January 2010
17 posts
How Should the United States Respond to Iran’s... →
Fatemeh Haghighatjoo was a member of Iran’s Parliament from 2000 to 2004 and a prominent advocate of women’s rights and political reform. She was one of the most courageous in standing up publicly to the hardline Iranian leadership. She resigned in 2004 after a crackdown on reformers and left Iran in 2005. She is now a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts–Boston. She was a committed...
Iran's political winds are shifting →
Glasnost in Iran? Iason Athanasiadis, who sampled the regime’s hospitality in Evin prison, counts the cracks that seem to be appearing in the facade of the Islamic Republic. Fellow journalist Nazila Fathi of the NY Times explores the same territory in her article The Iranian Exile’s Eye.
Iran's Women of War - The New York Review of Books →
One of the defining aspects of the opposition movement in Iran today is the prominent role of women. The regime seems to fear the women more than the men. And the result is that, according to one participant, “They treated us equally. They beat, clubbed and arrested us just like the men.” The author, Haleh Esfandiari, herself spent months behind bars in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Even...
Iran: Letter from Tehran “The Regime is Over” |... →
This is a letter from an opposition person in Iran. It may have a lot of wishful thinking. It is wise not to over-estimate the power of the opposition. But the letter also represents a perspective that should not be dismissed. The opposition may be different from the last time around in 1978-79, but it is real nonetheless.
YouTube - Iran: Protestors violently attacking the... →
Not your usual quiet demonstration.
Assassination in Tehran
Enduring America provides video of Iranian PressTV coverage of the assassination of the Iranian physicist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a respected Tehran University nuclear physicist, earlier today. The official Iranian government English-language news channel immediately concluded that the dissident Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), supported by the US and Israel, was responsible. My own take is a bit...
Jones talked Iran with Turkish FM - Laura Rozen -... →
The role of Turkey as an intermediary between the United States and Iran seldom comes out in the open, although it has been mentioned in passing on various occasions. Laura Rozen continues her digging on the US-Iran issue with this little-noticed report in the Turkish press of direct conversations by Turkey’s foreign minister, Iran’s foreign minister, and the US national security...
Exclusive: Iran offers nuke fuel deal - Laura... →
Laura Rozen, whose investigative reporting on POLITICO turns up one scoop after another, has a fascinating article about what appear to be nuclear contacts with Iran going on just below the surface. Iran says they have suspended uranium enrichment temporarily as a gesture of good faith and have made a confirmed counter-offer about a nuclear swap of Low Enriched Uranium from their stockpile. There...
In Iran, opposition appears to spread into... →
How does an opposition movement spread — especially when that movement is personally dangerous?
Crack journalist Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times shows how it expands one person at a time.
Four Endings to the Iran Story; Michael Fischer in... →
Michael M.J. Fischer is an anthropologist at MIT who has exceptional depth of experience with Iran. He was present in Iran during the Islamic Revolution 31 years ago and wrote an exceptional book about it. He has looked at four possible outcomes of the present turmoil in Iran.
Text of the Opposition Manifesto
The Manifesto
The following is an English translation (from the Persian) from the Jaras website of the manifesto signed by Iranian reform-movement founder and scholar Abdolkarim Soroush; dissident cleric Mohsen Kadivar; former parliamentarian and Islamic Guidance Minister Ataollah Mohajerani; investigative journalist Akbar Ganji; and Abdolali Bazargan, an Islamic thinker and son of a former prime...
An opposition manifesto in Iran - latimes.com →
Veteran reported Robin Wright describes the political and social demands of the Green movement in Iran as they are gradually emerging and taking shape.
Later she interviewed Abdolkarim Soroush, one of the leading Iranian intellectuals and one of the signatories of the new maifesto. His comments about the reasons for issuing this manifesto now are very interesting. Here are two exchanges:
...
Iran Shielding Its Nuclear Efforts in Maze of... →
Continuing with the same question as in the previous comment (see “Strategic Leaking” below), who might have a motive to leak this new NYT article about the fact that Iran has been putting a lot of its nuclear —and non-nuclear — factories and storage sites in tunnels dispersed throughout the country?
Of course, the major beneficiary of this story is the Mojahedin-e Khalq,...
Strategic Leaking by Gary Sick
Pretend for a moment that you are the president of the United States and you have gotten yourself into a bit of a hole with your Iran policy. First you offered to negotiate with Iran over nuclear (and potentially other) issues without the Bush preconditions. But there were powerful political forces that felt this was an example of your inexperience and even appeasement tendencies. So you unwisely...
The Decade's First Revolution? - Page 1 - The... →
We may be witnessing in Iran the first example of a post-modern rebellion. On the surface, there appear to be many similarities between today’s events and the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. However, the differences may be even more important.
Thirty-one years ago, the opposition had a single leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who inspired his followers from his exile abroad by sermons delivered...
Huff Radio: Left, Right & Center: Is America... →
An intelligent (though ultimately inconclusive) discussion of two “big” questions that are increasingly invoked with respect to Obama’s presidency.
The Current Iran Sanctions Bill - The Daily Dish |... →
Andrew Sullivan links to my comments, with Kelly Niknejad, on the subject of gasoliine sanctions against Iran.