Once allies, Iran and Israel now face deep hostility due to the Islamic Republic’s anti-Israel stance; many Iranians, frustrated with the regime’s oppression and failed policies, view Israel as a natural ally, embracing shared interests and historic bonds
China, Russia, and Iran’s Information War Against Americans
Russo-Iranian Cooperation and Threats to U.S. Interests
America Should Lend Them a Hand
Fate is sometimes kind to America. Such merciful intervention happened last summer when Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, rejected the Biden administration’s effort to revive former President Barack...
Introduction U.S. policy since the 2009 election-related uprising in Iran has gradually incorporated a variety of human rights related sanctions and designations to name, shame, penalize, and deter Iranian...
Last week, a Shiite American of Lebanese origin, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, attempted to murder the Indian-born British-American author Salman Rushdie. Matar’s social media posts display staunch support...
What might happen in Iran if America or Israel bombed the nuclear sites?
The Switzerland of the Middle East can still serve as a center for regional diplomacy. But even Switzerland does not offer safe haven to terrorists.
Ethnic Politics in the Islamic Republic
Iran faces the democracy conundrum: in multi-ethnic states where one non-majority group prevails over others, democratization entails risk of loss of empire.
The State Department released a video earlier this month showcasing the rights Iranians enjoyed before a radical Islamist dictatorship came to power in 1979. Many Iranians and Iranian Americans celebrated...
Spreading disinformation is one of the tools that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has used to eliminate rivals since it first entered Iran’s economic arena. Disinformation campaigns are...
A small number of merchants in Tehran on June 24 protested against the rapid depreciation of the rial, the Iranian currency. One day later, that small protest turned into the largest demonstratio...
Iran’s modern history is replete with examples of the citizenry seeking to reclaim power from despots. The Pahlavi dynasty, which ruled between 1925 and 1979, regularly faced popular rebell...
It’s easy for scholarly books that go against the Zeitgeist to slip by unnoticed, but it would be a mistake to overlook Misagh Parsa’s “Democracy in Iran: Why It Failed and How...
The Blind Man’s friend: Don’t suffer because of the past. You censored books for the sake of God. . . . What is...
The great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun centered his understanding of history on asabiyya, which is perhaps best translated as esprit de corps mixed with the will to power. In his maste...
Everyone has his or her own judgment as to what is the enduring lesson of the Iranian Revolution. Some are rooted in economic determinism, while others may find strength among social theories. To...
“To my esteemed enemy, Mohammad-Javad Zarif.” Iran’s former ambassador to the United Nations remains very proud of this dedication in his copy of Henry Kissinger’s ...