Dance and Doves at Funerals Are Defying Iran’s Regime
As Iran's January crackdown killed thousands, grieving families abandoned traditional Shiite funerary rites, refusing prayers and instead releasing doves and dancing at gravesides. The shift reflects deepening rejection of the government’s grip on religious life and public grief, with secular terminology replacing the state’s language of martyrdom.
Ukrainian Orphans Evacuated to Italy Have Become a Political Football
Hundreds of Ukrainian orphans, many with physical and intellectual disabilities, were evacuated in 2022 from state-run institutions where abuse was common, and placed with foster families in Italy, where they thrived. Now, Ukraine has ordered them repatriated, and the foster families are challenging the order in court.
How the Damascus Dossier Investigation Failed Families of Syria’s Forcibly Disappeared
When a consortium of international journalists published stories on a leak including 33,000 photographs of detainees killed by the Bashar al-Assad regime, they expected praise. Instead, families of the forcibly disappeared condemned it as exploitative and harmful, raising urgent questions about journalistic ethics, accountability and who investigations like this are really for.
Iran Has Always Been More Than the Islamic Republic
An Iranian journalist reflects on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, considering decades of failed sanctions, diaspora authoritarianism and the civilizational story that nobody told.
The Unresolved Contradictions Ali Khamenei Leaves Behind
Ali Khamenei’s journey took him from literary modernism to revolutionary Islamism. With the supreme leader’s death, Iranians are left to reckon with the political order he shaped and the unresolved contradictions he leaves behind. The impending succession now places the Islamic republic’s future in question.