Siyavash Shahabi
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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After “Woman, Life, Freedom,” Iran’s hijab law has neither changed nor been repealed; yet in social reality the state has failed to enforce it effectively.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…
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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…
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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,…
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Iranian Cinema in a Shapeless Moment: Dissecting Survival, Agency, and Paradox in a Transitional Era
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One of the latest conversations in cinema and art, hosted by an Iranian YouTube channel, brought together two of today’s most prominent Iranian film directors. Their discussion about censorship and cultural authoritarianism was gripping. But one point in their remarks clearly showed how different Iranian society is from three years…
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Children in the Firing Line: Why We Should Call it a Genocide
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Gaza is breathing under a planned machinery of destruction: continuous bombing of residential areas, a total blockade, imposed famine, the dismantling of health care and water services, and organized obstruction of life-saving aid. These are not scattered wartime errors; they are a chain of decisions and directives targeting the Palestinian…
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Fifteen Days in the Life of Workers in Iran
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Over the last fifteen days, reports from different towns and industries in Iran painted a consistent picture: people who work—factory hands, municipal crews, oil and gas employees, platform drivers, miners, and border laborers—are carrying the country’s crises on their backs. The same problems return again and again: unpaid wages, unstable…
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Iran’s Reform Front Statement: Insiders Expose a System in Crisis
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Less than two months after the “ceasefire” between Iran and Israel, on August 17 Iran’s Reform Front (including more than 30 political party and groups) released a statement titled “National Reconciliation: A Golden Opportunity for Change and a Return to the People,” offering immediate and practical steps for structural reforms…
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Environmental Activism and Resistance in Kurdistan
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In early August 2025, four environmental activists lost their lives while trying to control a wildfire in the Abidar mountains near Sanandaj, in Iran’s Kurdistan province. They were not the first to die this way. In recent years, at least 20 Kurdish environmental defenders have been killed in similar circumstances…
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Authoritarianism in Exile: the Future Iran Doesn’t Need
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In late July, a political gathering took place in Munich that brought together a wide range of Iranian right-wing opposition figures in exile under title of “National Cooperation to Save Iran.” On the surface, it looked like another conference of activists and politicians trying to present themselves as an alternative…
