Category: News & Analysis

What the Protests in Iran Are Really About

Trump and Netanyahu are trying to take credit, but this movement is all about the people. By Vijay Prashad / AlterNet January 3, 2018, 8:50 AM GMT All eyes are on Iran. On December 28, as if from nowhere, protests broke out in […]

What’s behind the protests in Iran and what can you do?

Owen Tudor 02 Jan 2018 Over the New Year, a wave of protests has erupted in Iran, as people in towns all over the country took to the streets to air their grievances. Many protests were about basic economics – […]

As the Death Toll Mounts, Iran’s People Have Left the Reformists Behind

The government cannot move its forces from one city to another because the protests have spread everywhere. It has no effective means to suppress the people. IRANWIRE 01.03.18 5:39 AM ET The spark that ignited nationwide protests in Iran was lit on […]

Iran – Tehran blames ‘armed protesters’ as death toll rises amid mass protests

TWELVE people have already been killed in continuing protests across Iran, with armed groups trying to take over unidentified security depots, state TV reported today. “Some armed protesters tried to take over some police stations and military bases but faced […]

‘Is it art or pain?’ Iran’s Parastou Forouhar on family, death and the failed revolution

Every autumn, the Iranian artist Parastou Forouhar returns to Tehran from Germany to hold a memorial service for her murdered parents. Dariush Forouhar, a secular politician, and his wife, Parvaneh, were two of Iran’s most high-profile political activists when they […]

Iran Should Take American Threats Seriously

by Shireen T. Hunter It was not surprising that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, national security adviser to President Donald Trump, “officially put…Iran on notice,” following what he cited as “recent Iranian actions, including a provocative ballistic missile launch and an […]

Iran mourns its greatest filmmaker

Iranian film legend Abbas Kiarostami died July 4 at the age of 76 in France, thousands of miles away from his place of birth in Tehran, where he and other filmmakers ushered in the so-called Iranian New Wave. While Kiarostami […]

Rouhani’s “Open-Door” Economic Policy for Iran: Recipe for Indebtedness, Deindustrialization and Dependence

by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH A number of commentators have compared President Rouhani’s policies of opening Iran’s markets to Western business with those of China’s Deng Xiaoping following the death of Mao Zedong some four decades ago [1]. A closer look at […]

Iranian film-maker Mania Akbari: ‘Cinema threatens the government’

theguardian.com Tom Seymour Among the laptops and the lattes in the foyer of London’s BFI Southbank sits a dissident and exile. Film-maker Mania Akbari fled her native Tehran last summer. She is determined to examine marriage, abortion, infidelity and lesbianism […]

Iran’s Nobel Peace Laureate Speaks From Exile

“Human rights activists do not have the right to lose hope,” says Iran human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi. —By Bryan Schatz Mon Feb. 29, 2016 6:00 AM EST Iranian human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi Domenech […]