Current Analysis Paradox and Possibility in Iran's Presidential Election Just a short time ago, the Iranian presidential election being held on June 17, 2005 was regarded as a non-event. The prospect that the election would advance debates over political reform and democratization appeared weak, in the shadow of the self-described defeat of Iran’s parliamentary reformist movement Mohammad Maljoo, Arang Keshavarzian • 8 min read
Current Analysis Iran’s Nuclear Posture and the Scars of War In waging war on Iraq, one of the points the Bush administration sought to prove was that President Bill Clinton’s policy of dual containment had failed -- that despite a decade of threats, sanctions, military action and UN-led disarmament, Iraq had continued to develop weapons of mass destruction ( Joost Hiltermann • 13 min read
Current Analysis Iran's Human Rights Record Should Be As 'Intolerable' As Its Nukes The Islamic Republic of Iran is in hot water with Washington and European capitals because of its apparent pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Dangling carrots of increased trade, the Europeans are trying to persuade Iran to renounce atomic ambitions. Skeptical of these methods but bogged down in Iraq, the B Kaveh Ehsani • 2 min read
MER Article Fatemeh Haqiqatjoo and the Sixth Majles On February 23, 2004, two days after the conservative victory in the elections for the Seventh Majles, for which the Guardian Council banned over 2,000 reformist candidates, including some 80 current deputies, the reformist-dominated Sixth Majles accepted the resignation of Fatemeh Haqiqatjoo. Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 15 min read
MER Article Iran, the Vatican of Shi'ism? The Iranian state, controlled de facto by the conservatives in the government, promotes the idea that Iran is the center of Shi‘ism. It bases its argument on the fact that Iran is a Shi‘i-run state, whereas Shi‘i Muslims in other parts of the world live in states that are dominated by Sunnis, and so Roschanack Shaery • 11 min read
MER Article Abbas's Photographs of Iran My work is visual. It’s immediate. My photographs show the process that is happening in Iran. —Abbas Born in Iran in 1944, Abbas moved to Algeria with his family when he was eight years old. As a young school¬boy at the École de Garcons d’El-Biar, Abbas wrote a short story entitled “A Grand Voyage” Shiva Balaghi • 6 min read
MER Article The New Conservatives Take a Turn The conservative forces that took majority control of Iran’s parliament, or Majles, in the February 2004 elections were not swept into office by a mass movement. Conservative candidates had the help of the Council of Guardians, a body of 12 senior clerics [1] vested by the constitution of the Islami Farhad Khosrokhavar • 9 min read
MER Article The New Landscape of Iranian Politics After seven turbulent years in which a reformist movement transformed Iran’s political landscape as well as its international image, conservatives recaptured two thirds of the parliament in February 2004. “Victory” for the conservatives was achieved, in large part, by the intervention of the unelect Morad Saghafi • 18 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
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 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
