Iran Lashes Out at West Over Protests

(Nazila Fathi | New York Times | 29 December 2009) – Iran continued to arrest opposition members on Tuesday in what seemed to be an effort to curb further protests after Sunday’s defiant demonstrations against the government, according to opposition Web sites. Read the rest of this entry »

New Clashes Test Iranian Regime’s Grip on Tehran

(Online Newshour | 28 December 2009) – In the wake of weekend protests in Iran that left at least eight people dead, Margaret Warner speaks with a pair of experts about the enduring opposition movement.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council, a nonpartisan organization promoting Iranian-American participation in U.S. civic life. And Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Could the Mullahs Fall This Time?

As protesters poured into the streets of Iran in the biggest and bloodiest demonstrations since June, Trita and Rouzbeh Parsi say this time could be the breaking point.

(Trita Parsi & Rouzebeh Parsi | The Daily Beast | 27 December 2009) – With the government growing increasingly desperate—and violent—the new clashes on the streets in Iran may very well prove to be the breaking point of the regime. If so, it shows that the Iranian theocracy ultimately fell on its own sword. It didn’t come to an end due to the efforts of exiled opposition groups or the regime-change schemes of Washington’s neoconservatives. Rather, the Iranian people are the main characters in this drama, using the very same symbols that brought the Islamic republic into being to close this chapter in a century-old struggle for democracy. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran’s Dangerous Power Vacuum

Ahmadinejad’s grip is slipping. The ayatollah is losing ground. And the military is on the rise. Gary Sick on how Obama should handle the aftershocks of a political earthquake.

(Gary Sick | The Daily Beast | 27 November 2009) - Iran is at a revolutionary juncture, one of those hinge moments in history when an explosion of actions and debates produces towering outcomes—often unintended—that bend the course of events the way a black hole in space bends a beam of light. In the tumult of these moments, it is almost impossible to know how it will end; only in retrospect does the outcome appear inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran Expanding Effort to Stifle the Opposition

(Robert F. Worth | New York Times | 24 November 2009) — After last summer’s disputed presidential election, Iran’s government relied largely on brute force — beatings, arrests and show trials — to stifle the country’s embattled opposition movement. Read the rest of this entry »

Maziar Bahari: Witness

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(Bob Simon | 60 Minutes – CBS News | 22 November 2009) - Recently freed after four months of interrogation and torture in Iran, Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari tells his story to Bob Simon and writes about his ordeal in the next issue of Newsweek.

In the next two “extra” video segments, “A Peaceful Terrorist” and “Mr. Hillary Clinton” journalist Maziar Bahari explains how he was the most dangerous kind of opponent to the Iranian government and how a strange nickname gave him hope in an Iranian prison. Read the rest of this entry »

Prisons and Protests: Covering Iran After the Election

Woodrow Wilson Center | Washington D.C. | 30 November 2009

The Middle East Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting present a panel discussion with Iason Athanasiadis, freelance journalist; Barbara Slavin, Assistant Managing Editor for World and National Security, The Washington Times; and Jon Sawyer, Executive Director, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Iason Athanasiadis is a writer, photographer, and documentary filmmaker covering Middle Eastern current affairs from his Istanbul base. He reported on Iran’s presidential election for American and British news outlets, including The Washington Times, on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He was jailed at the direction of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and held for three weeks in solitary confinement at Tehran’s Evin Prison. He was a consultant on A Death in Iran, a documentary for the BBC and PBS Frontline that aired earlier this month. Read the rest of this entry »

A Death In Tehran

(PBS | Frontline | 17 November 2009) - At the height of the protests following Iran’s controversial presidential election this summer, a young woman named Neda Agha Soltan was shot and killed on the streets of Tehran. Her death — filmed on a camera phone, then uploaded to the Web — quickly became an international outrage, and Soltan became the face of a powerful movement that threatened the hard-line government’s hold on power.

In A Death in Tehran, FRONTLINE revisits the events of last summer, shedding new light on Neda’s life and death and the movement she helped inspire. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran After the Election

Columbia University – School of International and Public Affairs| 5 December 2009

The recent elections in Iran, and subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world.  As protesters continue to take to the Iranian street to voice their opposition to the elections, fault-lines are emerging amongst the ruling elite.  These momentous events constitute a significant challenge to the legitimacy of the Iranian regime and the future of the Islamic Republic.  The conference will be an opportunity to have leading Iranian scholars and analysts discuss the impact of the recent elections, Iran’s relationship with the international community and the theocratic foundations of the Islamic Republic.

The one-day conference being held at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs  will feature Ervand Abrahamian, Asef Bayat, Hamid Dabashi, Shahla Talebi discussing the “Aftermath of the Election,” Farideh Farhi, Gary Sick, Wayne White, Judith Yaphe discussing “International Challenges,” and Houchang Chehabi, Mansour Farhang, Hossein Kamaly, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, and Abdolkarim Soroush “Appraising the Life of the Republic.”  For more event information and to register, visit the conference website.

The Plight of Iranian Journalists

(Muhammad Sahimi | Tehran Bureau | 8 November 2009) - Except for a brief period in the beginning of President Mohammad Khatami’s first term (1998-2000); and earlier, between 1941, when Allied forces occupied Iran, and 1953, the year the CIA-led a coup against the popular government of Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, freedom of the press in Iran has been under constant assault over the past century. Hundreds of Iranian journalists have been jailed or driven into exile. Many have been murdered. In short, Iran has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist. Read the rest of this entry »