On 8–9 January 2026, nationwide protests in Iran culminated in one of the deadliest crackdowns in recent history. This essay explores how symbolic power, media framing, and distorted risk perception shaped a collective perceptual error.
“Woman, Life, Freedom” began as a plural uprising from Iran’s margins. Through media framing and nationalist reframing, its radical challenge to centralism was narrowed into a single narrative, turning unity into a vehicle for erasure.
The patriarchal logic of monarchy extends beyond dynastic succession. Once detached from the palace, it reappears at the national level, reorganizing political authority through paternal symbolism and demands for loyalty rather than popular consent.
Persian edition 4 February 2026 This essay is not about Iran; it is about the method through which Iran is explained. It examines a mode of thinking that recognizes repression, poverty, and class struggle only as long as they occur in the “right” geography—and the moment they cross an
From the outset, the concept of “barandāzi” (براندازی) defined itself in opposition to reformism, while at the same time keeping a deliberate distance from its conceptual sibling, revolution.
Thursday 22 January 2026 Besiege your besiegement, no way out. Your arms fell, pick them up. Strike your enemy, no way out. Mahmoud Darwish From the moment we open our eyes, if we have slept at all, we coil inward like serpents, tightening with each new blow of bad news.
Editorial Note (2026): In the wake of the popular protests in Iran in January 2026, public curiosity about the nature of the Islamic Republic, its political architecture, and its internal logic of power has intensified. The essay below, first published in Persian in 2013, is drawn from the archives of
by Mahtab Mahboub Tuesday 13 January 2026 Iran is undergoing an escalation of repression by the government: a nationwide internet shutdown—now extended to satellite services such as Starlink—is being used to erase visibility while security forces kill protesters and extort families for the return of bodies. This strategy
In Iran, economic demands are political. Like “Woman, Life, Freedom,” today’s protests are cross-class and pluralistic, binding bread-and-butter grievances to calls for human dignity and freedom, a signature pattern of 21st-century movements.
The history of the Lurs is scarred by catastrophes under the Pahlavi regime. The puzzle is how that same regime, or its admirers, reshaped memory so that mass killings are minimized and the butchers of Lorestan are not only forgotten, but forgiven.
Persian edition In late November 2025, outside the Governorate of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad in Yasuj, a scene unfolded whose very plainness made it one of the most condensed images of the water–development–power nexus in Iran today. ISNA reports that “the people of Yasuj, the provincial capital of Kohgiluyeh
If we want to fight femicide today, we have to do two things at the same time: expose the structure and record the feeling. A legal and political struggle without archiving feelings collapses into statistics; and an archive of feelings without structure dissolves into ineffectual tears.