Website of Kourosh Ziabari, award-winning journalist and reporter

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The countdown is on for Iran’s June 18 presidential election and early projections suggest a hardliner close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will likely emerge on top. At least two Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRCG) commanders have thrown their hats into the ring, both of whom would represent a hard turn from the “prudence and moderation” espoused by outgoing President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani’s approval rating now stands at a trifling 25% according to a Stasis agency poll, a huge dip from the 67% he enjoyed in February 2016 shortly after the implementation of the soon thereafter annulled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Now, as US sanctions squeeze the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The lifeless body of a famous young TV host was found in her apartment in the Sa’adat Abad district west of Tehran on Friday, and Iran’s social media are now awash with speculations, gossip, conspiracy theories and, lamentably, hate speech and celebrations over the mysterious death. Authorities have been considering different possibilities, including suicide and manslaughter, but investigations are still under way at this writing and nothing is confirmed conclusively. Azadeh Namdari was a 37-year-old television host who enjoyed popularity among some segments of Iranian society, particularly religious traditionalists, for her vocal advocacy of the Islamic hijab and trying to be the voice of the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s Green Movement reformist leaders are being widely eulogized on social media on the 11th anniversary of being put under house arrest. But while some Iranians may pine for the heady days over a decade ago when reformists were seemingly on the ascent, conservatives are widely expected to sweep presidential elections in June, further consolidating their hold on the Islamic Republic. As moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s final term draws to a close, many of his ambitions and promises will go unrealized, not least his vow to win the release of reformist luminaries Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard. It isn’t clear to most how Iran’s moderates and progressives can...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran has long championed the cause of repressed Muslims worldwide, an often vocal stance that has underpinned the Islamic Republic’s self-proclaimed leadership role in the Muslim world. But Iran has willfully ignored the ordeal of more than 1.5 million Uighur Muslims now confined by China in controversial “vocational training” camps, a silence that has spoken volumes about Beijing’s growing influence over Tehran. Iran’s support for persecuted Shiite Muslim groups reaches far and wide, from repressed Shiites in Sunni-governed Bahrain, to the Houthis waging war in Yemen, to the  pro-Iranian Islamic Movement in Nigeria which seeks to establish an Islamic state and whose rebel logo includes a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s carpet industry, once a rich trademark of Persian culture and a key source of non-oil and gas export revenues, is coming unraveled under the double whammy of US sanctions and a Covid-caused recession. Without meaningful government relief and investment, the fast-fading export industry that normally employs 2.5 million people and provides livelihoods in associated businesses to as many as 10 million will soon be decisively overtaken by rival nations’ wares in regional and global markets, experts and analysts warn. Local media reports suggest as many as one million Iranians involved in the rug industry have already lost their jobs. Iran’s carpet industry survived the chaos that...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: In the midst of a full-blown national economic crisis, the latest polemics of a powerful hardline preacher have served as a distraction for Iranians, with many caught by surprise and others taking to social media to poke fun at the fundamentalist cleric’s rabble-rousing. Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday prayer leader of the holy city of Mashhad and the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Razavi Khorasan province, unveiled his novel prescription for social and family life when he said in recent remarks, “unfortunately, as a result of the impact of the Western culture, the spouses call each other by first names at home.” He went on to theorize that “in the first layer of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The coming weekend marks the Persian New Year. Nowruz, or New Day, heralds the advent of spring and jubilantly injects life into the frozen veins of nature. Even those who don’t celebrate it agree that this festival is an exceptional opportunity to enshrine the rejuvenation of the Earth after a chilly hibernation and embrace sights in our surroundings that manifest themselves on scarce occasions like the vernal equinox, which coincides with Nowruz this Saturday, March 20. It is true that Nowruz was originally the New Year festival of Iranians and a cohort of countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, but thanks to recognition by the United Nations and UNESCO, its venerable pedigree has been...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: For nearly two decades now, Iran’s nuclear program has represented a global concern debated in the media on a daily basis, and world leaders have made every effort to find a way out of this intractable dilemma. Iran insists on the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, remains adamant that it should be entitled to enrich uranium unrestrictedly, has consistently worked on the development of advanced centrifuges and heavy-water reactors, and at times has been accused of covering-up its past nuclear activities. Lamentably, the sizeable investment Iran has made on its nuclear mission has yielded little concrete outcomes its people can discern other than underpinning an international...

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: Joe Biden’s election has revived certain hopes that the landmark Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), may soon be restored and usher in a new era of stability to the region. Biden vowed on the campaign trail he would rejoin the JCPOA and enter broad negotiations with the Islamic Republic to address a wide array of sticking points that continue to blight bilateral relations. Iran, which resorted to so-called “remedial measures” after the Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018, has since rolled back several of its commitments under the deal, including recommencing its sensitive uranium enrichment activities. At the same time,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s was one of the most traumatic episodes of the 20th century for Iranians. While a new governmental system was being crystallized in a turbulent social context in the wake of a revolution, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein waged an all-out internecine war against his fragile neighbor, inflicted unspeakable human suffering on the people of Iran and razed the country’s infrastructure to the ground. The goal was to nip the fledgling Islamist movement spearheaded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the bud and prevent revolutionary Iran from emerging as a force of hostility against the Arab states of the Persian Gulf region and the alliance of Western powers. Described as...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s hardliners are pressuring moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s government to ban popular social networking platform Instagram in their latest bid to keep Iranians disconnected from the wider world. Last week, Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, Iran’s 39-year-old Minister of Information and Communications Technology, was subpoenaed to the culture and media court operating under the aegis of the judiciary to defend himself over a litany of complaints. These include allegations he is defying a court order mandating that Instagram be blocked. Other suits include a complaint filed by 150 clerics that Iran’s cyberspace is ridden with “immorality,” which the minister has allegedly failed to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As Iranian President Hassan Rouhani squabbles with hardline parliamentarians over next year’s national budget, state broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) will inevitably be richly funded despite rising public objections to its partisan reporting. A draft of the budget bill for the next Iranian calendar year, which begins on March 21, sparked an uproar over a proposed 35% year on year increase of IRIB’s budget. IRIB operates upwards of 100 local, national and international radio and television stations, and holds an absolute monopoly over media services in Iran. With satellite dishes capable of receiving international signals still officially banned and no real competition...