Author: Siyavash Shahabi
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Iran’s Uprisings: Social Roots, Not Security Fantasies
The claim that Iran’s protests are primarily the result of foreign interference has become a convenient shortcut—one that avoids engaging with the social reality of the country itself. Iran is a society of nearly ninety million people, spread across hundreds of cities, with deep class divisions, long histories of labour struggle, women’s resistance, and political…
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The Bureaucracy of Killing in Iran, and Orientalism
The news is horrifying for all of us. Not only because of the people who have been killed, but because of the shape of death itself. Seeing the bodies of hundreds of people in black bags. Seeing death being “processed” like an administrative file. Like a queue. Like an invoice. In the middle of an…
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Iran: When Politics Becomes a Black Market
In a non-democratic society like Iran, the rise of a war-hungry far right is not a cultural accident. It’s the direct outcome of a system of governance designed to block ordinary, collective routes to change. When there are no independent unions, no real political parties, no free media, and no genuine right to assemble, politics…
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The West’s Favorite Fantasy: A “Responsible” Islamic Republic
It looks like Trump’s view of Iran’s fascist state and a big chunk of the Western Left’s view have basically converged, because they’ve landed in the same ugly place: treating the Islamic Republic as a legitimate adult in the room, and Iranians as background noise. Trump is out here thanking a fascist regime for “cancelling”…
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Beyond the Headlines: Why Iran’s Protest Wave Can’t Be Reduced to One Name
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? In…
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Iran After the Blackout: From Repression to Resistance
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 brought…
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From Venezuela to Everywhere: The Logic of Rebuilding Empire
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 the…
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Council of the Left: An Iranian Experiment
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 by…
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The War on Minds: Inside Regime’s Coordinated Arrests of Left Scholars
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 called…
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Political Maturity in an Age of Binaries
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 of…
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Panahi’s Cinema and the Art of Smuggling Truth
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 a…
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Iran’s New ‘Hijab Situation Room’ and the Failure of Control
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 and…
