Posts tagged : "Iran"

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Iran’s brain drain accelerates as crackdown on dissent intensifies

Iran’s brain drain accelerates as crackdown on dissent intensifies

Kourosh Ziabari - Stimson Center: Emigration from Iran is on the rise again as more and more Iranians conclude that their country has been turned into scorched earth by the Islamic Republic and seek shelter, stability, and opportunity elsewhere.   While not as dramatic as the exodus from some other nearby countries such as Afghanistan or Syria, the human flight is a simmering societal cataclysm with long-term negative implications for Iran’s prosperity and national security. Over the past four decades, waves of emigration have deprived Iran of its most talented youth, who instead have become engines of economic growth in Europe and North America. Nepotism, failure to reward merit, shrinking civil liberties, and a lack of...

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Iran’s female athletes raise voices over entrenched discrimination

Iran’s female athletes raise voices over entrenched discrimination

Kourosh Ziabari - Al-Monitor: As the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris approach, Iran’s female athletes are speaking out publicly about the inequities in their professional journey, at a time the world is paying attention to the general trend of discrimination against women in Iran.   After Iran women’s national soccer team defeated Myanmar in April to make its way to the second round of the 2024 Olympic qualifiers from Asia, the squad’s captain, Zahra Ghanbari, described the victory over a higher-ranked opponent as phenomenal, lamenting the authorities’ failure to recognize them.    According to a report by Ham-Mihan Daily, each member of Iranian men’s national football team received $15,000...

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Are Iran and Egypt on a path to entente?

Are Iran and Egypt on a path to entente?

Kourosh Ziabari - AGSIW: After more than four decades of frozen relations, signs are emerging that Iran and Egypt are seeking to thaw ties. Since its inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has professed an unwavering commitment to the ideal of Islamic solidarity, but that avowal has often rung hollow, given its thorny relations with most of the Muslim world heavyweights, including Egypt. A senior Iranian member of parliament said on May 14 that there have been backdoor negotiations between Iran and Egypt hosted in Baghdad, and a deal to normalize diplomatic ties is imminent. Fada Hossein Maleki, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan between 2007 and 2012, told Tasnim News Agency that a meeting between Iranian President...

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Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Javad Zarif’s Checkered Legacy

Kourosh Ziabari - New Lines Magazine: Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, resonates with many Iranians as a traumatic episode that wreaked havoc on their lives. Earlier this month, the Iranian mastermind of the deal, former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, recounted what he presented as the untold stories of the genesis of that diplomatic blockbuster, now in a state of suspended animation, during an online forum on the Clubhouse app that stretched for six and a half hours, well past midnight in Tehran. At a maximum, a Clubhouse room can host 8,000 users, but the moderator said roughly 42,000 people had tuned in through...

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Iran must end its complicity in Russia’s indefensible war

Iran must end its complicity in Russia’s indefensible war

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: War in Ukraine rages on nine months after Russia initiated a full-scale invasion of its neighbouring country. The world has been shocked by the unfolding scenes of brutality, pillaging of towns and cities, mass burials, hospitals being shelled, and civilian infrastructure being knocked out by drones and missiles. As the world celebrated the New Year, on social media Ukrainians were posting photos of their cities eclipsed in darkness as their access to electricity shrinks daily. Damages incurred by Ukraine as a result of the war can amount to $700 billion by the end of the year, and the civilians are expected to live with power outages through mid-March. Now, amid a...

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Women in Afghanistan are Inspired, Emboldened by Protests in Iran

Women in Afghanistan are Inspired, Emboldened by Protests in Iran

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington: The countrywide uprising precipitated by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police has been described as the first feminist revolution of the Middle East. Taking wing after years of inertia, Iran’s civil society was incentivized by its women to defy patriarchal structures and enforcement of laws that have been steeped in religious fundamentalism. The “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement is less visible these days as street protests have waned in the face of a government crackdown, but the long-term social change set in motion because of the upheaval is consequential. Young and old Iranians rebelled against the...

