On Saturday, 19 September, supporters of the restoration of monarchy held a large gathering at Meridian Hall in Toronto, billed as ‘Cyrus the Great II’, to hear Reza Pahlavi; its organisers had announced a crowd of more than three thousand. The veteran singer Nooshafarin sang Ey Iran and made a terrible mistake in misreading one […]

This morning I sent a friend a short video. No note, no comment, nothing. In it Navīd Wahrāmān, a Pakistani writer, asks whether the Iranian diaspora’s hatred of Islam is justified. Pakistan had Zia-ul-Haq making prayer compulsory in government offices, and Afghanistan has a Taliban he calls less tolerant than the Islamic Republic, and neither […]

 We use the same platforms. Beyond that we have almost nothing in common, and the difference is not one of opinion. When I write about Iranian politics I am writing from somewhere. I have read the material and taught it for years, and I hold degrees in it. The positions I take are not […]

Ask an Iranian exile why a mosque in Hamburg should be closed and you may be told about Evin prison. The chain feels unbreakable from the inside. The state that jailed my cousin calls itself Islamic; Islam is therefore the thing that jailed my cousin; anything Islamic anywhere is therefore the enemy. Each step feels […]

On the Iranians cheering Europe’s far right, the word sitting in its manifesto, and the people that word names Iranians demonstrating outside the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, 17 February 2024. One placard reads ‘Die AfD ist keine Alternative für Deutschland – AFD Wählen ist so 1933’; the Persian placards call for the end of the Islamic […]

On the mast at Kuhestak, the map that put Tehran under a blast radius, and the test Iran International will not take A telecommunications mast stood near the shoreline at Kuhestak, in Sirik county, on the Hormozgan coast. On the evening of 1 September it was struck and came down across the road. A few […]

On the two machines that manufacture Iran, the eighteen years that keep me from checking, and what Yaser Mirdamadi found when he went back. Fourth in the Narrating Iran series, drawn from Yaser Mirdamadi’s account of his return and argued by Daryoush Mohammad Poor I write about Iran from a position that is not the […]

On the difference between criticism and abuse, and what the Iranian diaspora has done with it It sounds like an obvious thing to say, and it is not. Telling criticism apart from cynicism takes training. It takes education. It takes a degree of self-discipline that nobody is born with and few of us are ever […]

On the hundred names compiled in Tehran, the accusation waiting at the other end of the flight, and the guarantee neither side is offering On Thursday morning Mohsen Namjoo put out a video saying that by the time anyone watched it he would either be in the air or already on the ground in Tehran. […]