Category: Journal
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The Islamic Republic and the Seizure of a Popular Revolution
In the official calendar of the Islamic Republic, April 1 marks the day the “system” was consolidated. But in Iran’s critical memory, this date is not simply the anniversary of a referendum. It is the anniversary of the moment when a mass, diverse, anti-despotic revolution was compressed into a single, pre-directed answer: “Islamic Republic, yes…
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The Strait of Hormuz: Where War on Iran Becomes Everyone Else’s Crisis
In Iran, talking about a “global energy crisis” can sometimes feel like talking about something distant, something that belongs to other people’s lives. In a society that has spent years dealing with inflation, a collapsing currency, sanctions, structural corruption, and political repression, all alongside the organized looting of resources and the cheapening of labor, a…
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How a School In The Middle of War Became a Battleground Over The Truth
The Minab school case is not only about a deadly strike. It is about what happens to truth, language, and human judgment once war begins. On the morning of February 27, 2026, as the first wave of US and Israeli attacks on Iran was still unfolding, Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab collapsed. In the…
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Under Fire, Still Speaking of the Neighborhood
The article published by Shargh first has to be read in relation to the conditions in which it was produced. This text was not written in a free and normal setting. It was written in the middle of war, communication breakdown, public fear, population displacement, and within one of the most restricted media environments in…
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Mojtaba Khamenei and the Rule of the Shadows
When it comes to Mojtaba Khamenei, the issue is not just whether he has become, or may become, his father’s successor. The more important issue is the kind of power concentrated around his name: faceless power, backstage power, security-driven power, and power deeply shaped by the logic of control. If we put together the many…
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Iran and Kurdistan in the Grip of Two Violences
What we are seeing today in part of the current Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan is no longer just a tactical slip or simply a sign that they cannot understand the real balance of forces. Organizations such as PJAK, PAK, and Khabat had been waiting for foreign intervention and for a chance to…
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Why “Neutral” Anti-Imperialism Keeps Losing
Let’s be blunt. Kidnapping, arresting, or killing a political figure of one country by another state is defined as illegal in international law, not because powerful states suddenly became humane, but because even ruling elites after World War II understood that if this logic isn’t contained, competition between states turns into permanent chaos and endless…
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The Performance of Stability: Tehran Under the Lens
When a major international broadcaster describes Tehran as “a family festival” weeks after mass killings, the issue is not poetic tone. It is narrative power. In an authoritarian context, language does not merely describe reality; it rearranges it. After thousands were shot in the streets and communication blackouts were imposed to contain the evidence, the…
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Killing Without Guilt: The Political Engineering of Fascist Violence
What we are witnessing in Iran is not an isolated case of religious extremism, but a fully developed political logic of fascist violence. Protest is redefined as war, citizens are recast as enemies, and killing is stripped of moral responsibility. Violence is no longer treated as an emergency measure; it becomes a rational, ethical, and…
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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…
