How Lesbians Live in Iran

The Daily Beast, August 27  2011- A controversial new movie explores the lives of lesbians forced to live in the shadows. Omid Memarian talks to women in Iran who say the movie doesn’t do their predicament justice.

Four years after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared there are no gays in Iran during a speech at Columbia University, an Iranian-American filmmaker courageously portrays an unusual story of two Iranian lesbians who struggle under religious and cultural repression to explore their sexuality.

Iranians are, in general, culturally hesitant to publicly talk about their private lives and sexuality, so the sex scenes between two schoolgirls Atefeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemi) in Circumstance, take the viewer to the most extreme parts of Iranian underground lifestyle.

While Maryam Keshavarz’s portrayal is bold, and addresses a major taboo in Iran, many lesbians who actively live and love in the shadows there say the movie is not necessarily a true portrayal. Read more

August 28, 2011     Leave a Comment

American Muslims in the Obama Era (Multimedia)

American Muslims: Prejudice, Politics and the Pursuit of Happiness in the Obama Era (Multimedia)

August 20, 2011     Leave a Comment

New Oil Minister Cements Ties with Military

NEW YORK, Aug 8, 2011 (IPS) - Last week’s appointment of a ranking member of Iran’s influential Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as the country’s new oil minister could lead to a more unaccountable and unpredictable military with greater influence on the government in Tehran, analysts say.

The IRGC currently controls Iran’s most powerful intelligence- security arm, which played a key role in the post-election crackdown of 2008 and the intimidation, arrests and imprisonment of hundreds of political dissidents.

It has built up a sprawling business empire since the 1979 Revolution, with annual revenues estimated at some 12 billion dollars and investments in sectors ranging from oil, gas and petrochemicals to cars, bridges and roads. It also controls the paramilitary Basij militia. Read more

August 8, 2011     Leave a Comment

Take That, Tehran

The Slate, Tuesday, July 12, 2011 -This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. A Future Tense conference on the promise and limitations of using technology to spread democracy will be held at the New America Foundation on July 13. (For more information and to sign up for the event, please visit the NAF website.)

The Obama administration has begun taking action to bring Internet freedom to Iran. This sounds wonderful.

But this approach ignores two key factors: 1) Iran already has the upper hand in this battle; 2) the current approach is dangerous to activists and focuses on too few people. If the U.S. really wants to bring free-flowing information to Iran, it needs to rethink its current strategy.
I grew up in Iran and worked as a journalist there until 2004, when I—along with 20 other bloggers, Web technicians, and journalists—was arrested by security forces for my blog, in what was the first major raid against bloggers and online activists. After two months of mistreatment and solitary confinement, I was released and soon after moved to the United States. Read more

July 12, 2011     Leave a Comment

Why Did Iran Say “NO” to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights?

Huffington Post, Posted: 7/5/11- Less than a week after the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed former Maldivian Foreign Minister Ahmed Shaheed as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Iran, Head of Iran’s Judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, in a TV interview said, “accepting the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights is not our policy.”

In March, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing a monitoring mechanism for Iran and appointing a Special Rapporteur. Last month, three candidates were considered for this position. The Iranian side, knowing that a Special Rapporteur would be immediately appointed soon, sent a message to Geneva that the Rapporteur on Iran should have three qualifications: Be a man, be a Muslim, and not be from an Arab country. One of the male candidates didn’t seem to cause any controversy for Tehran; Ahmed Shaheed’s appointment met all of Iran’s requirements. Read more

July 5, 2011     Leave a Comment

New Arsenal Emerges in Struggle over Iran’s Internet

NEW YORK, Jun 20, 2011 (IPS) - Millions of Iranians who have lived under an intense level of internet filtering and advanced monitoring systems for years may soon benefit from new technology that sidesteps the censors.

Last week, the New York Times reported that “the [Barack] Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy ’shadow’ Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.”

One of these projects has been dubbed “Internet in a suitcase”. According to the Times, the suitcase - financed with a two-million- dollar State Department grant - could be smuggled across the border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet. Read more

June 20, 2011     Leave a Comment

Reading the Shah, and Ayatollahs in Tehran and What the U.S. Should Learn from the History

Huffington Post- What has been the root of the U.S’. inability to develop a sustainable policy or strategy on Iran for the last 30 years? What was not learnt from the Shah’s fall in 1979 and the nature of the revolutionaries who hijacked a pro-democracy freedom movement? And what are the parallels between the Shah’s regime and the current Islamic government in Tehran?

These are the types of questions that have been raised in my extensive interview with Dr. Abbas Milani, author of the recent book, The Shah, and the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University in California.

While the Iranian government continues to curb social and political freedom in Iran, particularly after the post-presidential unrests which resulted in killing of dozens and arresting thousands of people, the author of a recent book, The Shah, provides a comprehensive image of parallels that contributed to the fall of the Shah and is now being perpetuated by the Islamists in Tehran.

Read more

January 24, 2011     Leave a Comment

Iranian Royal Family’s Suicide Tragedy

The Daily Beast- The shah of Iran’s son took his life Tuesday, a decade after his sister died from an overdose. Omid Memarian and Roja Heydarpour on the family heartbreak and what it means for Iran. Plus, Stephen Kinzer reports on the death of the prince.

