Middle East Research and Information Project

Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971

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Kaveh Ehsani

Kaveh Ehsani is associate professor of international studies at DePaul University and a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

Voices from the Middle East: US Sanctions on Iran Devastate the Health Sector — Iranians buy protective masks in a drug store to prevent contracting the coronavirus disease COVID-19, in Tehran, Iran February 20, 2020. WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Nazanin Tabatabaee/Reuters

Covid-19 Coverage

Voices from the Middle East: US Sanctions on Iran Devastate the Health Sector

US sanctions against Iran, along with Iranian government policies, have created insurmountable obstacles for domestic drug manufacturers who are struggling to provide people with the health care they need, especially now as COVID-19 ravages Iran. An Iranian pharmaceutical company employee explains w

Kaveh Ehsani • 4 min read

MER Article

Abadan

In fall 1978, Abadan’s oil refinery workers played a decisive role in the Iranian Revolution by joining the national mass strikes. Just two years later, Abadan and the adjoining port city of Khorramshahr were shelled by the invading Iraqi army and effectively destroyed during the Iran–Iraq war (1980

Rasmus Christian Elling, Kaveh Ehsani • 10 min read

MER Article

Iran Dispatch

Trumpism has discombobulated Iran. Revulsion against President Donald J. Trump’s rhetoric and policies has achieved the rare feat of unifying the disgruntled Iranian public and the fractious ruling elite. This nationalist backlash barely conceals the internal crises facing Iran at every level—social

Kaveh Ehsani • 6 min read

MER Article

Survival Through Dispossession

Since the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the burning economic issue in Iran has been the privatization of public assets and, more recently, the elimination of subsidies for a vast array of goods and services. Leading figures, including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hav

Kaveh Ehsani • 21 min read

MER Article

Iran: The Populist Threat to Democracy

The August 31 UN Security Council deadline for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program passed with the Islamic Republic, not unexpectedly, refusing to acquiesce. In the summer of 2005, the newly inaugurated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reversed his predecessor Mohammad Khatami’s voluntary su

Kaveh Ehsani • 15 min read

MER Article

Neo-Conservatives, Hardline Clerics and the Bomb

Even as the US military launched a long-rumored offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja in early November 2004, the subject of anxious speculation in Washington was not Iraq, but Iran. President George W. Bush’s victory at the polls on November 2 returned to office the executive who located Iran upon

Chris Toensing, Kaveh Ehsani • 14 min read

MER Article

High Stakes for Iran

As neo-conservatives inside and outside the Pentagon step up their rhetoric against the Islamic Republic of Iran, internal polarization in Iran also seems to be reaching a breaking point. Hardliners in the Iranian regime have managed effectively to block most significant attempts at reforming governance over the past four years.

Kaveh Ehsani • 12 min read

MER Article

"The Temptation of Democracy"

Launched in 1992, Goft-o-Gu (Dialogue) aimed to open channels of constructive dialogue between Iran’s disparate political and intellectual currents. Given the highly polarized and repressive atmosphere at the time, Goft-o-Gu’s publication was a strikingly bold move. The journal discussed issues that

Kaveh Ehsani • 11 min read

MER Article

"The Conservatives Have Misjudged"

During his brief tenure as vice minister of Islamic guidance and culture, Ahmad Bourghani oversaw the issuance of hundreds of press permits and the flowering of an independent Iranian press for the first time since 1979.

Kaveh Ehsani • 8 min read

MER Article

"God Hasn't Died in This Society Yet"

Alireza Alavitabar is a key theoretical tactician of Iran’s religious New Left, an ideological trend to which President Khatami belongs. Alavitabar's greatest impact has been as the editor of the path-breaking Bahman (1996), Rah-e No (1998) and Sobh-e Emrooz (1999), publications that have advocated democratic reforms within

Kaveh Ehsani • 12 min read

MER Article

Municipal Matters

Although the 1997 election of Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran is widely considered a political watershed, an intriguing question remains unanswered: Why did such a grassroots intervention not occur earlier? What had changed to unite Iran’s heterogeneous interests and constituencies at this par

Kaveh Ehsani • 17 min read

MER Article

Do-e Khordad and the Specter of Democracy

A shadow haunts Iran, the shadow of democracy and popular sovereignty. Twenty years ago the Islamic Revolution established a polity based on two contradictory elements: a republic of equal and sovereign citizens, and a hierarchical theocracy of pastoral power descending from an unelected religious l

Kaveh Ehsani • 6 min read