Teaching Comparative

Iran: No Yoga

Thirty people taking part in a yoga session have been arrested during a private class in Iran, reports suggest, causing a buzz across the country's social media.

They were detained at a private residence in the northern city of Gorgan, where they were apparently taking part in a mixed class.

Local justice department official Massoud Soleimani said the instructor, who was also arrested, had no licence to run the class and had advertised the event on Instagram.

He also said that those taking part were wearing "inappropriate outfits" and had "behaved inappropriately", the Tasnim news agency reports.

The Islamic establishment in Iran does not allow any mixed-gender sports activities.

Professional-level yoga teaching is also banned in the country.

Mr Soleimani, the deputy chief of the Islamic Revolution Court in Gorgan which is the capital of Golestan Province, did not give any more details about the attire or behaviour of the detained group.

He did say that security forces had been monitoring the residence for some time before making the arrests…

In 2017, Iranian sports authorities issued a ban on Colombian dance aerobics exercise zumba and "any harmonious movement or body-shaking instruction".

Back then Iran's Sport for All Federation penned a letter to Iran's Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports to ban activities, including zumba, for contravening "Islamic ideology".

While there have have been public gatherings of yoga fans in the country over the past few years, "underground" and "unIslamic" classes, which are promoted across social media, are frowned upon…

Labels: civil liberties, Iran, political culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

What is not allowed in Iran

Iran's capital city has banned the public from walking pet dogs, as part of a long-standing official campaign to discourage dog-ownership…

As if this were not draconian enough, Brigadier-General Rahimi added that driving with a dog in your car was also banned…

Owning dogs as pets, and walking them in public, has been contentious ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, and owners have sometimes had their dogs confiscated.

Dogs are viewed as "unclean" by Iran's Islamic authorities, who also regard dog-ownership as a symbol of the pro-Western policy of the ousted monarchy…

Iranian state TV has temporarily banned the country's equivalent of "Who Wants to a Millionaire" after complaints by senior clerics and conservatives.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that game-shows endanger the "culture of hard work and productivity" that the country seeks to encourage.

Now a senior Shia cleric has issued a fatwa (an Islamic religious ruling) against shows like "Be a Winner" that offer cash prizes.

Gambling is banned under Islamic law…

The show, hosted by actor and model Mohammad Reza Golzar, gives contestants the chance to win up to 1bn Iranian rials (about $25,000) and allows audiences to win money by participating at home via an app…

Mohammad Reza Golzar

You might expect Iran's state broadcaster to remove images of women eating cucumbers on television - but the backsides of buffaloes and the outlines of ears under headscarves?

Censors in the conservative Islamic republic have banned these from screens over the years and exasperated TV production staff are now taking to social media to laugh about them.

TV writer Amir Mehdi Jule kicked off a campaign on Instagram with the hashtag #Censorship_and_I, talking about the challenges of depicting women's bodies.

"One of the problems of displaying women on television, in addition to the [need for them to wear a] headscarf… is the perception or illusion of the size of their body parts underneath their clothes," he said.

But he never expected feedback asking him to pay attention to the size and shape of women's ears. "We never realised that an ear covered by a headscarf could be provocative," he said…

Labels: Iran, political culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

The biggest part of the regime?

Iran’s supreme leader has replaced the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps… two weeks after the Trump administration designated the elite force of the Iranian military as a foreign terrorist organization…

Gen. Salami

Mr. Khamenei replaced General Jafari with a deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen Hossein Salami, and elevated his rank to major general.

General Salami takes over a 125,000-member branch of the Iranian military that has grown into a vast military-industrial complex since it was created by founders of the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah 40 years ago.

The Revolutionary Guards Corps reports directly to Ayatollah Khamenei, exerts deep influence in politics and the economy, and has its own air force, navy and intelligence service.

It also is in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile development and operates a subsidiary known as the Al Quds force, which carries out clandestine operations and other activities in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq…

General Salami has been outspoken recently in expressing Iran’s antipathy toward Israel, which regards Iran as its most dangerous foe in the Middle East…

Labels: Iran, politics, regime

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

High water challenges capacity of Iranian regime

Authorities in Iran are evacuating six more towns in the flood-hit south-western province of Khuzestan, Iranian state TV has reported.

