Current Analysis

Another Brick in the Wall

At ten o’clock in the morning, Thursday October 5, 2017, about 500 teachers gathered in front of the Budget and Planning Office in Tehran. [1] They were joined by thousands of colleagues protesting in front of education offices in a reported 21 cities across the country. Turning Global Teachers’

Zep Kalb • 10 min read

Current Analysis

Labor and Class in Iran

Mohammad Maljoo is a Tehran-based economist researching labor issues and the transformation of capital-labor relations in post-revolutionary Iran. Widely published in several languages, Maljoo is also the Persian translator of numerous books on political economy by thinkers such as Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson and Albert Hirschman. The bulk of

Paola Rivetti • 14 min read

Current Analysis

Lessons Learned (and Ignored)

On May 23, 1997, Mohammad Khatami, who had spent most of the 1990s as head of the National Library, defeated Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri, the speaker of Parliament, to become president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The election was a turning point in post-revolutionary history—the underdog beat the

Naghmeh Sohrabi, Arang Keshavarzian • 19 min read

MER Article

What is Activism?

In early 2011, the world watched as millions of people took to the streets across the Arab world to demand the fall of regimes, or at least substantial political reforms. As the weeks and then months unfolded, the broadcast media adopted split screens to show simultaneous live footage of crowds in m

Kevan Harris, Jillian Schwedler • 11 min read

Current Analysis

Release Homa Hoodfar

We are deeply concerned by the arrest and ongoing detention of Homa Hoodfar, an eminent anthropologist and contributor to Middle East Report, by the Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hoodfar traveled to Iran in early 2016 to visit family and conduct scholarly research. She was scheduled

The Editors • 1 min read

Current Analysis

The Day Tehran Shook

Speaking to a journalist days after the February 26 elections in Iran, leading reformist Mohammad Reza Aref stated, “When I saw the results for Tehran coming in, I was shocked.” Aref had expected the top of the list he headed to do well in the contest for Tehran’s 30 seats in the Tenth Majles, or Pa

Farideh Farhi • 11 min read

MER Article

Karimi, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran

Pamela Karimi, Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (New York: Routledge, 2013).

Norma Claire Moruzzi • 4 min read

MER Article

Class Reshuffling Among Afghan Refugees in Iran

When I was interviewing Afghan refugee writers and intellectuals in Iran in the mid-2000s, I soon realized that there was a gulf between their occupations and their aspirations. [1] The young poets who were the subjects of my research in the northeastern city of Mashhad often earned a living as manu

Zuzanna Olszewska • 6 min read

MER Article

Whither Iranian Petrochemical Labor?

On November 4, 2012, there were two snapshots of a deeply unequal struggle between labor and capital in Iran—a struggle that had begun two years earlier with a strike of temporary workers at the Mahshahr Petrochemical Complex. In Mahshahr, at the head of the Persian Gulf, Faraveresh, one of the five

Mohammad Maljoo • 13 min read

MER Article

The Politics of Recognition

The victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the presidential election of 2005 came as a shock to many segments of Iranian society, particularly the reformists within the Islamic Republic who believed they had pushed aside such arch-conservatives for good. Ahmadinejad prevailed thanks to the massive partic

Fatemeh Sadeghi • 11 min read

MER Article

The Iran Deal as Social Contract

For years discussion of Iran’s nuclear program and how best to address the surrounding impasse focused on international relations—chiefly, the extent to which the United States and the Islamic Republic could and should trust each other to reach a negotiated settlement. Amidst all the conjecture, the

Arang Keshavarzian • 12 min read

MER Article

Talking Class in Tehroon

Persian, like any other language, is laced with references to class, both blatant and subtle. With idioms and metaphors, Iranians can identify and situate others, and thus themselves, within hierarchies of social status and privilege, both real and imagined. Some class-related terms can be traced ba

Rasmus Christian Elling, Khodadad Rezakhani • 9 min read