Ali Khamenei
The Hollow Presidency
When President Masoud Pezeshkian suggested that Iran should avoid escalating tensions with its Arab neighbors, observers speculated that the country’s leadership was splintering. But the presidency, which once appeared to embody the executive authority of the Islamic Republic, has been steadily eroding for decades.
Between Iran and Me
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.
The Islamic Republic’s Broken Promises of Economic Justice
Iran’s Islamic republic was built on a pledge to uplift the poor and uproot inequality. Instead, decades of sanctions, ideological priorities and the Revolutionary Guard’s economic dominance have produced mass impoverishment and recurring unrest.
The Key to Understanding Iran Is Poetry
Even a casual observer could notice the importance of poetry in Iranian society, if only because a disproportionate number of tourist sites in Iran are the graves of medieval poets. When classical poetry has become a distant memory in so many cultures, it is clear that it is an integral part of the Iranian consciousness.
How Iran’s Hanging Judge Became President
The first decade of Iran’s revolution was its most brutal, and much violence was meted out by the Judiciary. Ebrahim Raisi, the new system’s ultimate loyalist, was just the right man for enforcing such brutalities and rising through the ranks.
After Khamenei
Whoever becomes the next president of the Islamic Republic will face many challenges. There are renewed nuclear talks and a restless nation licking its wounds from two bloody protests. And there will probably be a death and a succession to the position of supreme leader.