Posts tagged : "Asia"

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the world was mesmerized by the spectacle of the presidential race in the United States, attention was diverted from other headline-making issues, at least fleetingly. In particular, it looks as though the dust has settled on the latest civilizational clash between the West and the Islamic world following the reprinting of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo and the brutal murder of Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher who had shown the cartoons in one of his classes. A debate on the appropriateness of republishing the controversial cartoons, the degree to which they caused offense to Muslims worldwide, the sanctity of freedom of speech in a...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran was overtaken with merriment and relief when the long-awaited nuclear deal was inked in July 2015 by the Islamic Republic and six world powers, spelling a happy ending to a diplomatic impasse that had been an unnerving fixture of media headlines and an unvarying talking point of world leaders for nearly two decades. Iran was extricated from the bludgeoning sanctions that had maimed its economy and turned it into a hermit kingdom, and the international community obtained robust assurances that Tehran’s nuclear program would not deviate toward weaponization. A genuine diplomatic breakthrough was clinched, and then-US president Barack Obama lauded it as “the strongest non-proliferation agreement...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s Guardian Council, the powerful body in charge of electoral oversight, caught the public by surprise by announcing that women may run for the presidency in the 2021 polls that will decide the successor to Hassan Rouhani. Some women’s rights activists welcomed the announcement as a harbinger of change in a highly conservative, patriarchal society. Others suggested the gesture was grandstanding by the government to draw more voters to the ballot box and polish its image. More than 60% of university students in Iran are female. Some of the country’s most brilliant authors, academicians, scientists, artists, philanthropists and media personalities are women. Global examples are 2003 Nobel...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Ever since his inauguration in 2017, US President Donald Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy. Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization. The president has pledged to draw an end to the “forever...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Almost five million lives were on the line this week in Iran as the country’s ailing healthcare sector, crippled by US sanctions and troubled by reverse smuggling and price wars, appeared incapable of addressing a critical insulin shortage. “There is no insulin,” reads a viral Persian hashtag seen in tens of thousands of tweets, and which has generated more than half a million impressions on Twitter in the past seven days. With the country also in the grips of a new wave of coronavirus infections, with fatalities rising to levels unseen since the outbreak started in February, Iran’s minister of health has opted for silence in the face of the new crisis. The shortage “is temporary,”...

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...

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...

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...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is in the final year of his administration and speculation is rife about figures from across the political spectrum lining up to replace him before next year’s polls. Whether Rouhani’s successor will be a moderate like himself who will tread the tortuous path of reform in a conservative society or a hardliner who will radically transform the nation’s trajectory in the realms of economy, foreign policy, defense, security and its social outlook in a marked departure from Rouhani’s modus operandi is a valid question, but needs to be debated closer to the campaign season. What is of substance at this moment is critical scrutiny of President Rouhani’s...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Over three years have passed since Mohammed bin Salman became the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The challenges he has faced throughout this time have been too colossal for a 35-year-old leader to accommodate. Yet the prince has sought to give the impression of a strong social reformer. Indeed, some of the changes he has introduced will significantly transform the public image of Saudi Arabia and global attitudes toward the kingdom, at least in the long term. Under Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the kingdom, Saudi Arabia has repealed a longstanding ban on women driving, allowed female singers to perform publicly, relaxed male guardianship laws on women, implemented employment...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Living in a highly connected world means people take pride in assets that were less relevant and charming 50 years ago. Today, social mobility, freedom of movement, connectivity and open borders are privileges that are cherished by the citizens of the 21st century. It is no longer possible for nation-states to erect walls of protectionism along their borders and preclude the flow of people and information. Even for a country like North Korea, which to many typifies isolation and autarky within the framework of a revolutionary Juche doctrine, foreign relations are critical, ensuring the survival of the nation in a hyper-connected, radically changed world. The Henley Passport Index, a global ranking...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Reports about the delivery of 1.5 million barrels of gasoline to Venezuela by Iran in early June once again threw the saga of relations between those two countries into relief. Media, commentators and scholars have been heatedly debating the enigmatic Iran-Venezuela partnership ever since, and how this alliance can challenge the global dominance of the United States, which has long punished both countries with merciless sanctions. Geographically, there is little that Iran and Venezuela share. They are nearly 12,400 kilometers away from each other. Culturally, contemporary Iran subscribes to a conservative religious tradition, which manifests itself in different aspects of daily life, while Venezuela...