There is nothing worse for a mother than the death of a child, except, perhaps, the death of two children who took their own lives. That is what the former queen of Iran must endure now that her son, Ali-Reza Pahlavi, 44, was found dead in his home in Boston from a gunshot wound he inflicted on himself early Tuesday morning.

It isn’t the first time Farah Pahlavi has had to grieve a child who committed suicide. Just 10 years ago, former Princess Leila Pahlavi, whose young daughter suffered from anorexia and depression, took a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates, and died in her sleep at 31. Read more

January 5, 2011     62 Comments

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Brutal Artist Crackdown

The Daily Beast. December 25, 2010- The harsh sentencing of a world-renowned director prompted protests from Martin Scorsese and other artists this week. Omid Memarian on escalating repression in Iran.

When world-renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this week, the verdict reverberated both inside and outside Iran.

Not only did authorities in Tehran hand down an exceptionally harsh sentence, they also decreed that the 50-year-old Panahi will be banned from filmmaking, screenwriting and traveling abroad for the next 20 years. According to his relatives, Panahi has also been banned from talking to the media.

Along with Panahi, Muhammad Rasoulof, another filmmaker involved with Panahi’s movie, was also sentenced to six years in prison. Read more

December 25, 2010     107 Comments

Minister’s Sacking Shores Up Ahmadinejad’s Power Base

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Dec 14, 2010 (IPS) - While Iran gears up for a second round of nuclear talks with Western countries next month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abrupt dismissal of his foreign minister on Monday indicates a new power struggle with moderate conservatives that could alter the tone and face of Iran’s foreign policy machinery in the years to come.

Manouchehr Mottaki is the seventh cabinet minister dismissed by Ahmadinejad over the past five years, while two others have resigned. Ahmadinejad sacked Mottaki while he was on an official trip to Senegal.

Mottaki had held the portfolio since 2005. Read more

December 14, 2010     Leave a Comment

So Long, Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble. Recently, the Iranian president faced an insurrection among lawmakers, who are seeking his impeachment for various law violations. Pro-democracy politicians, reformists, moderate conservatives and even Ahmadinejad’s former allies are still calling for reform. Key religious leaders have repeatedly shown their dissatisfaction with Ahmadinejad, who has had to travel to the holy city of Quom several times during the past few months to heal the divide. And observers within Iran believe that, due to multilateral sanctions and the government’s economic policies, the president’s powerbase is eroding.

Ahmadinejad’s “domestic political aggression might lead the country into social and political instability—similar to or even worse than what the country went through after the 2009 Presidential elections,” Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former Iranian lawmaker told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday. “The move by the Iranian parliament to question and to [try to] eventually impeach Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicates a serious divide amongst the conservatives in power.” Read more

November 25, 2010     2 Comments

Q&A: “There Is No War on Terrorism”

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 10, 2010 (IPS) - “The U.S. intentionally confuses al Qaeda with other groups around the world fighting for their independence or liberation, but it’s [just] a convenient way to whip up support and get people very afraid,” says author and journalist and Reese Erlich.

“There is no war on terrorism,” he tells IPS.

Based on original research and firsthand interviews, Erlich’s new book “Conversations with Terrorists” draws fresh portraits of six controversial leaders: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Hamas top leader Khaled Meshal, Israeli politician Geula Cohen, Iranian Revolutionary Guard founder Mohsen Sazargara, Hezbollah spiritual advisor Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah, and former Afghan Radio and Television Ministry head Malamo Nazamy. Read more

November 10, 2010     72 Comments

Iran Primer: The Youth

by OMID MEMARIAN and TARA NESVADERANI[ primer] Iran’s youth have been politically active since the 1953 ouster of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The death of three students in protests against Vice President Nixon’s 1953 visit — to support the shah after a CIA-backed coup against the elected government — is still a national holiday. The young were key players in the 1979 revolution. Today, their strength is also in numbers. A baby boom after the revolution almost doubled the population from 34 million to 62 million in the first decade. Iran is now one of the youngest societies in the world, skewing politics, the economy and social pressures. The demographic bulge is one of the biggest threats to the status quo.

The youth bloc has been shaped by political and military crises. In the 1980s, they were the majority of combatants in the eight-year war with Iraq; even pre-teen Basij volunteers became human minesweepers. In the 1990s, Iranian youth demanded their post-war due in politics, the economy and society. By 1997, their growing numbers helped elect reformist President Mohammad Khatami. But as he failed to produce change, the young pulled back. The partial youth boycott of the 2005 presidential election was key to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election. Their reentry into politics in the 2009 election seriously altered Iranian politics. Read more

October 1, 2010     63 Comments

Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) - A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.

On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.

Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime”, among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more

September 28, 2010     135 Comments

Iran’s “Blogfather” Gets 20-Year Prison Sentence

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Sep 28, 2010 (IPS) — A week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told heads of state gathered for the U.N. General Assembly in New York that his government does not jail its citizens for expressing their opinions, Iran’s Revolutionary Court sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, an internationally known Iranian-Canadian blogger, to 19 and a half years in prison.

On Monday, the conservative website Mashreq announced the verdict issued by Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Courts.

Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime,” among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years. Read more

September 28, 2010     Leave a Comment

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