Fear and learning: Arab world not finished with democracy
A vibrant protest movement is visible in Iran and across the Middle East — but it isn’t calling for Islamic revolution, much less the tired misrule of the mullahs, The… Read more »
Category: Iran
Iran’s ‘Chernobyl’ moment? U.S. pursuing strategy of ‘regime disruption’
There have been fresh protests in Tehran more than three days after the Iranian authorities admitted they accidentally shot down a Ukrainian airliner on January 8, killing 176 people, RFE/RL’s… Read more »
Iran’s totalitarianism, weak civil society could prompt ‘social explosion’
Prominent Iranian artists, inside and outside the country, have reacted to the brutal crackdown of recent protests in Iran, The Independent reports (HT:FDD). Amnesty International says Iranian authorities are continuing… Read more »
Iran ‘a powder keg’: Protests ‘strike at heart of regime’s legitimacy’
The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatened the U.S. and its allies Monday as he addressed a pro-government demonstration attended by tens of thousands of people denouncing last week’s… Read more »
Iraqi freedom vs. Iranian domination – or failed state?
For more than a month, Iraq’s protesters have withstood bullets and stun grenades, tear gas and water cannons, as they chanted, danced and called for the ouster of the entire… Read more »
New social movement challenging Iraq’s sectarian politics
The largest mass protests to hit Iraq and Lebanon in decades are posing a direct challenge to the influence Iran has gained in both countries as demonstrators seek to overturn… Read more »
Time to recognize the ‘new faces of Iranian protest’
The Islamic Republic of Iran has come under fierce criticism amid reports that the judiciary amputated a man’s fingers for theft in the latest in a series of incidents… Read more »
‘Coups and Revolutions’: non-state actors, dysfunctional states impede Arab democracy
The slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi “has become the symbol of our collective moral conscience, the voice for the voiceless in the Middle East,” his fiancée Hatice Cengiz wrote in… Read more »
Bipartisan democratic unity can counter ‘brotherhood of authoritarianism’
If Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are allowed to crush Hong Kong’s democracy movement, it will mark a grave and significant victory for authoritarian ideology over democracy, says… Read more »
Captive Society: What do Iran’s leaders really fear?
What do Iran’s leaders really fear? New York Times columnist Bret Stephens asks. Above all, a revival of the Green Movement that nearly toppled the regime following the stolen presidential… Read more »