Website of Kourosh Ziabari, award-winning journalist and reporter

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: A convoluted conflict that has triggered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the war in Yemen is now in its seventh year, with a staggering death toll of more than 100,000 and dire economic repercussions that have made life in the most impoverished Arab nation additionally painful. International efforts to extinguish the conflict have so far made little success and humanitarian assistance is supplied with great difficulty. Nearly 24 million Yemenis, constituting four fifths of the entire population, require urgent humanitarian aid. A child dies every 10 minutes due to malnutrition or disease, and the country’s health sector, reeling from a massive loss of human capital and demolition of infrastructure,...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: In 2020, a string of unprecedented extreme weather events across the globe highlighted the exigency of taking meaningful action to tackle the climate crisis more seriously than ever. From record rainfalls in Indonesia forcing some 62,000 people from their homes to wildfires in Australia killing nearly 3 billion animals and demolishing 3,000 homes, from the Chinese province of Yunnan reporting the worst drought in 10 years to devastating floods in Kenya and Uganda displacing at least 400,000 people, the twinge of the heating Earth and changing climate was felt excruciatingly. Experts say 2020 was an apocalyptic wildfire season, with the global direct cost of forest fires standing at USD17 billion. Aggregately,...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Islam is now the world’s second largest religion after Christianity and the fastest-growing faith tradition globally. Spiraling fear of, and antipathy toward Muslims, which some scholars argue is a historical phenomenon with a pedigree stretching back to the 18th and 19th centuries, has been intensified and elevated to new heights in the recent decades, particularly with developments that have brought the Western civilization and the Muslim world into closer contact, including the rising tide of immigration from Muslim countries to Europe and North America in the late 20th century, and the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing project of War on Terror. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found people in...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: On March 15, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced his concern over the spiraling surge of anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry worldwide, calling on governments and stakeholders to play a more consequential role in containing this byzantine form of racism that has impaired harmony and stability in multicultural settings. As far-right discourses gain traction and ultra-nationalist politics pick up steam internationally, fissures between the Muslim communities and Western societies tend to become deeper and more resistant to healing. Throughout the European Union, aversion to Muslims is cropping up in a panoply of ways and shapes....

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Facts that corroborate the world is entangled in a climate emergency are abundant. Scientific evidence paints a clear and unambiguous picture of what lies ahead for the humanity: climate change is happening, it is almost entirely triggered by harmful anthropogenic activity, and in the decades to come, its impacts on human life will be scorching and at times irreversible. 2020, the second hottest year on record since 1880, witnessed unfortunate natural disasters almost unvaryingly linked to climate change. Record-setting wildfires engulfing Australia, California, Brazil and Siberia; an unprecedented hurricane season in the Atlantic marked by 30 named storms; massive floods overwhelming India and Bangladesh,...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: While US-Iran relations are apparently warming, with hopes rising of a resumption of the scuppered Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear pact, Washington continues to pile on punitive measures, particularly in the technology sector. The US government recently imposed a penalty of US$8 million on Germany’s SAP Software Solutions for “illegally” exporting US-origin software, including upgrades and security fixes, to Iranian users. The sale violated the technology sanctions placed on the Middle East nation, which is home to nearly 60 million internet users. From 2010 to 2017, SAP and its international partners exported the technology a total of 20,000 times to people in Iran and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s top envoy has backpedaled on remarks he made privately in a taped oral history about the country’s hardline Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and his ministry’s lack of real influence over the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. But while Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has made waves locally by claiming US-slain IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani interfered in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), his revelations on Russia’s bid to scupper the 2015 nuclear deal could have a greater political impact. The Donald Trump administration withdrew from the deal in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran that have since strangled its economy. But momentum is slowly but surely building towards a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Facebook has closed hundreds of fake accounts linked to the Iranian exile group Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MEK), a move that will be cheered in Tehran and raise questions about official US attitudes about the group under the new Joe Biden administration. Over 300 accounts, pages and groups believed to be affiliated with the MEK, also known as MKO, were tagged by Facebook for egregious online behavior including disseminating misinformation to discredit the Iranian government. Facebook ascertained that the majority of the accounts were operated from a single location in Albania and almost universally projected a favorable image of the otherwise historically infamous group some even liken to a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Nearly 73 years after it began to unleash havoc on the Middle East, little has changed in the dynamics of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. World powers and international organizations seem to have thrown in the towel, conceding that they are incapable of remedying the impasse, and as time goes by, diplomacy and fence-mending prove more evasive. In the final days of the US administration of Donald Trump, the dawning of the Abraham Accords, through which a handful of Arab countries initiated diplomatic relations with Israel, offered solace to the Jewish state, boosting its foothold at the doorstep of its arch-nemesis, Iran. To the Palestinians scrambling for sovereignty, though, the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: An attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility on April 11 has been blamed on Israel by Iranian officials, an accusation that threatens to hamper efforts now underway to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear pact. The apparent cyber-attack, which caused a power blackout at the plant situated eight meters underground, reportedly inflicted substantial damage to a number of centrifuges operating at the installation. Although Iranian officials have ruled out casualties or leakage of hazardous material, anonymous American and Israeli officials quoted in media reports have conjectured that the attack may have set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least nine...

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: A decision to extend the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran has ruffled the feathers of authorities in Tehran who say the country is being unfairly singled out. Experts, however, argue that Iran’s human rights profile needs impartial, thorough scrutiny. Twenty-one out of 47 member states of the UN Human Rights Council voted on March 23 to extend the mandate for another year, telling the representative to submit his findings on the country’s human rights challenges in time for the UN General Assembly in September. Only 12 countries voted against the resolution, which included Iran’s stalwart allies Russia, China, Venezuela and Cuba, while 14 other states, mostly...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: After dragging their feet on how to kick off the elusive process of resurrecting the moribund Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iranian government and the Biden administration are now involved in a fresh round of diplomatic efforts to sew up the full compliance of all parties with the deal terms. The Austrian capital Vienna is hosting delegations from Iran and six world powers, moderated by the European Union, where shuttle diplomacy and painstaking negotiations to revive the debilitated Iran deal started on Tuesday and are expected to continue until Friday. Iran, the trio of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as China and Russia, meet at the Grand Hotel Vienna. The US...