Guest Contribution by Reza Marashi
The following piece was written by Reza Marashi in Foreign Policy Magazine on January 19, 2012. Mr. Marashi is Director of Research at National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and a former Iran Desk Officer at the U.S. Department of State. The image in this piece, however, …
In his NYT op-ed today entitled ‘Don’t Do It, Bibi,’ Roger Cohen issued another stern warning to his favorite target, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In his piece, he warns about the grave repercussions if Israel were to attack Iran without political support …
Asghar Farhadi’s thrilling drama from Iran won the best foreign language film at the 69th Golden Globes on Sunday. In accepting the award, Mr. Asghar Farhadi, the director of the movie, dedicated the award to the people of Iran, whom he described as a “truly peace-loving …
The past year in Israel has been anything but boring. The Palestinians were rejected for full-membership in the United Nations, Israeli Corporal Gilad Schalit was returned alive to Israel, Turkey downgraded its diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, the Israeli population took to the streets for social change, …
Irrespective of one’s ideological affiliations, 2011 was an inconvenient year for the Middle East, to put it mildly. The speed at which Arab Spring brought about change has been baffling to most of us and inevitably prepared us for more drastic changes to come. Now let’s take a look at …
Book Review
Assassins of the Turquoise Palace
by Roya Hakakian
322 pages- published by Grove Press
“Number seven,” he said to the agent beside him”. These were the words uttered by Parviz Dastmalchi, a survivor of and witness to an assassination that shook Europe and the continent’s relations with the …
Summary of Turkish foreign policy in 2011
2011 was in many ways a milestone in modern Turkish history. First, the Arab Spring not only shook the Western influence in the region, it also ended the post-colonial period in the Middle East, marked by authoritarian-suppressive regimes, which in their way mirrored and …
In an exclusive and wide-ranging discussion with Reza Akhlaghi, senior writer at the Foreign Policy Association, Ramin Jahanbegloo and Mehdi Khalaji talk about the current state of Iranian affairs.
Topics discussed include:
• Shiite clergy and institutionalization of violence in Iran;
• Socio-cultural factors and civil, democratic institutions in …
The following is a statement by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) in Washington D.C.
Washington, DC – NIAC deplores the racist and violent depiction of what is supposed to be a group of cowboys donning “Iranians Suck” t-shirts while lynching an Iranian on a poster at a restaurant in Katy, …
Informed Americans about international and foreign policy affairs have voiced their frustration about U.S military interventions abroad and the potential for more of such interventions. These frustrations are undoubtedly the results of having been witness to consistent decline in the standards of living by Americans over the past decade, which …
Explosive campaign on Change.org asks Sweden’s minister for migration and asylum policy to reconsider deportation of 20 Iranian Kurds facing prosecution and possible execution in Iran.
Amsterdam – More than 56,000 people from over 40 countries have joined a popular campaign on Change.org demanding the Swedish government …
The following op-ed piece was written by Hassan Zarehzadeh Ardeshir. Hassan Zarehzadeh Ardeshir is a human rights defender and award winning journalist, currently living inToronto, Canada. He was the spokesman for the United Student Front, the biggest student secular democrat group in Iran, and founder of the first student human …
That education is a universal right is a principle enshrined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, for a large part, in the psyche of humanity. Therefore, the idea that one would be barred from higher education based on one’s religious convictions becomes absurd …
The following is a contributing piece from guest writer Ladan Yazdian. Ms. Yazdian is a foreign affairs and Middle East specialist. She holds a BA and an MA in political science. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech, working on global security, foreign policy, international relations, and human …
Ever since the failure of their reform agenda and their subsequent marginalization by the coming to power of Ahmadinejad, Iran’s reformists have been in near constant search of a well-articulated stance on their role in the country’s political future. The reform agenda by Iranian reformists was …
