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Iran
Audacity and Insolence
| Steve Shalom | February 17, 2011 |
According to the Israeli government, two Iranian warships plan to sail through the Suez canal en route to Syria. Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, declared that "this is a provocation that proves that Iranian audacity and insolence are increasing." The international community, warned Lieberman, "must understand that Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations."
End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran; Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran
| by Campaign for Peace and Democracy | Winter 2011 |
We, the undersigned, oppose the U.S.-led campaign to impose harsher sanctions on Iran, and the ongoing threat of war against that country. Despite Washington’s claims, its policy is clearly not animated by a genuine concern for protecting the world from the threat of nuclear war; otherwise how could Washington support such nuclear-armed states as India, Israel, and Pakistan, or maintain its own huge nuclear arsenal? Nor is U.S. policy driven by the goal of defending democracy.
Campaign for Peace and Democracy Iran sign-on
| Joanne Landy | October 23, 2010 |
New Politics readers and friends are invited to sign the Campaign for Peace and Democracy statement "End the War Threats and Sanctions Program Against Iran - Support the Struggle for Democracy Inside Iran." The statement is being circulated widely in the United States and internationally. To sign on or see the evolving list of signers go to http://www.cpdweb.org/stmts/1015/stmt.shtml.
Joanne Landy and Thomas Harrison, Co-Directors, CPD, cpd@igc.org. The statement along with a selected list of signers is below:
Green Is the New Green: Social Media and the Post-Election Crisis in Iran, 2009
| by Negar Mottahedeh | Summer 2010 |
The Persian language blogosphere is rich, varied, and dynamic. Of the 100 million blogs registered around the world in 2005, 700,000 were Persian language, either inside Iran or in the diaspora. Of these, over 60,000 are updated frequently. With over 20 million Iranians connecting to the internet, and over 600,000 Iranians signed up on Facebook by the presidential election of the summer of 2009, the Iranian cyber community is by far the most dynamic such community in the Middle East, and one that is unambiguously diverse.
Iran: Reform and Revolution
| by Yassamine Mather | Summer 2010 |
Recent news about Iran has been dominated by U.S. attempts to increase sanctions, and one could be forgiven for thinking the world hegemonic capitalist power is preparing war against a major nuclear power. The reality is far different: all the fuss is about a country where nine months of mass protests have not only weakened the state but also divided the ruling circles, making reconciliation at the top impossible.
Revolutionary Prefigurations: The Green Movement, Critical Solidarity, and the Struggle for Iran's Future
| by Danny Postel | Summer 2010 |
A year has now passed since the explosive appearance of Iran’s Green movement in June 2009. Suspecting malfeasance in the official tally of the country’s June 12 presidential election, millions of Iranians took to the streets. The historian Ervand Abrahamian, author of the classic Iran Between Two Revolutions, described the silent rally of June 15 at Azadi (Freedom) Square in Tehran (London Review of Books, 7/23/09):
Revisiting Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
| by Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson | Summer 2004 |
February 2004 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. From September 1978 to February 1979, in the course of a massive urban revolution with millions of participants, the Iranian people toppled the regime of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (1941-1979), which had pursued a highly authoritarian program of economic and cultural modernization. By late 1978, the Islamist faction led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had come to dominate the antiregime uprising, in which secular nationalists, democrats, and leftists also participated.
Middle East Developments
| by Stephen R. Shalom | Winter 2007 |
"What we're seeing here, in a sense, is ... the birth pangs of a new Middle East...."
-- Condoleezza Rice, July 21, 2006
Iranian Workers say: "We have nothing to lose but our unpaid wages"
| by Yassamine Mather | Winter 2010 |
Half a year after the demonstrations of June, 2009 in Iran, it is probably easier to examine in more depth the events that changed the country's political landscape. The bourgeois media in Iran and abroad is unanimous: the presidential elections of June 2009 and predictions of a Moussavi victory gave hope that change within the exiting regime was possible; millions of Iranians took part in the elections; the regime rigged the results; the rest is history.
Birds and Cages: Reading Sex and the State in Janet Afary's Sexual Politics in Modern Iran
| by Amy Littlefield | Winter 2010 |
Janet Afary is hopeful about the future of women's rights in Iran. And she identifies many reasons to be so, from secret individual acts of resistance by women against husbands, fathers, and dictators to collective feminist struggle and today's One Million Signatures Campaign for equal rights. But Sexual Politics in Modern Iran also reveals the full force of the cultural and political systems that the Iranian movement for gender equality confronts.