Tag: Islamic Republic
Iran Is Not a ‘Normal’ Country
Hours after Hamas’s horrific attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, all of Iran’s parliamentarians rose from their seats to chant “Death to Israel!” and “Palestine is victorious; Israel will be destroyed!” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other top Iranian officials, including the former head of the country’s military forces, expressed their support for Hamas, declaring that Iran “will stay with the Palestinian freedom fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem.”
These statements were not symbolic. Despite cleverly choreographed
All the Iran Options Have Failed
Just three weeks before Hamas’s gruesome attack on southern Israel, the first anniversary of Iran’s “Women, life, freedom” movement quietly passed on September 16. Even in the heat of events in Israel, the women’s uprising was worth a lament: If the theocracy hadn’t subdued it, Iranians might have toppled the Islamic Republic; and among all the other salutary effects, Hamas’s onslaught against Israel could conceivably have been smaller and less ambitious, or might not have happened at all.
Hamas, an
Iran Will Keep Taking Hostages If the Money Keeps Flowing
The first time I saw Siamak Namazi was while I was in my cell in Evin Prison, in Tehran. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the longest-held American hostage in Iran was being kept only a few hundred meters away from where I crouched on stained and threadbare carpet, my eyes fixed on a dusty wall-mounted television screen. I didn’t understand Farsi back then, but I knew Amrika, and had come to recognise the word jasoos,
When Iran Says ‘Death to Israel,’ It Means It
In the days leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, distinguished journalists, analysts, and activists argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin was unlikely to green-light an assault that could go wrong in so many ways and instead might be bluffing. They employed a variety of political rationales to explain away the military buildup and escalating rhetoric. At the core of each explanation lay a troika of errors: denuding an adversary of agency, engaging in mirror-imaging, and, perhaps most of all,