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The Flag in the Stands: On the Monarchist Abuse of the Lion and Sun
PodcastThe Lion and Sun has been systematically claimed by Iran’s monarchist restoration movement, which deploys it as a pre-Islamic or anti-Islamic identity marker — a visual shorthand for the proposition that authentic Iranian identity is secular and fundamentally in tension with Shi’i Islam. This is not an interpretation of history; it is a confiscation of… — read more
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Self-Amputation as Liberation
PodcastSomething broke in Iran after 2009 — not in the corridors of power, where repression merely recalibrated, but in the interior of a society that had maintained a fragile compact with the state. The Green Movement did not fail because it was crushed. It failed because the crushing proved, beyond evasion, that the Islamic Republic… — read more
