Articles

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: As the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling has sparked a global debate over abortion, the Iranian people have turned to social media to reject the hardline administration of President Ebrahim Raisi’s aggressive population policy and its baby boom ambitions. In a country of 85 million in which the median age is 31 and almost two-thirds of the population are under 40 years of age, the Iranian government is pushing for resistance against demographic ageing and jumping through hoops to boost the fertility rate. In 2013, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly demanded that the population should nearly double to 150 million and the...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Many residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, cross over the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge every day or move past it. It offers a unique vantage point to the well-liked Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, epitomised by the iconic $500,000 Spoonbridge and Cherry sculptural design. Most of the locals recognise Whitney, a Twin Cities philanthropist and civic leader who was married to the 1980 Independent-Republican gubernatorial candidate Wheelock Whitney and passed away in 1986. But to many Minnesota denizens and visitors of the Garden who happen to walk over the bridge spanning an interstate highway, or at least catch a glimpse of it from afar, the story behind the structure is almost undisclosed, unless one is...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: The Iranian opposition in exile is a well-heeled, formidable behemoth. No authoritarian state in the world is contested by such a vocal, unflappable conglomerate of resistance forces as is the Islamic Republic. Belarus, China, Russia and Venezuela have outspoken critics, but none of these detractors are making a living through bad-mouthing the regimes they despise. For the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia and a handful of European countries sheltering and resourcing the Iranian opposition, it makes strategic sense to invest in amplifying the collective voices of disillusioned expatriates who have faced persecution at home and had to flee for their safety. They in turn build on their resentments and...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Only a few months have rolled by since Saudi Arabia pulled off its largest campaign of mass execution by beheading 81 people in a single day, and it seems the scandalous misadventure has been clouded by the passage of time. Corporate media’s coverage of the Middle East has barely been affected by that travesty, and human rights advocacy organisations appear to be preoccupied with other things, including their unvarying Iran fixation. Even by the standards of Saudi, one of the most profligate practitioners of capital punishment, such a large-scale execution is rare. In fact, it has been recorded as the largest in the kingdom’s modern history. Of those sent to the gallows, 41 people were Shia...

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...