Posts tagged : "Politics"

Persepolis Kourosh Ziabari - Stimson Center: Modern-day Iran is the inheritor of a hallowed civilization and ancient monuments that have survived millennia of invasions, natural disasters, and political upheaval. While Iran’s current diplomatic and economic isolation discourages foreign tourism, the country’s cultural heritage remains one of the nation’s key distinctions, cherished by Iranians and many others around the world who hope to be able to explore it in person one day. There are presently 26 registered UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Iran, more than in Japan, the United States and Greece on the roster of places catalogued by the United Nations’ cultural and educational agency. Among them are well-known...

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...

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...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: As the administration of the ultra-conservative Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi finds itself lonely on the world stage with a dwindling appetite for foreign relations beyond “strategic” partnerships with China and Russia, the functioning of foreign embassies based in Tehran is becoming increasingly unsteady. In the wake of the nationwide protests that followed the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini in custody of the morality police, the Islamic Republic’s relations with Western nations went down a slippery slope of estrangement as more countries raised their voice in support of the protesters and decried the crackdown. Amid this period of precarity, embassies in Tehran...

Kourosh Ziabari - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington: The tidal wave of the coronavirus pandemic is subsiding. Increasingly countries are returning to normalcy as vaccinations and herd immunity are prevailing, and states are beginning to bounce back from the throes of the crisis. In Iran, the second country in the Middle East to confirm a coronavirus case, and once a hotspot of contagion, the government’s idiosyncratic response to the health emergency and its ideological handling of the immunization plans still resonates with many as the symptom of a broader malaise: the perception that to the government, politics supersede Iranian lives. It remains unclear when the first case was diagnosed versus what was...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: On December 6, the mayor of Tehran, Alireza Zakani, was the special speaker at the Sharif University of Technology in a ceremony to mark Students Day. He was one of several conservative ideologues deployed to university campuses by the Iranian government to initiate dialogue with students and placate them as the nationwide protests triggered by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini in September showed no sign of abating. Universities were particular hotbeds of protest and activism. While the authorities consummated a campaign of mass arrests, sham trials and violence on the streets, they also touted “dialogue.” They made a stab at appealing to young people through speeches like the one...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The nationwide uprising that ensued after the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police in September added a new dimension to the global media coverage of Iran and dislodged the exclusive focus previously set on the country’s nuclear program and the stalled negotiations to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Now, the media are spotlighting the heroism of the Iranian women braving an overwhelming crackdown to reclaim their dispossessed rights, as well as the often-untold stories of ordinary citizens who are these days the protagonists of an epoch-making, dramatic struggle for freedom. These stories are being relayed to an...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s talented, educated youth have consistently cultivated the nation’s public image as one characterized by vibrancy and motivation to push the boundaries. Whether mathematicians, computer scientists, anthropologists or artists, Iranians have carved out a universal reputation as hard-working and creative, even though the lion’s share of this brilliance is bearing fruit overseas, not at home. Over time, the country’s name has become a shorthand for its deep-seated brain drain, sapping the Islamic Republic’s strength to address challenges and deliver for its people. The authorities routinely complain about this human capital flight coming at the expense of the nation’s progress, and...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Protests continue to roil Iran after the shocking death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman arrested by the morality police for an “improper hijab,” who is widely believed to have been beaten to death while in custody of the guards. Despite a crackdown that has so far claimed at least 76 lives, Iranians are not ready to back away and are raising their voices, more strongly than ever, demanding the abolition of the vice squads and the annulment of the hijab mandate. No apologies have been offered by the authorities, no resignations extended, and the Ministry of Interior, tasked with investigating the incident, insists that Mahsa Amini had pre-existing conditions that caused her to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: The heinous stabbing attack against British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was so inexcusable that even the administration of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi disowned it, contending that the Islamic Republic could not be blamed for that outburst of violence against the persecuted writer, who had just begun to exercise some publicity after keeping a low profile for several years. But as the literary world was rallying around Rushdie to reiterate his right to free speech and denounce aggression to stifle contrarian thought, it transpired that the attack, celebrated by hardliners in Tehran as an act of divine vengeance against an apostate writer, was also silently saluted by members...

Kourosh Ziabari - TRT World: It was once the largest saltwater lake in the Middle East, and the sixth largest on Earth. Along its fertile banks, civilisations rose and fell. It was the cradle of life, sustaining millions of lives through millennia — humans, animals, birds. It is now dying. Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is fast on its way to desiccation or drying up. And the emergency management authorities of the West Azerbaijan province have warned as recently as July 14 that more than 95 percent of the highly saline lake’s water has disappeared. This follows a two-decade pattern of annually losing 40 centimetres of its water level. Although officials blame the runaway drying of the lake to the conundrum of climate change and...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: As the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling has sparked a global debate over abortion, the Iranian people have turned to social media to reject the hardline administration of President Ebrahim Raisi’s aggressive population policy and its baby boom ambitions. In a country of 85 million in which the median age is 31 and almost two-thirds of the population are under 40 years of age, the Iranian government is pushing for resistance against demographic ageing and jumping through hoops to boost the fertility rate. In 2013, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei explicitly demanded that the population should nearly double to 150 million and the...