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
Current Analysis The Fight for Iran's Democratic Ideals Over the weekend thousands of Iranian students continued their protests to demand political reform. Their voices were raised in support of Hashem Aghajari, the college professor who has been sentenced to death for blasphemy. But the student movement is broader than dissent over one injustice. Saeed Razavi-Faqih, Ian Urbina • 2 min read
Current Analysis Ground Shifting Under Mullahs After a court in Iran sentenced dissident academic Hashem Aghajari to death for challenging clerical rule, several thousand university students took to the streets in Tehran. They protested for about two weeks before the government threatened to crack down and declare a state of emergency. No one ha Ian Urbina • 4 min read
MER Article Iran and the Middle East The external relations of the Islamic Republic of Iran are, in large measure, dependent on politics within that country, and on the slow and often interrupted process of post-revolutionary change which Iran is undergoing two decades after the fall of the Shah. As has been widely reported over the past Fred Halliday • 16 min read
MER Article Nature Has No Culture In April 2000, Abbas Kiarostami received the Akira Kurosawa Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. While in the United States, Kiarostami visited New York City, where the Andrea Rosen Gallery mounted the first US exhibition of Kiarostami’s photographs. The photographs, which Anthony Shadid, Shiva Balaghi • 6 min read
MER Article Iranian Cinema Following the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the inauguration of the Islamic Republic, many predicted that new restrictions would kill off Iran's cinema. But Iranian film has survived, undergoing remarkable transformations in parallel with the wider changes in Iranian culture and society. Today, Ira Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 9 min read
Current Analysis On the Eve of Iran's Presidential Elections After waiting for an hour under the hot sun, sometimes excitedly and sometimes impatiently, to hear President Mohammad Khatami speak, halfway through his speech the crowd began heading for the exits of Tehran's Shirudi Stadium. Both local and foreign media commentators took the mass exit as further proof Naghmeh Sohrabi, Arang Keshavarzian • 4 min read
Current Analysis Khatami and His "Reformist" Economic (Non-)Agenda Mohammad Khatami is widely expected to be the winner in Iran's June 8 presidential election. He will, most probably, serve a second term, despite his own reluctance to enter the race, and the disappointment of those who gave him his surprise landslide victory in the tight contest of Sohrab Behdad • 7 min read
MER Article The Rise and Fall of Fa'ezeh Hashemi Both politics and women’s political activities are radically different under the Islamic Republic of Iran from what they were before the 1979 Revolution. But one fundamental fact has not changed: Politics is still the domain of men, and women who enter the field tend to be related -- either by blood Ziba Mir-Hosseini • 11 min read
Current Analysis Caught in the Middle Women will be a key constituency in Iran's upcoming May presidential election, which is widely regarded as a referendum on the "reform" movement symbolized by President Mohammad Khatami. Though women voters can be found across the Iranian political spectrum, one group—women journalists—will continue to Persheng Vaziri • 5 min read
Current Analysis Iran's Conservatives Face the Electorate In May, Iranians will go to the polls to pass judgment on the record of President Mohammad Khatami and the reform movement he symbolizes. Although observers of Iran typically characterize the Islamic Republic's factional divisions as a single left-right split dividing the regime into unified "reform Arang Keshavarzian • 5 min read
