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No short-term remedy to Iran’s economic challenges: Cyrus Bina

No short-term remedy to Iran’s economic challenges: Cyrus Bina

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s economy has never been more vulnerable and fragile. Last month, President Hassan Rouhani complained that the United States has been waging an “economic warfare” against Iran by slapping sanctions on the country’s energy, finance, banking, industrial and shipping sectors. In a bid to isolate Iran further, amputate the remaining ties between its financial institutions and the global banking system and prohibit the access of the government in Tehran to much-needed hard currency, the United States on Thursday introduced a new set of sweeping sanctions targeting 18 Iranian banks that were not previously targeted with punitive measures. Cyrus Bina is a distinguished research professor of...

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Iran on edge as Azeri minority backs Karabakh war

Iran on edge as Azeri minority backs Karabakh war

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Tensions flaring up between the Republic of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the intractable Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, deemed to be Europe’s oldest “frozen war,” have spilled over into the neighboring Iran, which shares borders and longstanding amicable relations with both nations. When the exchange of fire started on September 27 to reignite a three-decade-old battle on the sovereignty of a mountainous enclave both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim to be part of their territory, it was scarcely expected that the skirmish involving two Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe member states would degenerate into ethnic chaos in Iran, which has mostly been preoccupied with its own economic pains...

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What Iran should learn from Trump-Biden debate

What Iran should learn from Trump-Biden debate

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The countdown has started for one of the most theatrical presidential contests of recent times in the United States. While the entire world is fixated on a thus far incurable pestilence that has claimed more than a million lives, even the pandemic cannot divert global attention from the showdown between two heavyweights vying for the most powerful office in the world. The race features a recalcitrant former business tycoon turned politician considered by 27% of American adults as the biggest threat to world peace, intermittently described as “racist” and “misogynist,” up against his 77-year-old rival from the Democratic Party, endorsed by his former boss, ex-president Barack Obama, as a...

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Iran pays price for lack of a post-JCPOA Plan B

Iran pays price for lack of a post-JCPOA Plan B

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The 75th United Nations General Assembly that ran from September 22 to 29 was not impervious to the blight of the Covid-19 pandemic, and unlike in preceding years, New York City was not the rendezvous of top-tier leaders and high-profile delegations flocking to Manhattan to mark what has usually been a monumental diplomatic event and a magnet for the world media. The General Assembly this year was eviscerated of its traditional exuberance characterized by hotly anticipated or rare encounters between heads of state and government, impassioned speeches during the General Debate sessions, particularly those by the rulers of “rogue states” who are otherwise banished from international forums, and...

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What a Serial Traveler Thinks of Iran: Interview with Kamila Napora

What a Serial Traveler Thinks of Iran: Interview with Kamila Napora

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Iran’s unpopular quest for nuclear energy has dominated news headlines for decades. This has left little room for reporting on less-discussed topics about the country. One of these is tourism. At a time of a pandemic, Iran continues to face grueling international sanctions and domestic divisions. But it is an uncontested fact that the country has a long revered civilization, and getting to know the nation with all its intricacies and complexities is a challenging task. Universities around the world offer Iranian studies courses so students can learn about Iran and its history.  In recent years, growing demand to explore Iran has led to more travelers visiting the country, which is not a popular...

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Divisive Charlie Hebdo cartoons should be ignored

Divisive Charlie Hebdo cartoons should be ignored

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Anti-Muslim bigotry is on the rise globally. Let’s call a spade a spade. Islamophobia, even though some people prefer to tiptoe around using the term so that they don’t acknowledge the gravity of this gruesome form of racism, is an undeniable reality in the 21st century, casting a dark shadow over the lives of the nearly 1.8 billion Muslims dotted across the four corners of the globe. From burning down and vandalizing mosques to physical attacks on people appearing to be Muslims walking down the streets, hate crimes against Muslim students on university campuses, verbal abuse and death threats directed against Muslim citizens and the Islamic faith being constantly slandered in the media,...

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Key governments have rolled back their environmental commitments: Annalisa Savaresi

Key governments have rolled back their environmental commitments: Annalisa Savaresi

Kourosh Ziabari: Climate change is a complex threat to life on Earth, driving countless shifts worldwide, and it is only through collective action on the individual, national, regional and international levels that it can be addressed meaningfully. The provision of food, fibre, fuel and freshwater, without which human society and its economy cannot survive, is jeopardized by the rising global temperature and record levels of land and freshwater exploitation. The UN Secretary General António Guterres has termed climate change the “defining challenge of our time.” Some experts talk of climate change as a “threat multiplier” that even has the potential to increase the risk of political instability and terrorism. Climate change...

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Iran in turmoil as rial goes into free fall

Iran in turmoil as rial goes into free fall

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the United States seeks to ramp up economic pressure on Iran via renewed economic sanctions, the nation’s already slipping currency, the rial, has gone into a virtual free fall. New reports suggest that Iran’s rial has lost at least 49% of its value so far in 2020, a devastating collapse of the local unit. As such, the rial is now effectively one of the most worthless currencies in the world, inferior even to the Iraqi dinar and Pakistani rupee. As of September 24, the rial traded on unofficial markets at 277,900 to the US greenback while the official rate was 42,276. In July, the government approved plans to remove zeroes from the currency to ease making transactions, something locals have...

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Ahmadinejad lobbies to remain relevant

Ahmadinejad lobbies to remain relevant

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: A contentious interview by the Persian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran and one of the country’s most polarizing public figures, broadcast on September 17 rekindled an almost muted debate on the ambitions and motivations of a leader whom former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had derided as a “bellicose peacock strutting on the world stage” who had “insulted the West at every point.” Nearly eight years after departing from office as the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad still harbors an unquenchable thirst for being a political celebrity dominating the headlines, entertained by the global media for his deliberately...

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Iran polarized by young wrestler’s execution

Iran polarized by young wrestler’s execution

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It has been a tumultuous and restive week in Iran. The country has been gripped by consternation, and social media were inundated with angry reactions to yet another execution ordered by the judiciary. This time, the convict was Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler in the southwestern city of Shiraz who was charged with murdering a security guard during the 2018 protests in Iran against economic hardships and inflation. Pleas by global public figures such as celebrated artists, athletes and academicians, as well as international organizations, human-rights advocacy groups, sporting bodies and governments, to secure clemency for Afkari recast his case as a high-profile affair, grabbing the headlines of...

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US sanctions unjustly stalk overseas Iranians

US sanctions unjustly stalk overseas Iranians

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As US President Donald Trump’s administration tightens incremental sanctions on Iran to impair the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, derail its regional escapades and bring it back to the bargaining table, citizens of Iranian origin living overseas including expatriates and international students are collaterally feeling the sting of the punitive measures against their country of birth. The US sanctions regime against Iran is now a multi-layered, sophisticated constellation of embargoes expanded over time through numerous Congressional acts and executive orders by the US president. It targets any sort of trade and banking transaction with the beleaguered nation and extraterritoriality applies to...

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Two decades after 9/11, Iranians still ask ‘what if’

Two decades after 9/11, Iranians still ask ‘what if’

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: September 11, 2001, was one of the darkest days in US history and a watershed moment in the global consciousness around the West’s relations with the Muslim world. The terror attack on that day, which The New York Times once called “one of the most audacious attacks ever against the United States,” sabotaged the notion of the impregnability of America and violated the honor of a nation envied by friends and foes for its economic strength, political stability, military might and technological supremacy. The images of the 9/11 attacks, seared into the national collective memory of Americans, immortalized by detailed chronicles of investigative journalists and documentary photographers, might...

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