Iran
China to the rescue, with peace plans for Saudi, Iran, Russia, Ukraine and Afghanistan – up to a point
In another sign of its increasingly prolific international diplomacy, China last month released an 11-point position paper on the “Afghan Issue”. China’s Afghan démarche came just…
China trumpets the Saudi-Iran deal, yet much credit goes to Pakistan
China’s brokering of a Saudi Arabia-Iran peace deal was presented earlier this month as a diplomatic blockbuster, a sign of the country’s growing influence in the oil-rich Middle…
A tenuous tourniquet: Iran’s nuclear program
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi’s recent trip to Tehran was aimed at crafting a road map for resolving two main safeguards-related problems with…
Iran: Deep state, shallow protests
As protests in Iran enter a third month, the persistence of this unrest presents challenges for Iran’s theocratic system. But the fact that Iran’s demonstrators are battling an…
Commentary
Protests alone not enough to force out Iranian mullahs
Originally published in The Australian.
The personal is political: Iran protests for a normal life
Over summer in Australia we’re featuring selected articles from the past year. This was originally published 6 October 2022.
Chants of “Women, Life, Freedom” and “Down with…
Iran protests: the more things change …
It is always difficult to judge the significance of popular protests in autocratic regimes, particularly so in the social media era, when tiny snippets of videos without context…
After Mahsa Amini’s death, Iran protests signal a generational shift
Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, whose death on 16 September sparked a nationwide uprising in Iran, was not a political dissident. When Amini was arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality…
Iran applies its own maximum pressure in nuclear talks
Negotiations in Vienna to revive the Iran nuclear deal have dragged on through nearly a dozen rounds for more than a year now. The Biden administration’s hopes for a quick…