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
Current Analysis Off the Grid Air-conditioned transportation in Tehran is notoriously difficult to find. For pampered visitors such as the cultural anthropologists and documentary filmmakers from New York and Los Angeles who seem to converge on the Iranian capital every summer, a cool taxi ride to the northern parts of town reca Negar Mottahedeh • 18 min read
Current Analysis Round 12 for Iran's Reformists When, in mid-January 2004, the Council of Guardians rejected the applications of 3,600 out of nearly 8,200 people seeking candidacy in Iran's upcoming parliamentary elections, there was scant surprise in the country. President Mohammad Khatami, members of his government and sitting parliamentary deputies professed to be Kaveh Ehsani • 8 min read
Current Analysis To Deny Iran Atomic Weapons, Create a Nuclear-Free Region The 12-year standoff between Saddam Hussein’s former regime and the US displayed a circular logic: the Iraqi refusal to “come clean” about possibly non-existent weaponry simultaneously fed, and fed off of, Washington’s belligerence toward Iraq. With most eyes on the denouement of that malign symbios Chris Toensing • 3 min read
MER Article Football and Film in the Islamic Republic of Iran Maziar Bahari opens his documentary, Football Iranian Style (2001), at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium, where a large mural of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic until his death in 1989, peers down on the 110,000 soccer fans filling the bleachers. Like 75 percent of Iran’ Shiva Balaghi • 9 min read
Current Analysis Iran's Upcoming Parliamentary Elections Up for Grabs So confident are Iranian conservatives three months before the country's February 20, 2004 parliamentary elections that, in the words of one right-wing strategist, they have stopped talking about how to beat reformist candidates and begun to plan "how to run the nation." Conservatives believe that victory Siamak Namazi • 12 min read
Current Analysis Shirin Ebadi's Nobel Peace Prize Highlights Tension in Iran The decision to award the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, the intrepid Iranian human rights lawyer and former judge, took everyone by surprise—not least Ebadi herself. On the morning of October 10, when the award was announced, the Nobel winner was about to leave Paris, where she Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 9 min read
Current Analysis “Our Letter to Khatami Was a Farewell” Saeed Razavi-Faqih is a student at Tarbiat-Modarres University in Tehran and a member of the steering committee of the main national student organization, the Office for the Consolidation of Unity (OCU). Razavi-Faqih has played a key role in the leadership of Iranian student protests in December 2002 and previously. Kaveh Kaveh Ehsani • 12 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 Last Efforts of Iran's Reformers Student demonstrations in December 2002 revealed yet again the depth of public sentiment favoring political and economic reform in Iran. But the loose coalition of reformists under the leadership of President Mohammad Khatami has been unable to harness this “reserve power of revolution” to push its Ali Rezaei • 17 min read
MER Article Iranian Documentary Cinemas between Reality and Fiction Iranian cinema has made its name in the world with the poetic simplicity that marks the work of filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami. Shot entirely on location, his films have used non-actors to tell stories drawn from real events. Kiarostami’s great work Close Up (1990) follows the true story of Persheng Vaziri • 5 min read
Current Analysis Protest and Regime Resilience in Iran The largest pro-reform demonstrations since the summer of 1999 roiled Tehran on December 7-10, as student protesters press ahead with plans to hold campus referendums on the legitimacy of unelected bodies of conservative clergy that wield great power in the country's political system. On December 7, Iranian security Bijan Khajehpour • 7 min read
