Articles

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the sun sets on America’s costly 18-year war in Afghanistan, neighboring Iran is poised to gain an upper hand as foreign troops chart their withdrawal from the war-ravaged country. That is despite Tehran’s vehement vocal objections to a nascent peace deal between the US and Islamic fundamentalist Taliban group aimed at ending a war that by some estimates has cost American taxpayers nearly US$2 trillion. In February, US President Donald Trump’s administration and the Taliban reached a conditional agreement following nine rounds of intense negotiations in the Qatari capital of Doha. The deal covers four key issues: a sustainable ceasefire, facilitation of intra-Afghan talks now underway...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Nearly one week since the high-profile assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on the outskirts of Tehran and the world is waiting to see how Iran’s rulers respond. While a dramatic retaliatory attack may not be imminent, newly tabled legislation promises to accelerate Iran’s nuclear program in defiance of the assassination’s apparent aim of curtailing its progress and perceived threat. Fakhrizadeh, a brigadier general with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a key figure in Iran’s nuclear program was ambushed and killed on November 27 in what many observers have described as an “extraterritorial targeted killing.” Iranian authorities have reflexively blamed...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The November 27 assassination of an elite Iranian nuclear scientist, almost unanimously blamed on Israel’s intelligence apparatus, has put the Middle East on high alert and raises the specter of a military confrontation that will scupper any chance of a fast thaw in Iran-US diplomacy when US President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was a brigadier general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a lecturer in physics at Imam Hossein University and one of the most senior scientists in Iran’s multilayered, sophisticated nuclear enterprise. Some have referred to him as the Abdul Qadeer Khan of Iran, the “father” of Pakistan’s clandestine and ultimately...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Much of what the global media report about Iran these days revolves around its unpopular nuclear program, its involvement in proxy conflicts across the Middle East, and its human-rights violations. Yet the concealed face of Iran is that it is the inheritor of one of the most magnificent art heritages in the world history, reflecting a 5,000-year-old cultural tradition that many people are incognizant of as the nation’s artistic and cultural contributions are eclipsed by its political isolation. The London-based Victoria and Albert Museum, which bills itself as the world’s leading museum of art and design, has announced that it will stage the UK’s biggest exhibition on Iranian art, design and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Reports that US President Donald Trump consulted senior aides about military attack options on Iran has raised speculation that a new destabilizing conflict could be imminent in the twilight of his tumultuous term. Trump reportedly backed away from launching a strike when confronted with the scenarios such a hit would likely set in motion. But there are still concerns the lame-duck president may fire parting salvos at his Iranian adversary, leaving behind a conflict for his rival President-elect Joe Biden to untangle. Trump raised the strike option in a November 12 meeting at the Oval Office with his top-tier cabinet members, namely Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, acting...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world is engrossed in the news around the Covid-19 crisis and the epoch-making US presidential contest, the tragic deaths of four Kurdish Iranian migrants in the English Channel off the north coast of France has filled many with sorrow, throwing the plight of Iranian refugees and asylum-seekers into the spotlight. Rasoul Iran-Nejad and Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children Anita and Armin, aged nine and six, were crossing from France to the UK on October 27 when their boat capsized. They died, and the couple’s 15-month-old son Artin is missing. British media reported that the family had paid migrant smugglers a huge sum to take them to the UK shores by boat. They sold all of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world was mesmerized by the spectacle of the presidential race in the United States, attention was diverted from other headline-making issues, at least fleetingly. In particular, it looks as though the dust has settled on the latest civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world following the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher who had shown the cartoons in one of his classes. A debate on the appropriateness of republishing the controversial cartoons, the degree to which they caused offense to Muslims worldwide, the sanctity of freedom of speech in a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The theatrical presidential race in the US is over after a blistering campaign season. Even though the loser has defied a long-standing tradition by refusing to concede defeat and congratulate his challenger, it is safe to assume Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20, 2021, as the 46th president of the United States. Newspapers, radio and TV stations, and news agencies are flooded with analysis and commentaries about how this election was epoch-making and unparalleled, what should be expected of Joe Biden, eyed by millions of Americans, as well as people in the four corners of the globe to undo the damage done by the eccentric Donald Trump to the pillars of democracy and multilateralism, and what...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: It might not be good news for Iran, but Israel is solidifying its foothold in the Middle East, cozying up to more Muslim, Arab nations that have long stopped thinking of the Jewish state as an existential threat. The surprise announcement on the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August, followed by a similar deal between Israel and Bahrain in September, lifted the veil on the new realities of the region, ushering in fresh alliances and shifting paradigms. It’s out in the open that Iran and Israel are sworn enemies, and although they never engaged in any direct confrontation, they have been the two belligerents of a full-blown proxy conflict and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran was overtaken with merriment and relief when the long-awaited nuclear deal was inked in July 2015 by the Islamic Republic and six world powers, spelling a happy ending to a diplomatic impasse that had been an unnerving fixture of media headlines and an unvarying talking point of world leaders for nearly two decades. Iran was extricated from the bludgeoning sanctions that had maimed its economy and turned it into a hermit kingdom, and the international community obtained robust assurances that Tehran’s nuclear program would not deviate toward weaponization. A genuine diplomatic breakthrough was clinched, and then-US president Barack Obama lauded it as “the strongest non-proliferation agreement...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Almost five million lives were on the line this week in Iran as the country’s ailing healthcare sector, crippled by US sanctions and troubled by reverse smuggling and price wars, appeared incapable of addressing a critical insulin shortage. “There is no insulin,” reads a viral Persian hashtag seen in tens of thousands of tweets, and which has generated more than half a million impressions on Twitter in the past seven days. With the country also in the grips of a new wave of coronavirus infections, with fatalities rising to levels unseen since the outbreak started in February, Iran’s minister of health has opted for silence in the face of the new crisis. The shortage “is temporary,”...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s all-male Guardian Council, after four decades of barring women from the presidency, has reversed course to allow women to run in 2021. The step has been largely welcomed as a positive sign by women’s rights advocates, although the constitutional watchdog tasked with overseeing Iran’s electoral process screens all candidates’ eligibility for elected government positions. In a press conference on October 10, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesperson of the ultra-conservative body, which operates under the aegis of the Supreme Leader, surprised reporters by saying there was no prohibition on women running for the presidency in next year’s elections. No explicit legal provision blocked...