Category: Iran

Existential threat? Iran and opposition ‘locked in lopsided confrontation’

     

At a time of rising tensions between the United States and Iran, various opposition factions within the Iran diaspora are competing to position themselves as a credible alternative to the… Read more »

Iran’s reformist movement – threatened or already dead?

     

Veterans of Iran’s reformist movement – Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammadreza Khatami, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, and Mostafa Tajzadeh – are concerned about the “mortal blow that even a limited military conflict with the United States of… Read more »

A strategy to counter Iran’s growing power

     

Iranian regional advances have opened up a path, both literally and figuratively, for Iran to circumvent U.S. sanctions by interweaving its terror militias deep within the governments and societies of… Read more »

Downplaying Islamism, regime aims to demobilize Iran’s ‘underground but still vibrant’ civil society

     

  The European Union decided on Monday to extend restrictive measures imposed against Iran to last for an additional year until April 13, 2020, due to “serious human rights violations”… Read more »

Regime crackdown fails to silence Iran protests

     

The global campaign to free Iranian human rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh is gathering momentum, as a regime crackdown fails to silence protests. More than 600,000 have signed a petition calling… Read more »

Middle East’s ‘distasteful theocracies’ under fire for rights abuses

     

  The prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh’s draconian sentence for her peaceful activism shows the threat posed by Iran’s revolutionary courts to human rights work, the Center for Human… Read more »

Iran’s power struggle ‘an opportunity for civil society & democratic forces’?

     

In historical examples of successful transitions to democracy, there has always been an alliance of democracy and civil society activists with centrists. The two must band together to prevent the… Read more »

Is liberal democracy resilient enough to confront current challenges?

     

Democracy is “not a one-way street,” and democratic nations can fall back into authoritarianism, according to Mike Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, and Sanford School Dean Judith Kelley. They joined moderator… Read more »

Iran’s Islamic Republic faces three converging threats

     

As the Islamic Republic concludes its fourth decade, the country faces three converging threats, according to Saeid Golkar, a visiting assistant professor in political science at the University of Tennessee… Read more »