Flood waters in Khorramabad in Lorestan

Gholamreza Shariati, the provincial governor, said rescue teams were taking residents to nearby shelters on Saturday, including three army barracks.

The evacuation orders came as a new round of flooding was expected.

Shariati said emergency discharges from dams and reservoirs were adding to the high floodwaters, but such measures were essential to prevent catastrophic breaches, with river waters continuing to rise upstream from the province…

The interior minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, told state TV that about 400,000 people were at risk out of the province’s population of 5 million.

Eleven towns and scores of villages have already been evacuated. There have been no evacuation orders for major cities, including the province’s capital, Ahvaz…

There have been no reports of damage to the province’s petroleum facilities, which account for roughly 80% of Iran’s oil production…

Heavy damage from the floods has been blamed in part on widespread disregard for safety regulations in the construction of buildings and roads near rivers.

Labels: capacity, Iran

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

And the winner is (or will be)…

The upcoming transition could remake Iran, the world’s only Shiite theocracy, and alter the geopolitics of the Middle East, where Iran has been projecting its influence in places such as Syria and Iraq.

But the inner workings of Iran’s Islamic system — which is based on a contested Shiite doctrine known as wilayat al-faqih, or “guardianship of the jurist” — is notoriously opaque. And efforts to determine the next steps have become somewhat of a parlor game in both the Iranian capital Tehran and in Najaf. The names being bandied about to succeed the supreme leader include those of the chief of the judiciary, the head of a powerful advisory council and Khamenei’s own son.

The clergy in Najaf, the primary center of Shiite theology in the world, are for the most part averse to the idea of a supreme religious and political authority and operate independently of the clerical establishment in Iran…

“Khamenei now is a very strong leader,” said Sheikh Khaled al-Baghdadi, a Najaf cleric clad in a white turban and loose brown robe… Baghdadi is among those who doubt the theological legitimacy of the supreme leader position but acknowledges that Khamenei has made effective use of the role…

But even as Khamenei has consolidated power — promoting allies and empowering the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is tasked with safeguarding the Islamic system — Iran is facing an uncertain period as its economy falters and tensions with the United States rise. At home, rampant corruption and soaring inflation have stunted economic growth and angered ordinary Iranians. Abroad, Iran is confronting a U.S. pressure campaign that seeks to isolate the Islamic Republic…

Such instability, experts say, could undermine an otherwise smooth succession. And that has many Iranians ill at ease…

According to Iran’s constitution, if Khamenei dies or is otherwise incapacitated, a leadership council would be formed to lead for an interim period. A separate body, known as the Assembly of Experts, is responsible for naming a successor…

“The next leader should at least have experience leading the judicial, executive or legislative branch,” said Mohsen Kadivar, a former cleric and Iranian political dissident who teaches Islamic studies at Duke University.

But because the stakes are so high, analysts say, it is likely that the formal process will be bypassed in favor of more covert negotiations. The Revolutionary Guard in particular will hold powerful sway over the process, experts say.

“The person chosen by Khamenei will be announced . . . after the candidate receives approval from Revolutionary Guard commanders,” Kadivar said.

Labels: Iran, leadership, politics, rule of law

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

The next supreme leader in Iran?

Hardline Iranian cleric Ebrahim Raisi was elected on Tuesday as deputy chief of the Assembly of Experts, an influential clerical body which chooses the Supreme Leader, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

Raisi

He got the job less than a week after he was appointed head of the judiciary - making the protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a key player in Iran’s politics.

A potential contender to succeed Khamenei, Raisi is a former presidential candidate seen as having close links to the elite Revolutionary Guards. He helped oversee the execution of political prisoners in 1988 when he was deputy prosecutor in Tehran…

As deputy chief of the 88-member Assembly of Experts, he is likely to play a prominent role in selecting the next supreme leader.

Raisi’s position as the head of the judiciary, who is appointed by the supreme leader, is also a powerful position in a country that has long used its legal system to crack down on political dissent.

Iran says its judiciary is independent, and its judgements and rulings are not influenced by political interests.

Labels: Iran, leadership, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

It was 40 years ago today...

Iran is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed shah, overturned 2,500 years of monarchical rule and brought hard-line Shiite clerics to power.

