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When Language Fails: Vulgarity, Silence and the Unfinished Conversation
Podcast I was there—present online—when Dr. Fatemeh Sadeghi and Hossein Hamdieh, speaking from London and Tehran respectively during Iran’s internet blackout, began discussing something that has haunted me for months. An interrogator assigned to question young protesters arrested during the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising had confessed his bewilderment. He could not understand what they were… — read more
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Iran’s Unfinished Reckoning
Podcast Photographer: Parastoo Maleki – Unsplash A narrative essay drawn from a dialogue between Hossein Hamdieh and Daryoush Mohammad Poor The Polarised Mirror In the spring of 2026, Iran and the United States were engaged in careful, tentative diplomatic contacts—first talks in Islamabad, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir travelling to Tehran, a fragile ceasefire still… — read more
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The Copernican Revolution of the Iranian Mind
Podcast Hamid Dabashi on Sovereignty, Selfhood, and the End of Western Validation Based on a conversation between Hossein Hamdieh and Hamid Dabashi The Day After the Ceasefire On the Wednesday after the ceasefire was announced, Hossein Hamdieh sat in a repurposed factory near Azadi Square in Tehran—a building that had once housed industrial machinery and… — read more
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The Depth Illusion: How Philosophical Scaffolding Disguises the Banality of War Apologism
Podcast Image credit: Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash A Diagnostic Framework for Identifying Logical Fallacies in the Rhetoric of Humanitarian Intervention For S. S. and M. M. who steered the direction of this essay into a more constructive one. Introduction There is a genre of argumentation—increasingly prominent in debates over military intervention—that… — 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
