding provisions and quantifiable targets for how anthropogenic emissions should be phased out, the Paris Agreement is a call for global awakening on what the United Nations has termed the most immediate threat to human rights. Out of the 193 United Nations member states, only four nations have...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: In Iran, where social fissures are vividly displayed and routinely reinforced, debate on feminism and equal rights for women is an exclusively polarising stimulus for public contretemps, not only because of the degrading way in which feminist advocates are treated by the state, but also the quotidian clashes which pits feminists against each other. It is quite rare for Iranian feminists to agree on how women rights should be defined and promoted, leaving little room to focus on charting concrete paths in reclaiming the rights of women within a patriarchal society. However alienating and fruitless the intellectual spats tend to be, almost everybody concerned over the dire conditions experienced by women...

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: While the United States and its allies cobble together package after package of punitive measures on Russia to drive home that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adventurism in Ukraine will have grave consequences for his country and catapult it into global isolation, and as the humanitarian crisis precipitated by the blitzkrieg is consuming resources and shifting global consciousness, the eccentricity with which Russia’s southern Caspian Sea neighbor and ally Iran has responded to the crisis has mostly remained unnoticed. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was one of the first world leaders to pick up the phone and call Putin to pledge allegiance as soon as the news of the war flashed over TV...

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: The atrocities in Bucha, Mariupol, and other Ukrainian cities have taken the severity of Russia’s war in Ukraine to a whole new level. Graphic footage emerging of bullet-riddled bodies with tied hands, charred corpses piled together dumped in the streets, and buildings and cars blown to pieces have exposed how an apparently unquenchable thirst for power and domination can be boundless. In response, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, Spain, the United States and a handful of other countries expelled more than 325 Russian diplomats from Moscow’s missions. At the same time, the sanctions machinery of the United States and European Union is in full swing, and Russia is being targeted by...

Kourosh Ziabari - Foreign Policy: When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was running for office, he famously said in a May 2021 televised debate how much he deplored the disruption that Iranian children who play online games experience due to the nation’s poor internet infrastructure and weak signals, arguing that he had plans to boost internet connectivity if elected. He made similar remarks about his displeasure that university students are being sealed off from their peers internationally because of the country’s flawed internet services. As simplistic as his youth outreach may have been, Raisi was trying to portray himself as a politician who related to the young population’s sensitivities around sustainable internet...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Nationwide protests over the Iranian government’s decision to cut subsidies on food and basic staples and the ensuing hyperinflation have diminished, but a kerfuffle involving the Islamic Republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has heightened tensions globally, driving the US dollar to historic highs in the Tehran market, and rendering the prospects of the revival of the nuclear deal dimmer than ever. The UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution on June 8 rebuking Iran for its limited cooperation with the IAEA and the traces of uranium at three nuclear sites about which it has provided insufficient explanations to the world body. Of the IAEA member...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran is set to relax a ban on importing cars, reversing an unpopular policy in force since 2018 that has left Iranians stuck on the road with poor-quality, locally-made automobiles. The move aims at stimulating more market competition in the large domestic auto industry as complaints grow that cosseted local producers have resorted to the worst of monopolistic behaviors. Iran’s auto industry accounts for a large percentage of the nation’s non-oil exports and employs nearly 800,000 workers. The two major car manufacturers, Iran Khodro and Saipa, are both state-owned, while a smattering of smaller firms is privately run. The country’s automotive sector is the biggest in the Middle East...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As Iran and the Taliban take cautious first steps towards formalizing relations, a new worrying wave of anti-Afghan sentiment is sweeping across Iran amid new heated calls for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. On April 5, an assailant stabbed two Iranian Shia clerics to death on the premises of the revered shrine of the 8th Shia Imam Reza in the pilgrimage city of Mashhad. The attacker, apparently motivated by anti-Shiite motives, was later identified as an Uzbek national who had crossed illegally into Iran last year. However, after the footage of the assault captured by pilgrims went viral on social media, many Iranians mistook the aggressor for an Afghan citizen, sparking...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: North Macedonia suddenly finds itself on the front lines of Russia’s war on Ukraine. As the newest member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), joining in March 2020, the small Balkan nation of 1.8 million has boldly censured and joined sanctions on Moscow – despite being heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies. President Stevo Pendarovski, in power since May 2019, is now bidding to bring North Macedonia into the European Union (EU), which certain EU members including Greece and Bulgaria have opposed. A recent International Republican Institute poll showed that 79% of the North Macedonian public favors EU membership, which would pull the new country closer to the West and further...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Russia’s blitzkrieg on Ukraine and endgame talks to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran nuclear pact have become increasingly interlocked in an emerging new geopolitical order. But hopes that a new nuclear deal will allow Iran to quickly replace Russian energy supplies to the West are likely premature for a multitude of reasons. In remarks last weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked the US for written guarantees that the JCPOA’s revival be made contingent on Russia being allowed to maintain trade and economic ties with Iran exempt from US sanctions over its Ukraine invasion. Many analysts interpreted the request, made after months of negotiations and with...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the largest military attack on the European continent since World War II, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was arguably the West’s most urgent diplomatic priority. Representatives from Iran and six world powers have in recent weeks shuttled to Vienna to regenerate the 2015 nuclear deal that was shattered when then-US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the pact and reinstated punishing sanctions against Tehran in 2018. Now, the Tehran hardliners who once berated the deal largely because it was negotiated by the moderate president Hassan Rouhani are in charge of resurrecting the pact under the ultra-conservative Ebrahim...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It is common knowledge that the Iranian government is in an acutely vulnerable position and that a blend of draconian international sanctions, public discontent at home, corruption and unremitting power struggles have drained its resources and resilience, stripping it of political leverage on the world stage. To the constellation of the Islamic Republic’s adversaries and opposition parties in exile, this fragility presents a unique opportunity to prey on and see if a coup de grace can be administered to what appears to be a languishing, heavily wounded antagonist. One day, a terror attack is orchestrated in the restive south of the country and when the suspected mastermind is arrested to stand...