Ahmad Baladi’s death exposes a system where “urban order” masks dispossession. Small livelihoods are erased through legal procedures that present poverty not as a social condition, but as an administrative offense.
Dabashi’s power lies in rewriting the genealogy of colonial violence and binding it to the present. Still, his critique falters when it treats “the West” as an essence or "civilizational instinct" rather than a shifting system of power and institutions.
What did bring Ayandeh Bank to its knees? How did a supposedly modern private bank accumulate a deficit so vast, 550 trillion tomans in losses, that the Central Bank could no longer look away?
In Tehran, prices move like shadows on a wall, unsteady, alive, changing shape every hour. The city inhales but does not move forward; it circles within itself, whispering the language of survival: rent, exchange rate, bread, medicine, and the hope of a light at the tunnel’s end.
The Islamic Republic regime is weakened but still poses a threat to the Iranian people. The recent short conflict with Israel revealed the country's vulnerabilities and the helplessness of its citizens. How can domestic tyranny be dismantled without succumbing to foreign warfare or internal chaos?
Between March and September, some 3,123 hectares of forests and rangelands across Kurdistan have burned. What lies behind these fires? What resources do local volunteers have to fight them? And how has the state responded?
The abandonment of the Iranian people cannot be laid solely at the feet of their rulers. The same indecision and short-termism that have long characterized the regime’s nuclear diplomacy appear, in another form, in the fractured ranks of the opposition.
In a country where poverty, corruption, water and power shortages, and runaway inflation are fueling unprecedented anger, the sight of a massive crowd gathered freely in the heart of Tehran could have done more than provide music; it could have lit the fuse of a street revolt.
What steps in domestic politics could keep us from sliding into an external military aggression, a coup, civil war, and economic–environmental ruin?
A sense of belonging to one’s home is a human feeling; it does not inherently require allegiance to any particular state or fixed borders. Home is where you work, toil, build a life and a house.
After Israel’s twelve-day military onslaught, the moderates are openly talking about the need to change the “governance paradigm.” That paradigm, when stripped of euphemism, is the Supreme Leader’s doctrine of clerical rule (Velayat-e-Faghih) and the Shiite radicalism of the “Axis of Resistance.”
Two weeks after the ceasefire between Israel and the Islamic Republic, signs that Israel, backed by the United States and Western allies, is pursuing a policy of “Lebanonizing” Iran are beginning to materialize.