Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

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Pezeshkian waving at a crowd in Tehran, July 2024. Saeed Zareian / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo

On July 5, the parliamentarian Masoud Pezeshkian prevailed in Iran’s snap presidential election. It was a surprising win. Pezeshkian is a relative moderate who pledged to engage with the West, end Internet filtering, and cease the morality police’s harassment of women—a program not endorsed by the country’s clerical elite. Instead, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wanted a president in the mold of Pezeshkian’s hard-line predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a May helicopter accident. As a result, most experts believed that Khamenei would maneuver to ensure the election of another proven conservative. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs shortly after the helicopter crash, “Iran’s next president will almost certainly be just like its last”.…  Seguir leyendo »

At a funeral for Raisi and others killed in a helicopter crash, Tehran, May 2024. Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo

The sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in helicopter crash on May 19 marked a momentous day for the Islamic Republic. His presidency ushered in a new era for his country, characterized by increased militarization abroad and growing tumult at home. Not since the 1979 revolution had Iran’s political system faced such a fast-paced transformation. Externally, the country surprised the world with its military capabilities and its willingness to deploy them. Internally, Iran grappled with rising secularization, putting society at odds with the government. These shifts meant that the Iran that exists today is very different from the one that existed when Raisi came to power just three years ago.…  Seguir leyendo »

Houthi supporters rallying in Sanaa, Yemen, January 2024. Khaled Abdullah / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo,

Since November, the Red Sea has become the site of escalating attacks by Yemen’s Houthi movement, the armed group that governs most of Yemen’s population. These assaults, which the Houthi rebels say are designed to pressure Israel to end the war in Gaza, mark the emergence of a new conflict zone in the already volatile Middle East. By effectively closing the sea to cargo ships, the strikes have disrupted global trade and earned the Houthis unprecedented international attention.

The attacks have done an especially good job of earning the Houthis attention—and support—from Iran. Traditionally, the militia has been a second-tier partner for the Islamic Republic, which tends to work more closely with Hezbollah and other militia groups that share its anti-American ideology.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso, , , ,

The long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has created partnerships in the South Caucasus that cut across religious, ethnic, and geopolitical lines in surprising ways. Iran, which is ruled by Shiite clerics, has provided an economic lifeline to Christian-majority Armenia, whose primary backer has long been Russia. Meanwhile, Israel and Sunni-majority Turkey have formed a strategic alliance with predominantly Shiite Azerbaijan. And the two Shiite-majority countries in the mix, Iran and Azerbaijan, remain locked in a bitter, decades-long dispute over territory and identity.

For almost three decades, with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict frozen in a stalemate, this configuration was mostly seen as a case of politics making strange bedfellows: curious, but not a cause for alarm.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran, August 2022. Wana News Agency / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo,

Iran is no stranger to mass protests, but the demonstrations sparked by the killing in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman detained by the so-called morality police, signal a tipping point. For weeks now, Iranian women have shown extraordinary courage and a willingness to resist security forces in schools, in the streets, and in every other corner of the public sphere. They have stood bravely in intersections, marched down major thoroughfares, occupied squares, and erupted in chants at school assemblies, removing their headscarves in defiance of the strictures of the state. Their dogged resistance in the face of brutal crackdowns and arrests augurs the beginning of protracted protests throughout the country.…  Seguir leyendo »

Poll workers during parliamentary elections in Tehran on Friday. Credit Wana/Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo,

On Friday Iran held its 11th parliamentary elections since the foundation of the Islamic Republic in 1979, and the first since the Trump administration renewed sanctions on Iran and battered its economy.

The voting turnout — 42.5 percent — was the lowest since 1979, and a loose alliance of conservative candidates won. In Tehran, the capital, where about 75 percent of the voters chose not to vote, all 30 seats were won by the conservative candidates loyal to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Iranian electorate faces a perpetual dilemma on whether to participate or boycott the elections as the choice of candidates is limited and the Guardian Council — a constitutional committee made up of six clerics and six jurists that vets the electoral candidates — bars those seen as critical of the regime or deviating from its positions.…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrators burn a picture of President Trump during a protest last May in response to his decision to pull out of the international nuclear deal and renew sanctions. Credit Vahid Salemi / Associated Press

ReflexionesIslam y Mundo ÁrabeMundoOriente Próximo

Forty years after the 1979 revolution, Islamism is exhausting itself as a legitimizing force for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Studies sponsored by the Iranian government show that resentment toward the state’s religious symbols is at an all-time high.

According to the research arm of the Iranian parliament, around 70 percent of Iranian women do not strictly follow the official diktats for wearing a veil. Anticlerical sentiments have turned violent. Regardless of their ties to the government, clerics are routinely attacked and stabbed in the streets by angry anti-regime individuals.

Iran is responding by cautiously downplaying Islamism and emphasizing nationalism and foreign threats to win over disgruntled citizens.…  Seguir leyendo »