Posts tagged : "Iran"

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As US troops quickly withdraw after 20 years of war in Afghanistan, regional powers are moving to fill the emerging power vacuum in a country long bedeviled by lethal internal rivalries. Iran, the top trading partner of Afghanistan and an influential neighbor with high stakes in its stability, has engaged both the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents in recent months. This comes even though many Iranians have decried their government’s overtures to the Taliban as treacherous considering the group’s track record of sponsoring violence and terrorism including in Iran. The US troop withdrawal has already created massive reverberations across Afghanistan. The Taliban have recently claimed to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: For nearly two decades, the global media coverage of Iran has functioned in such a way that the name of the country has been bracketed with a pernicious nuclear program and malign conspiracies to destabilize the Middle East and beyond. That Iran has been receiving bad press for a long time is not a mystery or the allegation of a jingoistic mind. It is an inevitability attested to by the pundits and commentators of media organizations that let bias sweep through their reporting. There are plenty of reasons to feel bitter about Iran, perceive its regional role as counterproductive and consider its brand of statecraft as erratic. The Islamic Republic’s foreign-policy adventures have been...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Deliberations are underway in Iran’s parliament to outlaw the use of international social media platforms and instant messaging services, legislation that threatens to cast the country into cyber-darkness. The pending bill would also criminalize the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers now used to bypass internet blocks and bans in a country that enforces one of the most rigorous online censorship regimes in the world. The bill, ironically titled “Protecting the Rights of Users in Cyberspace and Organizing Social Messengers,” has stirred nationwide controversy. Journalists, political and online activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens all fear the restrictions will...

Kourosh Ziabari - The National Interest: The latest flare-up of violence between Israel and the Palestinians was extinguished on May 21 after eleven days of exchanging rockets and missiles, leaving behind a trail of casualties and destruction and further compounding what is an intractable dilemma that has demonstrated its resistance to resolution throughout decades. The conversation about the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can go on infinitely, and there are always questions that remain unanswered. But the less-meditated aspect of this multi-pronged, byzantine feud is the role external powers have been playing since 1948 in lengthening and exacerbating what is no longer a fracas over territory, but a scene of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Speculation is rife in Iran over who will steer the economy under President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, the conservative cleric and judicial head who clinched an easy victory in the June 18 election. The challenges Raisi faces are severe and experts are already casting doubt on his ability to remedy the economy given his limited statecraft experience and the ambiguity surrounding his plans for post-Covid economic recovery, taming hyperinflation and incentivizing investment. By any measure, Iran is in the throes of a cataclysmic economic recession, aggravated by the global pandemic and the economic sanctions that have crushed the livelihoods of ordinary citizens and businesses since former US president...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: It’s official: hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi is Iran’s new president and will formally succeed Hassan Rouhani in August. What’s less clear is the Islamic Republic’s new foreign policy and economic direction. Raisi secured 17.9 million popular votes, accounting for 61.9% of the ballot in a preordained result marred by the disqualification of pro-reform and moderate candidates. Raisi, a darling of the conservative establishment, saw his supporters celebrate in eastern Tehran on Saturday evening in defiance of millions of Iranians who boycotted the polls. As anticipated by many observers, voter turnout was a record low in the history of the Islamic Republic at 48.8%. The boycott was a silent...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s presidential election campaign has commenced in earnest, with seven Guardian Council-approved candidates vying to replace President Hassan Rouhani after his eight-year tenure. The 12-member Guardian Council, tasked with vetting and filtering candidates in elections, eliminated 585 other aspirants, many of them seen as moderate and pro-reform, narrowing the field to a handful of known conservatives. Chief among them is Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Republic’s Chief Justice known for his anti-Western views. He is widely viewed as the frontrunner in a field of candidates critics say has failed to capture the public’s imagination. Polling day is June 18. Distinguished pragmatist figures who...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: When facing down public dissent and unrest, Iranian authorities are known to downplay the magnitude of the various crises they confront. But officials are uncharacteristically sounding the alarm about a mounting water crisis, one which could trigger a full-blown conflict over access to the essential resource. According to Minister of Energy Reza Ardakanian, the coming summer in the Iranian calendar year will be the “driest in the recent five decades.” The minister said he was concerned about peaking demand for drinking water and cast doubt on the government’s ability to ensure an uninterrupted supply of water nationally. Iran is now confronting its most severe drought in half 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...

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: The countdown is on for Iran’s June 18 presidential election and early projections suggest a hardliner close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will likely emerge on top. At least two Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRCG) commanders have thrown their hats into the ring, both of whom would represent a hard turn from the “prudence and moderation” espoused by outgoing President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani’s approval rating now stands at a trifling 25% according to a Stasis agency poll, a huge dip from the 67% he enjoyed in February 2016 shortly after the implementation of the soon thereafter annulled Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Now, as US sanctions squeeze the...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The lifeless body of a famous young TV host was found in her apartment in the Sa’adat Abad district west of Tehran on Friday, and Iran’s social media are now awash with speculations, gossip, conspiracy theories and, lamentably, hate speech and celebrations over the mysterious death. Authorities have been considering different possibilities, including suicide and manslaughter, but investigations are still under way at this writing and nothing is confirmed conclusively. Azadeh Namdari was a 37-year-old television host who enjoyed popularity among some segments of Iranian society, particularly religious traditionalists, for her vocal advocacy of the Islamic hijab and trying to be the voice of the...