Journalists are not supposed to become the story. We are usually on the other side of it. Someone lives through an event and we write about it. Someone is gone and we report their passing. A crisis unfolds and we try to find the right words to tell its story.
In the Persian classic Shahnameh, Ferdowsi tells the story of Zahhak, the usurper king who is kissed on each shoulder by Ahriman, the spirit of evil, and finds two black snakes growing from the wounds.
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s latest appointments to Iran’s top security and paramilitary institutions are not routine personnel changes but a reflection of his priorities for tighter control over the institutions directing war and domestic repression.
Iran’s World Cup match against Egypt has become a test not only of FIFA’s approach to inclusion but also of whether LGBTQ+ Iranians can claim visibility on one of the world’s biggest sporting stages.
The Memorandum of Understanding between Iran and the United States may strengthen the Revolutionary Guards, weaken Persian Gulf security and deepen China's access to Iranian energy. Above all, however, it leaves Iranians to face the Islamic Republic on their own.
For decades, a dangerous illusion governed the Persian Gulf. Arab capitals knew the Islamic Republic was hostile. Yet, they believed the threat could be managed.
US President Trump’s approach toward Iran may better be explained by the political timing of the World Cup and the culture of New York real estate dealmaking: performance, delay, leverage and spectacle.
Iran’s ruling establishment has increasingly turned to threats and combative rhetoric as it faces mounting economic problems at home and growing diplomatic strain abroad, expanding a wartime language into everyday governance.
As the US-Iran gap widens and President Trump brands the truce “on life support,” three competing visions of international law are struggling for mastery over the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. Each captures part of the truth. None fully resolves the tensions.
Washington and the tech industry have the means to help Iranians: expand the tools that bypass censorship and raise the price Tehran pays for shutting the internet down.
Any settlement of the Iran war that leaves the Revolutionary Guards in control would preserve the Islamic Republic's core of power and risk turning a military advantage for the US and Israel into a strategic defeat.
The fragile truce between Tehran and Washington expires on April 22. With it ends restraint. Conflict will return, though its scale remains uncertain.
For decades the IRGC relied on its ability to threaten closure of the Strait of Hormuz as its premier economic shield and golden get out of jail card.
Much of the global conversation about Iran revolves around security, conflict, and nuclear risk. What is less discussed is an environmental collapse already unfolding, with consequences that extend well beyond its borders.
I have learned as an Iranian-American scientist that war and politics rarely remain outside the laboratory for scholars from the Middle East, following us into our visas, our collaborations and even our ability to concentrate on our work.
The United States can seize the moment to support regime change and forge a strategic partnership with a democratic Iran that could yield over $1 trillion in revenue for American firms over the next decade.
From the vantage of the region’s coastal states, where these waters have long mirrored both promise and peril, the current chorus of criticism directed at the United States–Israeli campaign against Iran strikes a discordant note.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf may soon be called a pragmatist. That would be a mistake.
Moscow may be benefiting from the war between Iran and the United States and Israel, but the longer it continues, the less it serves Russia’s interests.
The real question is not whether the United States can destroy Iran’s capabilities, but whether it can end the Islamic Republic—and control what follows.
As President Trump weighs options against Iran, he faces a legacy‑defining choice that could reshape the century, with the Islamic Republic at its most precarious moment since 1979 after years of US pressure and a determined popular uprising.
The killings that swept Iran last month revived memories of 1988, when the Islamic Republic erased thousands of political prisoners in silence—my brother, Bijan, among them.