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Two Kinds of Certainty
Podcast On the seventy-third anniversary of the 1953 coup, a reflection on the arrogance that ended Mohammad Mossadegh’s government, and the different arrogance that must not be allowed to replace it. Seventy-three years ago today, tanks reached the prime minister’s residence in Tehran and put an end to the government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The anniversary… — read more
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The Middle Nobody Counts
Podcast On Radio Farda’s Pārāgrāf-i Avval, the Madani–Bayat correspondence, and the part of Iran that no one has counted Radio Farda’s programme Pārāgrāf-i Avval, presented by Muhammad Zarghami, put the correspondence between Saeed Madani and Asef Bayat to Jalal Idjadi and to me. The exchange has run in Naqd-i Iqtiṣād-i Siyāsī since Urdībihisht 1403, begun… — read more
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Who Holds the Rope
Podcast On capital punishment in Iran, the argument the opposition will not make, and the one the Muslim tradition already supplies An iron scaffold went up in Alikhani Square in Isfahan on Monday night. People gathered. There were scuffles with the guards. In the early hours of Tuesday, Amirhossein Safari and Abolfazl Sepahi were hanged… — read more
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Three Thousand Five Hundred
Podcast On 25 July 2026, Morad Vaisi published a number. Vaisi is senior Iran analyst at Iran International and host of its flagship politics programme. Since January he has been collecting the names of the dead and reading them aloud, live, hour after hour. It is honourable work. He has done it under pressure, and… — read more
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The Love of the Microphone
PodcastOn Masih Alinejad’s theatre of grief, the platforms that reward it, and the war she now says she never wanted. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Partido Popular, greets Masih Alinejad before the ‘Mujeres libres’ session at the Congreso de los Diputados, Madrid, 5 March 2026. Credit: EFE / Borja Sánchez-Trillo, via Infobae. On 21… — read more
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Somebody Else’s 1945
PodcastOn the Nazi analogy, the Iranians who reach for it from abroad, and the state that made it plausible Aftermath of overnight US strikes on a bridge in Bandar Khamir county, near the Strait of Hormuz, 17 July 2026. Screengrab from footage broadcast by Iran’s IRINN state television, made available via AFPTV. Credit: AFP /… — read more
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Nobody Wants to Go to War
Podcast On a corridor interview of 21 July 2026, and the verb that carries a war A journalist puts one question to three United States senators: the President has formally told Congress that the war with Iran has resumed. What do you make of it? The exchange, filmed by Marzia Hussaini and posted to X… — read more
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The Table and the Ledger
Podcast On Sada Cumber’s ‘Iran at the Crossroads’ (National Security Institute), and what would tell us the turn is real A crossroads implies a traveller. Somebody walked to get there, at a price, and somebody now has to choose a road. Sada Cumber has the right image for this moment, and I want to take… — read more
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The Ledger of Ali Khamenei
Podcast Ali Khamenei held the office of Supreme Leader for thirty-six years. He inherited a republic that was bruised, broke, and at war, and he left behind a state whose legitimacy had been hollowed from within – by his own hand, and often against his own stated interests. The record is long enough to sort.… — read more
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Nobody Is Free to Stay
Podcast The programme opens in Istanbul, at a reading of the Shahnameh. Fifty thousand couplets, a thousand years old, recited aloud by Iranians far from home. Within two minutes the frame is set: this, we are told, is where Iranians go now, as disillusionment with Islam takes hold. ‘War, God and the Islamic Republic’, an… — read more
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The Grief You Can Afford
PodcastOn Reza Pahlavi’s sudden mourning for the conscripts of Bampour, and the children of Minab he was willing to call a price This week you asked Iran’s soldiers not to die for the Islamic Republic. You mourned the conscripts killed at the Bampour garrison. You told their parents to keep their sons at home. You… — read more
