Website of Kourosh Ziabari, award-winning journalist and reporter

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Aside from its declining currency, which is known as one of the world’s most worthless currencies, Iran is reputed to have one of the most unsafe and aged aviation fleets. In recent years, hundreds of passengers have lost their lives while flying on Iranian airliners due to their age and the failure of the companies to improve their standards. The inability of Iranian airlines to buy new aircraft and renovate their fleet is mostly a result of economic sanctions that the United States has imposed on Iran since the 1980s. Some of the deadliest aviation accidents in the world have involved Iranian airliners. A notable example is the Caspian Airlines Flight 7908, which was a scheduled...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Many journalists, academicians and foreign policy experts raised concerns about Donald Trump’s lack of political and foreign policy experience during the presidential campaign. Were their concerns justified? Perry Cammack (@perrycammack), a fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says President Trump has “a singular genius for self-promotion” and his approach to foreign policy represents his approach to “Manhattan real estate or reality television.” The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran deal, is a multilateral accord between Iran and the European Union represented by France, Germany and the United...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Charles Dickens, the Victorian British author is remembered even today for his novels and novellas like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, The Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. I had the opportunity to interview Lucinda Hawksley, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dicken. She is a distinguished member of Charles Dickens’s family and one of his few living descendants. She is an art historian, public speaker and broadcaster specializing in literature, art, history and social history from the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a volunteer speaker of the Whales & Dolphins Conservation Society, Lucinda Hawksley has travelled across the world and appeared...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Iranians are unhappy for a number of reasons, like in all countries where people are sometimes more and sometimes less happy. However, the root cause of unhappiness in Iranian society is of a different nature: It’s ideological. There are different ways to measure and illustrate the extent of life satisfaction in different countries. International reports and indices are a good tool to gage why some nations are generally happier while others are less so. Iran is rich with natural resources and invaluable human capital but, at least according to the World Happiness Report 2018, it is a country where people do not smile effortlessly, ranked 106 out of 156 nations. A study by Kuba Krys, a psychologist...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Since the 1979 revolution, women in Iran have been denied entry to sports stadiums. The reasons cited by authorities are mostly religious. In a theocratic state like Iran, they are worried about “ethical values” in society which, they believe, might be undermined if women are allowed to do certain things, such as play athletics or watch football in stadiums alongside men. Now, after almost 40 years of debate and resistance by authorities, religious figures and activists, an important development has taken place: Iranian women were allowed to watch two FIFA World Cup matches featuring the Iranian national team. Thousands of Iranians packed the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, the biggest in the Middle East,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Centre for Journalism: Republic of Macedonia is a country in the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991. A multiethnic society, four official languages are spoken in Macedonia: Albanian, Turkish, Romani and Serbian. Macedonia has an open and market-based economy and is a member of the Council of Europe and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The name of the country, however, has been a source of controversy between Macedonia and its southern neighbor Greece for quite a while. The Greeks are opposed to the use of the name of "Republic of Macedonia" by the country and international organisations, as it implies sovereignty over the...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: On May 8, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Washington will de-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran deal. The withdrawal of the United States from the agreement and President Trump’s promise to impose harsh sanctions on Iran has further complicated Iran-U.S. relations, resulted in more stress on Iran’s economy and as a result, caused public discontent in Iran with the government of President Hassan Rouhani who had promised improvements in the economy and a resolution to the nuclear dispute. Retired Lt. General Arlen D. Jameson, the former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Strategic Command, says the decision by President Trump to...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: During the tumultuous days of Iran’s revolution in 1979, the leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, used a statement in reference to the perceived United States intervention in Iranian affairs by saying that “America cannot do a damn thing.” Iran’s revolution was hugely anti-Western and the height of its antagonism to the West was reflected in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979, in what came to be known as the Iran hostage crisis, and laid the groundwork for the severing of bilateral ties between Tehran and Washington. The “revolutionary” Iranians believed that the sovereignty and independence of the nation was compromised under King...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: Association football is not a very successful sport in Iran, but it’s one of the most popular sports in a country with more than half of the population under 35 years old. It’s conventional for schoolchildren to develop an early passion for football and spend the majority of their leisure time playing with their close friends in the yards, gardens or street football pitches. It can be safely argued that football is the basis for many friendships among young people in small cities and rural areas in Iran. The culture of football in Iran and the passion it generates is comparable to what happens in Brazil, even though the achievements of the two countries in this sport is in no way...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has been described as the world’s most urgent refugee crisis. The roots of the ethnic conflict can be traced back to British colonial policy in what was then Burma, but it was the decision to strip the Muslim Rohingya minority of citizenship rights on the basis of their religion that laid the foundation for most recent abuses. While 135 national ethnic groups were recognized and granted certain rights, the Rohingya were effectively rendered stateless under the 1982 Citizenship Act, creating the world’s largest stateless minority. Decades of privation and humiliating restrictions culminated in violent clashes between the Arakan Rohingya...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: 70 years after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in its current form following the 1948 exodus and what came to be known as Nakba, the international community still appears to be unable to find viable answers for many questions arising from this conflict. Several UN resolutions, Security Council meetings, statements and peace-making committees, fact-finding missions and literally millions of newspaper articles, hundreds of TV documentaries and thousands of hours of negotiations have failed to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis in the offing in Palestine and the political dilemma between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel is on a quest for recognition, consolidated...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Islamophobia has long been one of the major plagues of the Western societies. The rise of far-right in Europe, the exacerbation of global refugee crisis with the wars and conflicts that are breaking out across the Middle East and the surge of racial intolerance in the United States with the coming to power of Donald Trump make Islamophobia a concern that needs to be seriously addressed. Academics and researchers are the best people who can respond to unsettling questions about Islamophobia adequately. Farid Hafez is a distinguished Austrian political scientist and university lecturer. He is a senior fellow at the Bridge Initiative hosted by the Georgetown University and a lecturer and researcher at the...