Iran
The Elusive Quest for a Kurdish State
Kurdish communities in the Middle East have been struggling for independence, autonomy and civil rights since at least the 1880s. While Kurdish movements across the region have suffered from fragmentation, the more formidable obstacle to fulfilling Kurdish aspirations are regional and global geopolitics. Djene Rhys Bajalan explains the many challenges, both historically and in the present day. This article is from the forthcoming issue of Middle East Report, “Kurdistan, One and Many.”
The Odyssey of Iranian Sociologists Under Pressure
US sanctions on Iran, along with the COVID-19 pandemic and domestic political restrictions, are shrinking the public sphere in Iran, including sociological research and study. The Iranian Sociological Association, a large organization working all across the country, is a research hub that engages the public and the government in tackling society’s problems. Shahrokni explains how its important role is, however, being undermined by immense internal and external pressures.
Rethinking US Policy Toward Iran: A Forum
While US relations with Iran have been adversarial since the 1979 Islamic revolution, President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) in 2018 and his belligerent implementation of a “maximum pressure” policy has on more than one occasion risked...Rethinking US Policy Toward Iran: A Forum
The Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward Iran defines much of US policy toward the Middle East. Any effort to imagine new paths for US policy in the region will need to reformulate US-Iran relations. Middle East Report reached out to seven scholars and policy analysts for their thoughts on some critical questions. This forum is a preview of MERIP’s forthcoming issue, “Exit Empire – Imagining New Paths for US Policy.”
Voices from the Middle East: Doctors, COVID-19 Patients and Dilemmas of Treatment under Sanctions in Iran
Caring for COVID-19 patients without the proper equipment and medicine is difficult anywhere. In Iran it is especially devastating to know that lives are being lost due to US sanctions. Two pediatricians at provincial hospitals in Iran describe their experiences.
Mutual Aid and Solidarity in Iran during the COVID-19 Pandemic
In Iran, the state at first wavered in response to the spread of the coronavirus but eventually led a mass mobilization across the government and military to try to monitor, treat and contain COVID-19. Beyond the official response, charities, mosques and professional groups are responding to the rapid changes in public life with new forms of social organization and grassroots mutual aid.
Voices from the Middle East: US Sanctions on Iran Devastate the Health Sector
US sanctions against Iran, along with Iranian government policies, have created insurmountable obstacles for domestic drug manufacturers who are struggling to provide people with the health care they need, especially now as COVID-19 ravages Iran. An Iranian pharmaceutical company employee explains why procuring supplies has become so difficult.
The Making of a “Resistance Parliament” in Iran and the Challenges Ahead
Iran’s parliamentary elections in February handed the conservative supporters of the Supreme Leader a major victory. Abedini and Armin explain how and lay out why the regime is poorly positioned to deal with popular discontent, crushing US sanctions and the spreading coronavirus.
Iraqi Protesters Thwarted by Trump’s Iran Policy
The recent US assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Soleimani has had dire consequences for the Iraqi protest movement and its calls for substantive changes in the Iraqi political system.
Protesting Clerical Welfarism in Iran’s Pious City
Protests in Iran’s holy city of Qom reveal that social fragmentation in Iran runs so deep that even within a community as intimately related to religious learning and the state as Qom, the divisions and boundaries go beyond easy distinctions between regime and opposition, hardliner and reformer or secular and pious. The uneven nature of Iranian society, which is being exacerbated by international sanctions and ever-expanding modes of privatization and deregulation, has worked its way into all sectors of a society that is at once cognizant of this condition and also still divided.
Abadan
In fall 1978, Abadan’s oil refinery workers played a decisive role in the Iranian Revolution by joining the national mass strikes. Just two years later, Abadan and the adjoining port city of Khorramshahr were shelled by the invading Iraqi army and effectively destroyed during the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88), which scattered their population of over 600,000 as refugees across Iran and abroad.
The Psycho-Politics of Wellbeing
Iranians have repurposed, reconfigured and transliterated the psychiatric concepts of depression and trauma as depreshen and toroma. In this wide-ranging interview, Orkideh Behrouzan speaks with Sheila Carapico about the politics of Iranian mental health care policy, public discussion of the effects of 40 years of revolution and war and the ways in which a younger generation is forming identities through depreshen-talk. Behrouzan is a physician, medical anthropologist, scholar of science and technology and the author of Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran. She teaches in the anthropology department at SOAS, University of London.
Iran Dispatch
Trumpism has discombobulated Iran. Revulsion against President Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric and policies has achieved the rare feat of unifying the disgruntled Iranian public and the fractious ruling elite. This nationalist backlash barely conceals the internal crises facing Iran at every level—social, political, environmental and economic.
How the Houthis Became “Shi‘a”
It is wrong to code what is happening in Yemen as a Sunni-Shi‘i conflict. The Houthis are not an Iranian proxy but a predominantly local political movement founded in long-standing, Yemen-centric grievances and power struggles. The cynical use of sectarian language casts the conflict in Yemen as part of an epochal, region-wide struggle rather than a local civil war made more deadly for Yemeni civilians by Saudi and Emirati intervention.
A “Blue” Generation and Protests in Iran
The protests reveal a widespread disaffection with all existing political factions. New slogans calling for the “death” of “the dictator” and for a “referendum” alternated with those in favor of the Pahlavi monarchist regime that ruled Iran before the 1979 revolution. This public enunciation of an all-or-nothing approach to political change in Iran is an unexpected development, and is indicative of a new level of rejectionist “blue” alienation, especially among Iranian youth.
Another Brick in the Wall
At ten o’clock in the morning, Thursday October 5, 2017, about 500 teachers gathered in front of the Budget and Planning Office in Tehran. [1] They were joined by thousands of colleagues protesting in front of education offices in a reported 21 cities across the...Labor and Class in Iran
Mohammad Maljoo is a Tehran-based economist researching labor issues and the transformation of capital-labor relations in post-revolutionary Iran. Widely published in several languages, Maljoo is also the Persian translator of numerous books on political economy by...Lessons Learned (and Ignored)
On May 23, 1997, Mohammad Khatami, who had spent most of the 1990s as head of the National Library, defeated Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, the speaker of Parliament, to become president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The election was a turning point in post-revolutionary...What is Activism?
In early 2011, the world watched as millions of people took to the streets across the Arab world to demand the fall of regimes, or at least substantial political reforms. As the weeks and then months unfolded, the broadcast media adopted split screens to show simultaneous live footage of crowds in multiple countries. Some regimes were toppled and many were seriously shaken, but no regime in the region was left untouched. The high visibility of the uprisings, together with massive street protests on nearly every continent, led Time to name “the protester” as the 2011 Person of the Year.