The anniversary starts every year on February 1 - the day Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 returned from France after 14 years in exile to become the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Across the country on Friday, sirens rang out from trains and boats and church bells chimed at 9:33 am. - the exact time Khomeini’s chartered Air France Boeing 747 touched down 40 years ago at Tehran’s International Mehrabad airport.

The 10-day anniversary festivities, known as the “Ten Days of Dawn,” end on February 11, the date Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s government collapsed.

Labels: history, Iran, political culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:13 AM 0 comments

Economics, trade, and politics

New tough sanctions targeting Iran's oil sector, imposed by the United States, come into force on Monday [12 November].

The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, has responded robustly.

"There is no doubt that the United States will not achieve success with this new plot against Iran as they are retreating step by step."

Iran is heavily dependent on its exports of oil, and renewed sanctions, if effective, would hit the economy hard.

Iran has the fourth largest reserves of oil.

The EU has proposed supporting companies trading with Iran despite these new sanctions.

But will these companies risk being hit by secondary sanctions which would limit their own ability to trade with the US?

But other countries, including those of the European Union, believe Iran is holding to its part of the bargain on the nuclear deal and have made clear their intention not to follow America's lead.

Such is the dominance of the US in global trade, that even the announcement of the renewed sanctions has been enough to trigger a wave of international companies pulling their investments out of Iran, and its crude oil exports have been falling.

The latest US measures exclude any company that trades with Iran from doing business in the United States…

The US has made it clear it wants eventually to cut off Iran's oil trade entirely, but has allowed eight countries to maintain imports as a temporary concession to give them time to reduce imports. US allies such as Italy, India, Japan and South Korea are among the eight, the Associated Press reports…

In order to allow companies to trade with Iran and not face stiff US penalties, the EU plans to implement a payment mechanism - a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) - that will enable these companies to avoid the US financial system.

Like a bank, the SPV, would handle transactions between Iran and companies trading with it, avoiding direct payments into and out of Iran.

So when Iran exports oil to a country in the EU, the company from the receiving country would pay into the SPV.

Iran can then use the payment as credit to buy goods from other countries in the EU through the SPV…

The US had insisted on cutting exports to zero but that seems unlikely as it would increase the price of oil, says Scott Lucas, a professor of international politics at Birmingham University.

In addition to the countries allowed to continue buying Iranian oil, the backing of China, Iran's largest trading partner, may also prove critical…

Labels: economics, Iran, politics, sanctions

posted by Ken Wedding @ 12:11 PM 0 comments

As the price of dollars in Tehran goes up, the economy goes down.

In an open letter, over 50 Iranian economists warned of a collapse in the Iranian economy, stating that the severe inflation of the rial has hit a high it had never reached in the past 75 years, since World War II.

They also considered the continuation of what they called “wrong economic policies” that would lead to the suffering of Iranian families as the reason for this high rate of inflation in the country, according to the Iranian news agency ILNA.

The experts also called on the heads of the parliament and judiciary to intervene...

The experts pointed out that the current “incorrect policy” of managing the collapse in currency caused the currency to lose about 70 percent of its value since April under the threat of revived US sanctions, with heavy demand for dollars among ordinary Iranians trying to protect their savings. They added that mismanagement in commodity markets and random pricing being placed by traders in the country further increases economic concerns over the next months…

In the Iranian capital, money exchange shops offered 135,000 rials for one US dollar at one point, drawing crowds of onlookers and those wanting to trade. Only the day before, the rial was selling at 170,000 to the dollar, with prices recently going as high as 190,000 to the dollar.

Although the Iranian government has taken measures to reduce inflation by injecting hard currency into the market, and preventing traders and currency exchanges from selling dollars while banks would buy dollars from citizens, the inflation rate did not decrease much…

This warning about the high rate of inflation and the collapse of the Iranian economy comes amid fundamentalist movement in parliament threatening to overthrow the government of Rouhani through questioning most ministers and withdrawing confidence from them, against the backdrop of economic crises and the deterioration of currency and the cessation of many industries in the country.

Labels: economics, Iran, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Is economics political? Are politics economic?

Iran’s rial fell to a record low on Wednesday, part of a staggering drop in the currency’s value since the United States pulled out of the nuclear deal only four months ago…

Iranians line up to exchange currencies

Signs of the currency chaos can be seen everywhere in Tehran: Worried residents lined up outside beleaguered money changers, travel agents offered vacation prices only in hard currency, and diapers disappeared from store shelves…

There was no immediate acknowledgement of the drop on state media.

