Posts tagged : "Iran"

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The resounding “No” the United Nations Security Council gave last Friday to a US-led initiative to extend indefinitely an arms embargo against Iran set to expire on October 18 may for some time be a favorite topic for discussion in think-tanks, media and academic institutions thirsty for new developments in the course of Iran-US relations. However, there are ramifications to this episode that need to be spotlighted irrespective of the sensational hype about the “victory” of Iran and the “humiliation” of the United States. The fact that other than the Dominican Republic, no Security Council member, not even Washington’s staunch allies Britain, France and Germany (which abstained), sided...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Awqaf, Iran’s powerful religious endowments agency, answerable only to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and operating a portfolio generating nearly one-quarter billion US dollars annually, is facing intense scrutiny this week following reports it has seized a slice of the iconic Mount Damavand. “Investigations reveal that the Awqaf has secured an endowment deed for one out of 11 registered parcels of Mount Damavand, from the foothills to the summit,” reported Hamshahri, one of Iran’s most reputable national newspapers. The deed for the tranche of the nation’s most famous mountain was secured through a ruling by the Supreme Court, and without input from the national Forests, Range and Watershed...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran has been rocked over the past week by the shocking death of a fugitive judge, raising the stakes in a high-profile corruption trial that has put the top echelons of the Islamic Republic under the microscope. The former judge, Gholamreza Mansouri, was found dead on June 19 after falling from a window of the Duke Hotel in Bucharest, Romania, taking with him potentially explosive information in the trial of the influential Akbar Tabari. Tabari, the former deputy head of administrative affairs at Iran’s judiciary, is being indicted along with 21 associates for creating a “criminal group” within his office. Prosecutors allege Tabari obstructed justice and received massive bribes in the form...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: Four decades after the Islamic Revolution was birthed, more Iranians are emerging critical of the state’s stringent, uncompromising anti-American rhetoric and tend to be skeptical of the rationale behind the authorities’ insistence on continuously fanning the flames of hostility with the United States. Critics have pointed to the high costs of this unwarranted ideological brinkmanship for the Islamic Republic while underlining its waning traction among the younger, middle-class Iranians for whom the definition of national interest takes on pragmatic overtones spurred by a genuine desire to be integrated with the international community and redeem their country from an entrenched...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Ultraconservatives in Iran have seized upon the wave of protests against police brutality and racism in the United States to highlight the failings of their longtime adversary and to herald its “collapsing regime.” In recent days, the front pages of hardline newspapers and news agencies have been flooded with pictures of protests in various US cities. Headlines describe how law enforcement authorities, instructed by President Donald Trump, have cracked down on demonstrators. Apocalyptic projections about the imminent downfall of the United States and “imperialism” are ubiquitous. “Washington Collapsed!” proclaimed the right-wing Mashregh News agency, which published a video of...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Protests over the continued scarcity of water in the southwestern Iranian province of Khuzestan have once again thrown into relief the economic and social woes of a region credited with being the beating heart of Iran's petroleum industry. The region routinely provides a boost to the national economy, while it simultaneously stagnates in poverty and underdevelopment. Gheyzanieh province boasts a population of 25,000 and is located 40 kilometres east of Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan Province. It hosts the largest petroleum companies of Iran, and produces 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. The district sits on upwards of 600 oil wells. The majority of Gheyzanieh residents are farmers or have...

Kourosh Ziabari - openDemocracy: Six months after the Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 catastrophe, families of the 176 victims and the governments involved, are still waiting for accountability. On the morning of 8 January, the Kiev-bound UIA flight PS752 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran’s international airport, killing all passengers and crew members on board. Iran’s aviation authorities initially attributed the deadly incident to technical error in the aircraft. However, intelligence agencies of a number of countries sounded the alarm that the jetliner was targeted by missiles most probably fired from a close range and that technical error was out of the question. After three days of denial, the...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: The international community is gripped with the fear of an unprecedented health crisis the like of which has not been seen since the Second World War. The novel coronavirus is wrecking lives in some 190 countries and territories and has thus far caused nearly 309,000 deaths. The economic disruption triggered by the pandemic is believed to be the largest global recession since the Great Depression of 1930s. Extensive cancellation or deferral of sporting, cultural, religious and political events; crisis of legitimacy plaguing political establishments across the world; increased vulnerability of natural ecosystems; debilitating stagnation of international tourism industry; widespread closure of schools and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As the death toll from the novel coronavirus in Iran approaches 7,000 and cases surge past 100,000, experts are warning that an untimely reopening in progress could precipitate a new wave of infections. “There is no other path ahead of us,” said President Hassan Rouhani, in explaining to the public his decision to ease a weeks-long nationwide lockdown. Iran remains the Middle East’s epicenter of Covid-19, with more than double the number of recorded infections in Saudi Arabia, the region’s second worst-hit country. The Rouhani administration’s appeal to the International Monetary Fund for a US$5 billion emergency loan to fight the public health crisis has not been responded to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: On April 28, a group of 400 Iranian clerics and seminarians wrote a letter addressed to the Chief Justice Ebrahim Raisi, asking him to arrest and indict the Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi and the Secretary of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace Abolhassan Firouzabadi over what they believed was the growth of “vulgarity” in Iran’s cyberspace and the failure of the two officials in completing work on the “national internet.” “National internet” or the National Information Network, as its official name goes, is the product the Iranian hardliners wish to usher in as a domestic replacement for the internet, the information system...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s tourism sector, the pearl of the post-nuclear accord and one of its last economic lungs under sanctions, now faces coronavirus-induced unraveling. The industry “cannot survive and will collapse” in the face of the recession precipitated by the global Covid-19 crisis, Iran’s official IRNA news agency assessed late last month. The stark warning came even as Iranian authorities proceeded with a phased re-opening of certain businesses and places of worship. Should the government of President Hassan Rohani fail to intervene and support the tourism industry, more than 1.5 million jobs risk being lost, IRNA reported. Banafsheh Tehrani is one of some 13,000 Iranian tour guides and tour...

Kourosh Ziabari - Responsible Statecraft: The exodus of Afghan immigrants fleeing Iran in the recent weeks because of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the Islamic Republic has largely gone off the radar of global media, but is actually a tragedy that has the potential of spawning broad, devastating consequences. Iran has been hosting between 3 and 4 million Afghans, of whom only 1 million are registered refugees with legal status and entitlement to government support. Afghans in Iran have faced discrimination on different levels, and unequal access to healthcare services is one of them. For decades, international organizations have been offering financial assistance to Iran to subsidize its support for the Afghan...