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Iran’s Orwellian Ploy to Outlaw Citizen Journalism and Online Speech

Iran’s Orwellian Ploy to Outlaw Citizen Journalism and Online Speech

Kourosh Ziabari - Democracy in Exile: Spooked by the success of citizen journalists in revealing the magnitude of the state-sponsored crackdown on protests and the critical role of popular public figures in mobilizing grassroots activists, Iran's parliament is pursuing two pieces of legislation that boil down to a government fiat that Iranians shouldn't have public opinions and express them freely. As part of the first legislation, which is being euphemistically promoted as a "bill to criminalize the publication of news contradicting citizenship rights," the judicial commission of Iran's Majlis, or parliament, is working to codify into law a ban on publishing—both by individuals and media outlets—any news that may...

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Iranian Celebrities Who Back the Protest Movement Face the Regime’s Wrath

Iranian Celebrities Who Back the Protest Movement Face the Regime’s Wrath

Kourosh Ziabari - Democracy in Exile: As nationwide protests have gained steam in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called morality police in September, the Islamic Republic has confronted dissent with new levels of severity. As of Sunday, 488 protesters, including 68 minors, have reportedly been killed, and with some 18,000 protesters arrested, detention facilities are overflowing. After several reported executions in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan, some of which haven't been documented, two protesters were hanged to death in a span of four days in Tehran and Mashhad. As the crackdown widens, artists and athletes who express solidarity with the protest...

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The Widespread Anguish Behind Iran’s Defiant Protests

The Widespread Anguish Behind Iran’s Defiant Protests

Kourosh Ziabari - Democracy in Exile: The nationwide protests rocking Iran for the past month, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called morality police, show the depth of anger and resentment that Iranians feel toward their government for its stifling of women, symbolized by the compulsory hijab law that so many Iranian women are now openly defying. But this sweeping outrage and outpouring of dissent across the country could have erupted at any time, well before the current protest movement crystallized against the violence unleashed by the morality police and the government's unremitting enforcement of the hijab. Widespread frustration and fear have been building up among Iranians for years,...

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UNICEF isn’t doing enough to protect Iranian children during protests

UNICEF isn’t doing enough to protect Iranian children during protests

Kourosh Ziabari - Atlantic Council: The sweeping nationwide protests that followed the death of Mahsa Jina Amini in police custody on September 16, 2022 have been distinct from previous rounds of uprisings in Iran. Aside from the inclusive nature of the movement, which has straddled social boundaries and unified people of all stripes, the government crackdown has also been unprecedented. To quell what appeared to be a thundering revolutionary wave, the Islamic Republic unleashed violence, killing at least 524 people, making over nineteen thousand arrests, and, for the first time in years, engaging in a head-on confrontation with the nation’s most prominent artists, athletes, and celebrities who sympathized...

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Iran’s Protracted Protests Represent a Broad Rejection of the Status Quo

Iran’s Protracted Protests Represent a Broad Rejection of the Status Quo

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Center Washington DC: Over the past four months, the international community has been heaping praise on the Iranian people for their audacious uprising, which has been challenging the country’s clerical establishment despite a heavy-handed crackdown that is now being bolstered by a wave of retaliatory executions. The ongoing protest movement, whose spirit and core message have been captured in its unifying slogan, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” was initially ignited by the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, who died while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” a force that millions of Iranians have decried for its brutality and arbitrary enforcement of the...

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Iranian Efforts to Tout Arbaeen Pilgrimage Boomerang

Iranian Efforts to Tout Arbaeen Pilgrimage Boomerang

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington: Thousands of Iranian pilgrims were stranded at the Iran-Iraq border in mid-September as they staged for the Arbaeen pilgrimage, an Islamic Republic-sponsored event marking the 40th day after the anniversary of the martyrdom of the third Shia imam, Hussein ibn Ali, in the Battle of Karbala. Reports about turmoil and instability at the border precipitated by the influx of crowds of pilgrims and the unpreparedness of the Iranian authorities were widespread in the run-up to the pilgrimage in neighboring Iraq. In one incident on September 11, 10 Iranian pilgrims died as the van carrying them crashed and exploded. On September 9, Iran’s Red Crescent...

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