Search Results for: basij

IRGC takeover? Iran protests may change leadership, but not regime

     

Iran’s Supreme Leader demanded the judiciary punish those “who disrupt economic security” on Wednesday, following protests over the rial’s collapse and a tightening of U.S. sanctions pressure that has set… Read more »

Iran’s economic crisis a consequence of political malaise: creates options for shift in regime?

     

All this week panicked Iranians have gathered in throngs outside banks and other financial businesses hoping to buy dollars, as the government seeks to head off a collapse in the… Read more »

What the Iran protests were not

     

Iran’s most significant protests in almost a decade may have calmed, but anger that fueled the nationwide demonstrations lingers and could erupt again at any time, according to experts. Siavush… Read more »

Iran ‘outsmarted itself’ in silencing civil society?

     

Iran in large part considers peaceful activism a “threat to national security,” and those who warn about festering popular grievances and rampant corruption are treated as seditionists, notes Tara Sepehri… Read more »

Iran polarized ahead of pseudo-election

     

After an unexpectedly close race between President Hassan Rouhani, the pragmatic incumbent, and hardline challenger Ebrahim Raisi (left), ordinary Iranians on the eve of the vote appeared united only in… Read more »

Iran election exposes Islamic Republic’s façade and true face

     

The presidential election in Iran this Friday is being billed as yet another contest in which a spirited but ineffectual reformer is fighting it out with a hard-boiled theocrat. Meanwhile,… Read more »

Authoritarians mobilizing illiberal non-state actors against democratic forces

     

Authoritarian regimes are mobilizing and orchestrating ‘uncivil’ society groups and illiberal non-state actors against democratic forces, reports suggest. The uniformed men who shot Venezuelan pro-democracy demonstrator Carlos Moreno were not… Read more »

Will Iran’s next election ‘reconfigure political landscape’?

     

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s hardliners may want to sideline President Hassan Rouhani as May’s elections approach, but getting there is risky, according to a prominent analyst. Traditionally,… Read more »

Ideology underpins Iran’s rising axis of resistance?

     

The ideology underpinning the Iranian-led axis of resistance in the Middle East has evolved, according to Harvard analysts Payam Mohseni and Hussein Kalout. From a primarily state-centered enterprise, it has… Read more »

Reformists, hardliners vie to influence choice of Iran’s next supreme leader

     

There is a lot of manoeuvring in Tehran to influence the decision on who will be Iran’s next supreme leader. There is no public succession plan for the most powerful… Read more »