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Beyond the Headlines: Why Iran’s Protest Wave Can’t Be Reduced to One Name
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As Iran’s new wave of nationwide protests enters its twelfth day, and reports of a sweeping internet blackout continue to emerge, an old question has returned to the center of political debate with renewed urgency: are political figures leading the streets, or are they trying to catch up with a movement already in motion?…
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Iran After the Blackout: From Repression to Resistance
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Video showing the brutal massacre of dozens of people by Islamic fascism in Tehran. Iran Human Rights says it has so far verified the identities of 192 victims. These videos are from the bodies of those killed on Thursday, at the Kahrizak forensic center in Tehran. Someone who has just managed to leave Iran…
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From Venezuela to Everywhere: The Logic of Rebuilding Empire
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They keep telling us the problem is “misconduct,” “overreach,” or a few illegal decisions made by the wrong people in Washington. It’s a comforting story because it turns history into a courtroom drama: find the violation, fix the procedure, move on. But what if the point isn’t the violation? What if the point is…
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Council of the Left: An Iranian Experiment
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On 10 January 2026, a cluster of Iranian Marxist parties and organizations will gather in Stockholm under the banner of the “Council for Cooperation of Left and Communist Forces.” On paper it’s just another exile conference. In reality, it’s a rare attempt to weld together fragments of a socialist left that has been scattered…
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The War on Minds: Inside Regime’s Coordinated Arrests of Left Scholars
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In the past 24 hours, security forces carried out coordinated raids on the homes of several left-wing researchers and translators in Tehran, arresting Parviz Sedaghat, Mahsa Asadollahnejad, and Shirin Karimi. They confiscated the belongings of Mohammad Maljoo and summoned him for questioning; the home of Heiman Rahimi was also searched, and he, too, was…
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Political Maturity in an Age of Binaries
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Ignorance is not harmless once it walks into the street. I learned that in 2004, watching Iranian football fans do a Nazi salute to German players, not out of ideology but out of emptiness — no history, no memory, no sense of what that gesture meant. Today I see a similar emptiness in parts…
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Panahi’s Cinema and the Art of Smuggling Truth
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At an event held in honor of courageous, resilient cinema, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and legendary director Martin Scorsese sat down for a deep conversation about obstacles, inspirations, and the power of film under extreme restrictions. The talk, in New York, gave Panahi space to speak about the roots of his passion and how…
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Iran’s New ‘Hijab Situation Room’ and the Failure of Control
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On Friday, October 17, 2025, the secretary of Tehran province’s “Enjoining Good & Forbidding Wrong” headquarters, announced a new “Situation Room for Chastity & Hijab,” alongside the organization and activation of “more than 80,000 trained volunteers” plus 4,575 trainers and judicial auxiliaries (“zabet-e qazaei”). Officials framed it as a cultural-social campaign run with “cultural…
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How Taghvai’s Cinema Teaches Us to Replace Paranoia with Practice
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Nasser Taghvai, a renowned Iranian filmmaker and creator of enduring works, who for years resisted censorship and chose seclusion rather than making films under official policies, has passed away at 84. He was a pioneer of the Iranian New Wave and, at the same time, widely known to the public for his popular works.…
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After Jina Amini: Bodies, Labor, and the Regime’s Social Defeat
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After “Woman, Life, Freedom,” Iran’s hijab law has neither changed nor been repealed; yet in social reality the state has failed to enforce it effectively. The streets of Tehran and other cities now look less like scenes of discipline and more like a daily referendum: women without hijab or with diverse forms of dress…
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Iran: CFT, FATF, and the Politics of Credible Execution
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At its session on October 1, 2025, the Expediency Council approved Iran’s “conditional accession” to the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT). According to the Council’s spokesperson, this approval will be interpreted “within the framework of the Constitution and domestic laws.” Domestic and international media described the move as a…
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UN Snapback on Iran: The Profiteers’ Economy vs. Public Welfare
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Sanctions are never just “sender vs. target.” They create corridors—ship-to-ship transfers, free-trade zones, real-estate havens—where sanctioned oil turns into offshore balances while basic goods at home get pricier. Unless diplomacy plus domestic rule-of-law closes these corridors, the profiteer economy outlives the sanctions and workers keep paying through prices, unsafe jobs, and repression. (This is…