Iran is engaging in talks with the United States as it feels the weight of economic, diplomatic, and domestic crises. The outcome is not clear and democracy isn’t within reach, but its civil society hasn’t yet lost its resilience
In the face of rising international isolation and domestic asphyxiation, one fact about Iran has hardly ever been contested. A dynamic if ailing civil society, including a press that raises a voice of dissent whenever possible, prevents the country from becoming the North Korea of the Middle East.
As Tehran teeters without a vision to guide it, realism doesn't appear to be trumping Washington's idealism. The Iran-US understanding is long overdue, and still, the world will benefit from it whenever it happens.
Arash Azizi’s What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom is arguably the most solid work of non-fiction so far explaining the socio-political backdrop against which the first women-led democratic uprising in the Middle East emerged from Iran.
In Iran, bereavement is consciously instrumentalized by the state as a tool of social control that feeds off institutional grief and reproduces it in a symbiotic relationship driven by religion.
The intransigence of Iran's supreme leader refusing negotiations with the United States proves that he is willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of his people only to make a point: his costly ambitions overpower everything that defies the revolution he inherited. Sanctions cannot touch that.
Cyber aggression is no longer about a clash of ideas. In exchanges that supposedly begin to be polished conversations, Iranian users often end up wishing each other harm, insulting their respective female relatives, and if they don’t trade death threats, they conclude by blocking their interlocutor.
The people of Iran are largely firm in their position that there’s no logical justification for a military showdown with Israel. A full-fledged conflict, initiated by either side, is a no-go zone for a lot of Iranians—even if we don’t know the exact numbers.
There’s only one ingredient in the Iranian people’s worldview that has not been outperformed by a disastrous mélange of crackdowns on civil liberties, economic maladies, corruption, and the specter of an all-out confrontation with Israel: nationalism
The former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency is a household name in conflict resolution. When Hans Blix was awarded the $50,000 Olof Palme Prize, the memorial fund recognized him by stating that he “worked throughout his life for the benefit of international law, peace and the United Nations.”