Iran’s economy has faced troubled times in the past, whether from the shah’s overspending on military arms in the 1970s or the Western sanctions that came after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and United States Embassy takeover. Drastic fluctuations in oil prices have also taken a toll.

This time, however, feels different. The currency has crashed along with hope many felt following the 2015 nuclear deal…

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, called the American moves economic “sabotage” this past weekend, and mentioned the diaper shortage. Some 70 percent of material for disposal diapers is imported. As the rial falls, it makes purchasing the material from abroad more expensive.

“Imagine that in Tehran or other major cities, baby diapers suddenly become scarce. This is happening, this is real, this is not make-believe. Baby diapers!” Ayatollah Khamenei said, according to a transcript on his official website. “This makes people angry. On the other side, the enemy wants people to be angry with the government and system. This is one of their ways.”

Labels: economics, Iran, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:55 AM 0 comments

Unrest in Iranian cities

Protests renewed in Tehran and several Iranian cities on Sunday evening, marking the sixth consecutive day of protests against the regime’s policies while some violent clashes erupted between protestors and security forces in some cities.

Scene in Tehran, August 5.

According to videos published by activists, there were protests in the neighborhood of Ekbatan, northwest of Tehran, in other areas like Daneshjoo Park in the center of Tehran, and in the streets of Karagar and Amir Abad in South Tehran.

Protestors in Enghelab Street, in the center of Tehran, were chanting “Death to the Dictator.” A video showed security forces attack protestors while some young men burnt trash bins to obstruct the security forces’ advance.

Violent clashes also erupted between protestors and riot police in the park of Tehran’s theatre, and according to some reports, there were violent clashes between protestors and riot police in Qom and Karaj.

Activists said the government shut down cellular services and cut off the internet in both cities, Qom and Karaj, to prevent citizens from publishing photos of protests and clashes.

Meanwhile, in Kazerun, in the Fars Province, hundreds of people protested in the center of city and chanted anti-regime slogans.

Labels: economics, Iran, protests

posted by Ken Wedding @ 8:09 AM 0 comments

Unrest in Iran

President Trump says his decision to leave the nuclear agreement is already having a huge impact on Iran. He is right, Iranians say, but for the wrong reasons…

[A]nalysts say there has been little or no change in Iran’s regional posture. The real impact to date has been on internal politics, with a repression on the slightest hints of dissent, and the economy, after the reimposition of sanctions.

“A good economic and political process was underway in Iran,” said Mirzababa Motaharinezhad, a spokesman for Mardomsalary, a moderate political group. “Unfortunately, after Trump pulled out from the deal openness ended here and a crackdown on activists resumed.”…

[I]n the small alleyways of Tehran’s bazaars and the luxury car dealerships in the affluent northern parts of the city, Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement has definitely added to economic woes, which are contributing to political tensions.

On Monday, protesters gathered outside the Parliament building in Tehran to complain about the economy, and the police fired tear gas to disperse them. On Sunday, the Grand Bazaar had to close because of protests…

Closed shops in the Grand Bazaar

“Finding a safe place for my savings has become nearly impossible,” said Asgar Kouhpaee, 55, a tradesman who for years made his living as an egg wholesaler. He said he always kept his savings in cars, but this year he missed his chance. A Toyota RAV4, a midscale SUV model that costs around $25,000 in the United States and sold for $68,000 here last August, now costs around $100,000…

Many people seem to be blaming their leaders, rather than President Trump or others, for most of the problems, making the government hypersensitive to expressions of dissent…

“The impact of Trump’s pullout from the nuclear deal is very very low, said Reza Khandan, the husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer who was arrested last week. “Even if the nuclear agreement was fully implemented, and all the money reached here and the banking system was not under sanction, the mismanagement inside the country would have squandered the oil revenue and other transactions. We are in bad economic and social states, and it has nothing to do with Trump and sanctions he imposed or will impose.”…

Meanwhile, anticipating fresh protests over the economy and rising political dissatisfaction, the government has allocated four stadiums and six parks across the capital as locations for legal protest rallies…

Labels: dissent, economics, Iran, limitations

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 1 comments

Iran comes to China

China will host Iranian President Hassan Rouhani next month at a regional summit in a Chinese coastal city, the country's foreign ministry said on Monday…

Presidents Rouhani and Xi

Rouhani will pay a working visit to China and attend the summit of the China and Russia-led security bloc the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the ministry said.

