Articles

Kourosh Ziabari - Atlantic Council: The sweeping nationwide protests that followed the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody on September 16, 2022 have been distinct from previous rounds of uprisings in Iran. Aside from the inclusive nature of the movement, which has straddled social boundaries and unified people of all stripes, the government crackdown has also been unprecedented. To quell what appeared to be a thundering revolutionary wave, the Islamic Republic unleashed violence, killing at least 524 people, making over nineteen thousand arrests, and, for the first time in years, engaging in a head-on confrontation with the nation’s most prominent artists, athletes, and celebrities who sympathized...

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Center Washington DC: Over the past four months, the international community has been heaping praise on the Iranian people for their audacious uprising, which has been challenging the country’s clerical establishment despite a heavy-handed crackdown that is now being bolstered by a wave of retaliatory executions. The ongoing protest movement, whose spirit and core message have been captured in its unifying slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” was initially ignited by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” a force that millions of Iranians have decried for its brutality and arbitrary enforcement of the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington: Thousands of Iranian pilgrims were stranded at the Iran-Iraq border in mid-September as they staged for the Arbaeen pilgrimage, an Islamic Republic-sponsored event marking the 40th day after the anniversary of the martyrdom of the third Shia imam, Hussein ibn Ali, in the Battle of Karbala. Reports about turmoil and instability at the border precipitated by the influx of crowds of pilgrims and the unpreparedness of the Iranian authorities were widespread in the run-up to the pilgrimage in neighboring Iraq. In one incident on September 11, 10 Iranian pilgrims died as the van carrying them crashed and exploded. On September 9, Iran’s Red Crescent...

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington: The tidal wave of the coronavirus pandemic is subsiding. Increasingly countries are returning to normalcy as vaccinations and herd immunity are prevailing, and states are beginning to bounce back from the throes of the crisis. In Iran, the second country in the Middle East to confirm a coronavirus case, and once a hotspot of contagion, the government’s idiosyncratic response to the health emergency and its ideological handling of the immunization plans still resonates with many as the symptom of a broader malaise: the perception that to the government, politics supersede Iranian lives. It remains unclear when the first case was diagnosed versus what was...

Kourosh Ziabari - Middle East Institute: At the start of January, Iran found itself embroiled in a new diplomatic spat. This time, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons pouring scorn on the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruffled feathers in Tehran, and the foreign ministry vowed decisive action to prevent future affronts to “religious authority.” Unlike in Iran, media in the West are not supposed to take orders from the state, and the Iranian foreign ministry’s rage directed at the French government was obviously misplaced. Nonetheless, the Islamic Republic was quick to launch its first retaliatory measure, announcing the closure of a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: On December 6, the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, was the special speaker at the Sharif University of Technology in a ceremony to mark Students Day. He was one of several conservative ideologues deployed to university campuses by the Iranian government to initiate dialogue with students and placate them as the nationwide protests triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in September showed no sign of abating. Universities were particular hotbeds of protest and activism. While the authorities consummated a campaign of mass arrests, sham trials and violence on the streets, they also touted “dialogue.” They made a stab at appealing to young people through speeches like the one...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The nationwide uprising that ensued after the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in September added a new dimension to the global media coverage of Iran and dislodged the exclusive focus previously set on the country’s nuclear program and the stalled negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Now, the media are spotlighting the heroism of the Iranian women braving an overwhelming crackdown to reclaim their dispossessed rights, as well as the often-untold stories of ordinary citizens who are these days the protagonists of an epoch-making, dramatic struggle for freedom. These stories are being relayed to an...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A month has rolled by since the outburst of nationwide protests over the death of the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini arrested by Iran’s morality police for what the authorities argued was her “inappropriate hijab,” a movement that soon ballooned into a broader social revolt characterized by the centrality of women demanding freedom and equal rights. The core element of the uprising that has convulsed Iran has been the rejection of the grotesque morality police equally loathed by the religious women who wear hijab voluntarily and the more progressive, liberal-minded women who don’t wish to subscribe to the government-prescribed lifestyle. Iranian women have become emboldened...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s talented, educated youth have consistently cultivated the nation’s public image as one characterized by vibrancy and motivation to push the boundaries. Whether mathematicians, computer scientists, anthropologists or artists, Iranians have carved out a universal reputation as hard-working and creative, even though the lion’s share of this brilliance is bearing fruit overseas, not at home. Over time, the country’s name has become a shorthand for its deep-seated brain drain, sapping the Islamic Republic’s strength to address challenges and deliver for its people. The authorities routinely complain about this human capital flight coming at the expense of the nation’s progress, and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Protests continue to roil Iran after the shocking death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested by the morality police for an “improper hijab,” who is widely believed to have been beaten to death while in custody of the guards. Despite a crackdown that has so far claimed at least 76 lives, Iranians are not ready to back away and are raising their voices, more strongly than ever, demanding the abolition of the vice squads and the annulment of the hijab mandate. No apologies have been offered by the authorities, no resignations extended, and the Ministry of Interior, tasked with investigating the incident, insists that Mahsa Amini had pre-existing conditions that caused her to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The heinous stabbing attack against British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was so inexcusable that even the administration of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi disowned it, contending that the Islamic Republic could not be blamed for that outburst of violence against the persecuted writer, who had just begun to exercise some publicity after keeping a low profile for several years. But as the literary world was rallying around Rushdie to reiterate his right to free speech and denounce aggression to stifle contrarian thought, it transpired that the attack, celebrated by hardliners in Tehran as an act of divine vengeance against an apostate writer, was also silently saluted by members...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: One year since conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi rose to the presidency, his campaign promises to shield the Iranian economy from sanctions and lift it to new heights have gone wholly unfulfilled. As street protests against the dire state of the economy spread across the country, political stability is being put to a potential make-or-break test for the politically inexperienced leader. Iranian purchasing power has recently hit record lows amid runaway inflation, stagnant wages and a collapsing currency, galvanizing more and more Iranians to take to the streets to protest against their economic plight and the government’s perceived mismanagement. Despite the protests mushrooming across the country,...