MER Article Cultural Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran Article 2 of the constitution of Islamic Republic of Iran states, “The Islamic Republic is a system based on belief in…cultural independence.” This clause goes on to exalt the “sciences and arts [as] the most advanced results of human experience.” The very next article of the charter calls for Shiva Balaghi • 2 min read
MER Article How Islamic Was the Revolution? Like all revolutions, the 1979 revolution in Iran is too complex to be captured by a single adjective. It has come to be known as the “Islamic” Revolution, for it authored a regime ruling in the name of Islam and with the utopian mission of creating a just and pure Arang Keshavarzian • 2 min read
MER Article Why the Islamic Republic Has Survived Obituaries for the Islamic Republic of Iran appeared even before it was born. In the hectic months of 1979 -- before the Islamic Republic had been officially declared -- many Iranians as well as foreigners, academics as well as journalists, participants as well as observers, conservatives as well as Ervand Abrahamian • 10 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Spring 2009) Tehran, February 9, 1979. The Shah was gone. Iran was governed, if governed is the word, by Shahpour Bakhtiar, a former minister in the cabinet of Mohammad Mossadeq, the nationalist premier whose CIA-engineered overthrow had restored the monarchy 26 years earlier. The country was roiled by massive d The Editors • 7 min read
Current Analysis Bring In the Dead Beating their chests and wearing black, a procession of young men and women filed toward the gates of Tehran’s Amir Kabir Polytechnic University on February 23. The mourners -- drawn primarily from the ranks of the Basij militia and unaffiliated hardline Islamist vigilantes -- were carrying the rema Rasmus Christian Elling • 16 min read
Current Analysis The Song Does Not Remain the Same Starting in the late 1990s, and especially following two stories by CNN's chief international correspondent, the British-Iranian Christiane Amanpour, Westerners were treated to a slew of articles and broadcast reports aiming to “lift the veil” on Iran. Amanpour’s second story revolved around “youth Ramin Sadighi, Sohrab Mahdavi • 13 min read
Current Analysis Yes, We Really Must Talk With Iran If American troops are ever to come home from Iraq and Iraqis are to have a decent chance at peace and prosperity, the United States must open up a new chapter in its Middle Eastern diplomacy. The Iraq Study Group in 2006 made this point when it called for “diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions Charles Knight, Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article Paradise Lost, Gone Shopping Shahram Khosravi, Young and Defiant in Tehran (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Norma Claire Moruzzi • 6 min read
Current Analysis War Is Peace, Sanctions Are Diplomacy The White House is pressing ahead with its stated goal of persuading the UN Security Council to pass far-reaching sanctions to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear research program. Sanctions are what President George W. Bush is referring to when he pledges to nervous US allies that he in Carah Ong • 13 min read
Current Analysis Iran's “Security Outlook” Widespread apprehension attended the June 2005 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, at least among those Iranians who had approved of the country’s direction under the reformist clerics led by President Mohammad Khatami. Their worries had little to do wi Farideh Farhi • 14 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Spring 2007) Twin specters hang over the Middle East of the American imagination -- the perceived rise in the geopolitical power of the region’s Shi‘i Muslims and the dark shadow cast by the sectarian reprisals that increasingly propel the Iraqi civil war. In the United States, pundits and Democratic presidential candidates The Editors • 15 min read
MER Article Worker Protest in the Age of Ahmadinejad In June 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, after an intense campaign in which he exerted great effort to present himself as the defender of the poor and the working class. These classes, badly hurt by neo-liberal economic policies in the period Mohammad Maljoo • 12 min read