It did not give exact dates for his visit, but the summit is scheduled to be held on the second weekend of June in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao.

Iran is currently an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, though it has long sought full membership.

Russia has previously argued that with Western sanctions against Tehran lifted, it could finally become a member of the bloc which also includes four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, Pakistan and India…

Labels: China, international relations, Iran

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Analysis of Iran's presidential politics

The Iranian president’s signature achievement, a landmark nuclear deal with world powers, is starting to unravel, and his economy is in distress even before renewed U.S. sanctions begin to bite, with Iran’s currency swooning to record lows against the dollar.

His domestic opponents are clamoring for his resignation…

Longtime observers say it is far too early to count Rouhani out. They point to his skills as a shrewd political operator, honed over decades as a government insider, as well as his long-standing ties to Iran’s ruling clerics.

For now, Iran’s pragmatist president continues to enjoy the support of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who wields the ultimate authority in the country…

The mild-mannered Rouhani, a rotund cleric known for his constant smile, put a fresh, moderate face on Iran’s foreign policy. And while Rouhani and Khamenei have sparred openly over matters such as the economy and nuclear talks, the supreme leader is loath to return Iran to the chaos of the Ahmadinejad years…

The nuclear agreement… has helped ease Iran’s international isolation, offering major sanctions relief in return for restrictions on Tehran’s atomic energy program. Rouhani had pinned his legacy to the deal.

Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council in Washington, said that declarations of Rouhani’s demise have failed to take into account the support among Iran’s political elite for these nuclear negotiations. Senior figures in Iran’s political and security establishments in addition to Khamenei — including the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps — have stopped short of calling for Iran to immediately leave the agreement.

In the short term, Rouhani’s popularity should keep him afloat…

But his approval rating, the firm said, also has steadily declined in recent months…

Iranians are fed up with joblessness, soaring prices and a depreciating currency. Nationwide protests broke out in the winter over the ailing economy after a leaked government budget proposal showed cuts to subsidies for the poor…

Don't Panic. 

The multiple choice section of the exam will ask questions about

• Introduction to Comparative Politics (5%)
• Sovereignty, Authority, and Power (20%)
• Political Institutions (35%)
• Citizens, Society, and the State (15%)
• Political and Economic Change (15%)
• Public Policy (10%)

That's all.

Labels: elections, Iran, leadership, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Unrest in Iran

Teachers went on strike in central Iran’s city of Yazd. Steelworkers and hospital staff walked off the job in the southwest city of Ahvaz. Railway employees protested near Tabriz. And a bus drivers union in Tehran battled the private companies that control many city routes.

These were among the hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles. Workers are turning not only against their employers but also Iran’s government, piling pressure on leaders who promised but failed to deliver better times in the two years since economic sanctions were lifted in the nuclear deal…

Prices of eggs, meat and bread are rising more than 10% a year, compounding consumer woes. Unemployment is about 12%, and the Iranian rial has fallen sharply against the dollar,..

Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars in proceeds from the nuclear agreement have gone to Iran’s military involvement in Syria and support of Lebanon’s Hezbollah rather than the national economy, critics of the deal say…

Iran’s labor disputes are extending a panoply of protests in the Islamic Republic that stem from social, economic and political strains…

Leaders of the new Islamic Republic hobbled the rise of independent labor unions, which were viewed as a potential threat. While Iran has state-sanctioned Islamic labor councils, international labor groups don’t view them as independent of the state. Some leaders of independent unions face arrest…

Labels: economics, Iran, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Protest messages on money

"Banknotes are our un-censorable messengers," one user wrote, referring to a rumoured plan to permanently block the popular messaging app Telegram, which is by far the most popular digital communication tool in Iran.

Slogans included "I am an overthrower".

Some of the sayings were originally chanted during mass anti-establishment protests at the turn of the year.

In late December, demonstrators took to the streets then to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic situation in the country.

