Worldcrunch
With the suppression of last year’s anti-regime protests in Iran, its people can barely stomach the West’s resumption of its business-as-usual approach with the Islamic Republic. The key to challenging the renewed status quo, the author writes, may very well lie with the country’s women.
Iran can expect few real economic benefits from joining the China-dominated SCO, but its leaders hope China and Russia will help the regime tighten its grip at home.
Mass protests which lasted for months in Iran last year galvanized Iranians at home and abroad, in a way not seen since the 1979 revolution. That unity must be maintained as political capital for the next time Iranians challenge the Islamic Republic.
The Biden administration’s bid to revive a nuclear agreement with Iran is seen by some as a “weak” approach to exercising power in the Middle East. However, it may be an attempt to restrict Russia’s strategic influence inside Iran, which may serve both the West and Tehran.
Iran is reacting mildly to recurring Taliban provocations on its frontier. Is this due to diplomatic weakness, policy incompetence or is there some murky complicity inside Iran with the Afghan drug trade?
Impatient to be rid of a 40-year dictatorship, many Iranians have sunk into despair at the failure of protests last year to topple the Islamic Republic. They must be patient and sober in their immediate expectations, before a longer, ongoing process of change turns Iran into a free nation with the rule of law.
Among the Islamic Republic of Iran’s very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America’s left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.
Iran and Afghanistan have long had a tense relationship. Recent skirmishes at their shared border indicate that conflict is escalating, but the causes are unclear.
Russia attacks Ukraine with Iranian shahed drones, thinks about buying Iranian missiles, sells Iran Su-35 fighters, and starts repairing its civilian aircraft. How is it that Iran has become Russia’s main ally?
Finding themselves amid a range of strategic, economic and regional interests, Iranians in a post-regime future will have to deftly maneuver their country toward a peaceful, constitutional state. Bahram Farrokhi writes about the good, the bad and the worst-case scenarios.
A spate of recent attacks in Iran on clerics, seminarians and even state agents are prompting some to self-defense classes, while others are holing up inside.
The Arab League has readmitted Syria, ending the regime’s ten-year isolation. This is a defeat for the West — and an admission by the Arab states that there is no way around Assad.
Iran must one day write the history of the violence perpetrated on its women, especially under the 40-year Islamic Republic, if historiography is to serve its progress toward a peaceful, democratic society.
Media coverage of Iran’s mass protests of 2022 failed to truly show how most Iranians thought about the hijab or a general dress code for women. Centering the whole fight for justice in Iran around the headscarf has its risks.
Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei recently sent out a special envoy to ease tensions with wealthy Arab neighbors. He’s hoping to end the country’s international isolation and dismal economic conditions that contributed to last year’s mass protests.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have announced they will restore diplomatic relations. The news may have proved startling — especially China’s role — but is unlikely to dispel long-standing distrust between two regional rivals.
The move is seen as a coup for China in its efforts to assert itself as a global superpower, while also presenting itself as a responsible and peaceful nation in the eyes of the non-Western world. The agreement is expected to help reduce tensions in the region and revive hopes for peace in Yemen, where the two countries have been fighting a proxy war.
One of the chief victims of radical clerical rule in Iran has been religion, historically a bulwark of Iranian society now seen as a tool of tyranny.
Inside Iran, people are risking their lives to fight the oppressive Islamic Republic. Now, they need support from compatriots abroad and Western democracies to bring an end to this decades-long fight for democracy.
It is still not clear what was the exact target of an attack by three armed drones Saturday night on an arms factory in central Iran. But it comes as Tehran authorities appear increasingly vulnerable to both its foreign and domestic enemies, with more attacks increasingly likely.
In recent weeks, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has made repeated references to the end of Iran’s last regime in 1979. It may be a sign the country is indeed approaching another kind of revolution.
The European Union has been hesitant to classify Iran’s national security force as a terrorist organization because of fears of a reprisal.
The revolt in Iran began in protest of police brutality and the Islamic Republic’s rotten structures, but quickly became a “revolution of minds,” hastening the rise of a national community united in its resolve to live in a free and lawful state.
Here are the 10 most-read articles of the past year: Escape From Foxconn: Inside The COVID Lockdown Chaos Blocking China’s iPhone Production THE INITIUM Around China, Zero-COVID policy has shut down entire towns and workplaces. But in the high-tech Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, famous for cranking out iPhones, employees were forced to work even if […]
Worldcrunch asked its staff to choose the articles published this year that made a particular impression on them. They largely cover the major events that marked the news in 2022, from the war in Ukraine to the protests in Iran and the overturning of Roe v Wade in the U.S. Here are the 10 stories […]
In an unusual challenge to Iran’s senior leaders from Shia clerics in the country, a group of theologians and jurists in Qom say the state has been incompetent and had no right to execute protesters. At least two Iranian demonstrators have been executed this month, with the latest publicly hanged on a crane.
By executing a protester after a rapid trial, Iran’s clerical regime has taken its clampdown on the once-in-a-generation uprising to a new level. Observers fear there are more to come soon.
Reported declarations by some Iranian officials on revising the notorious morality police patrols and obligatory dress codes for women are suspect both in their authenticity, and ultimately not even close to addressing the demands of Iranian protesters.
Sending Ukraine advanced weaponry would be a response from Israel to reports that Tehran is sending ballistic missiles to Moscow.
The showdown between Iranian protesters and the clerical regime is another episode in a decades-long clash of theocracy and Western-style secular modernity. Its outcomes will reverberate across the entire Islamic world, so the West needs to pay attention.
Two anonymous Iranian Twitter users spoke about their hopes that Iran’s protests could hasten the end of the unpopular regime, and what Elon Musk’s takeover of the the platform could mean for them.
Amid increasing tensions prompted by ongoing anti-government protests, reports from Tehran show increased surveillance of some foreign embassies. Iranian agents are said to be particularly curious about visas to get out of the country.
If not cannon fodder, many of the reservists are facing shortages of food, weapons and promised payments.
Reports from Tehran suggest that some senior officials may be “quietly” taking exile in the South American nation led by Nicolas Maduro, a trusted ally of the Iranian regime.
Moscow has been forced to turn to rogue regimes for military supplies for its stalled invasion of Ukraine.
After months of trading barbs with Ukraine’s allies in the West, Tehran is now fully engaged alongside Moscow in the conflict, most notably with supplies of so-called Kamikaze drones. Although the fact that Iran still denies its activities is a sign that the partnership is loaded.
A member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards tells Kayhan-London that while they must stay hidden, “many” policemen, soldiers and officials sympathize with the mass protests against the Islamist regime. He also shares information about Iran’s role in the Ukraine war.