MER Article Ahmadinejad's Nuclear Folly The tumult in Iran since the June 12 presidential election is, without a doubt, the most significant sequence of events in the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution itself. No other occurrence -- not the Iran-Iraq war, not the 1989 turmoil that sidelined Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, until t Farideh Farhi • 12 min read
Current Analysis Tehran, June 2009 The morning after Iran’s June 12 presidential election, Iranians booted up their computers to find Fars News, the online mouthpiece of the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus, heralding the dawn of a “third revolution.” Many an ordinary Iranian, and many a Western pundit, had already adopted such Kaveh Ehsani, Norma Claire Moruzzi, Arang Keshavarzian • 19 min read
Current Analysis An Artist as President of the Islamic Republic of Iran? Something’s happening here. In one of the largest street demonstrations in Tehran since the 1979 revolution, thousands filled Vali Asr Street (formerly known as Pahlavi Street) on Monday, forming a human chain nearly 12 miles long and stopping traffic for nearly five hours. They wore strips of green Shiva Balaghi • 7 min read
MER Article Activism Under the Radar Few would disagree that the 1979 Iranian revolution, despite the massive participation of women, rapidly became a catastrophe for women’s legal status and social position. Under the Shah, Iran had a mildly forward-looking family law limiting men’s rights to polygamy and unilateral divorce, and, at least theoretically, Homa Hoodfar • 14 min read
MER Article Foot Soldiers of the Islamic Republic’s “Culture of Modesty” “Simplicity has disappeared,” laments Minoo Shahbazi, energetic at 50, and animated in the cheap manteau and black scarf she wears beneath her chador. Look at her 16-year old son, she says: “He likes to wear famous brand-name clothes. Obviously, I do not agree. He is very different from me.” Fatemeh Sadeghi • 16 min read
MER Article The Islamic Republic's Failed Quest for the Spotless City It is characteristic of modern social revolutions to seek moral improvement of the population, as well as redress of the injustices of the ancien regime. In 1794, Paris echoed with calls to “righteousness”; in 1917, the Bolsheviks denounced the bourgeois decadence of the czarist era. For Ayatollah R Azam Khatam • 14 min read
MER Article Baluchistan’s Rising Militancy Baluchistan, a region long associated with instability and armed conflict, straddles the borders of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan is home to the largest number of Baluch, at 5 million, and the largest province of Baluchistan, at 43 percent of the country’s land mass. In Iran, the Baluch, Sonia Ghaffari • 11 min read
MER Article Thirty Years of the Islamic Revolution in Rural Iran Development, or modernization, of the Iranian countryside became an ideological imperative at the very outset of the post-revolutionary period. Both the religious and secular leaders of the Islamic Revolution believed that the deposed Pahlavi monarchy deliberately had neglected agriculture and rural economic development in its efforts to create in Eric Hooglund • 15 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 Change of Power The poet Esmail Khoi once remarked to Ardeshir Mohassess that many of his drawings focused on oppression, depicting both the oppressor and the oppressed as ugly and animal-like. “You seem to suggest,” Khoi observed, “that those who suffer from oppression are no less cruel that their oppressors.” Ard Shiva Balaghi • 3 min read
MER Article Tied Up in Tehran I want to begin with a story. Like the best of stories, it is true. Norma Claire Moruzzi • 17 min read
MER Article The Reformist Moment and the Press The story of Iran’s “reformist moment” of 1997-2005 can be told through the story of the Iranian press in this period. Previously, the Islamic Republic had severely restricted freedom of the press, issuing permits only to newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets that mimicked the hard line of sta Ramin Karimian • 2 min read