Telegram was believed to have been the main platform people used to obtain and share information about the protests, which took place across Iran from late December 2017 to January 2018.

Nearly 8,000 tweets have been posted since 28 April under the hashtag #Onehundredthousand_talking_banknotes in Persian, according to BBC Monitoring. Most posts are aimed at raising awareness about the new online movement…

Most tweets were posted anonymously, making them hard to independently verify…

One account… published a photograph of a note featuring a drawing of a protester in a hijab - a tribute to the recent "Girls of Enqelab (Revolution) Street" movement against the compulsory Islamic dress code in the country…

Labels: Iran, politics, protest, social media

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Degree for nothing?

Iran is facing a crisis represented in the high percentage of the unemployment among the universities and institutes graduates at 42 percent of the total unemployment.

Dr. Saeed Nemki, Assistant in the Development of Social and Public Affairs [said]… “We are facing this situation, while educating these people had cost a lot. Thus we should think about a basic solution for this dilemma and eliminate the elite from immigrating (abroad),”…

[T]he 42 percent of the unemployed, either have bachelor’s degree or even higher, despite allocating major financial resources for their graduation. This is a very important issue in the society. Actually, the society’s expected something different than those graduates. Thus brain drain is one of the worries facing the labor market in the future…

Iranian news agencies published reports that mentioned the details of the report of the interior minister of Khamenei, indicating that there are about 11 million Iranians are marginalized, 1.5 million are drug addicts, and 600,000 are imprisoned, these are catastrophic numbers for a country that exports more than 4 million and 500 thousand barrels of oil daily.

Labels: economy, education, Iran, political culture

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Anything but soft power

Although President Hassan Rouhani said few days ago while marking Iran’s Army Day that Iran wants brotherly and strong relations with neighboring countries and rejects interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and noted that “dialogue is the only means towards peace in the region,” the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has contradicted him by stating that it will not commit to staying within Iran’s borders.

… Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy, said the Revolutionary Guards’ activities “are not limited to Iran,” noting that the guards’ forces are currently fighting thousands of kilometers away from Iranian borders.

Fadavi added that this military apparatus’ actual name is the “Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps” refusing the appendage “Iranian.”

Commenting on why the Revolutionary Guards’ forces are present in other countries specifically in Syria and Iraq, Fadavi said: “Guarding the Islamic revolution does not only mean guarding one country and one government…

Fadavi commended the presence of Iranian forces in Syria and Iraq and Tehran’s support of militias in Yemen and Lebanon and said this is “necessary” to defend the Islamic revolution…

On April 18 while marking Army’s Day, Rouhani commended the army for not interfering in political affairs. Commentators said Rouhani was thus indirectly criticizing the Revolutionary Guards for interfering in the country’s domestic and foreign political affairs.

“Although the army understands politics well, it was not dragged into the political game and it remained committed to the imam’s will. We do not see the name of any army commander in corruption cases, and this confirms the purity of the Islamic Republic’s army,” Rouhani said. The Revolutionary Guards responded to Rouhani and said his remarks “destroyed unity, (incited) divisions and conveyed ingratitude.”

Fadavi concluded his interview by saying: “During the sacred (Iranian-Iraqi) war, we were fighting the enemy in the city of Khorramshahr and in the midst of our homes but today we are fighting the enemy thousands of kilometers away from our borders.”

Labels: ForeignPolicy, Iran, politics, soft power

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Money and legitimacy

All this week panicked Iranians have gathered in throngs outside banks and other financial businesses hoping to buy dollars, as the government seeks to head off a collapse in the rial, the national currency.

But they have met with nothing but frustration, told there were no dollars or other currencies for them to buy at the official government rate…

Forex rates in Iran

Long on a downward path, the rial plunged this week, losing 35 percent of its value against the dollar and hitting what has been widely described as a record low. The government is seeking to impose an exchange rate of 42,000 to the dollar, but in Tehran’s black-market exchanges this week the going rate was 60,000…

In an effort to squelch currency speculation, the government sent riot police into the bazaars on Wednesday, where they arrested several money changers…

However, many of those changing money in the bazaars were ordinary people seeking to protect themselves against rising prices and fearful of further declines in the currency.

Others, like Mohsen Yekta, a university professor, said they needed the foreign exchange for personal business. “Every month I send some money to my daughter in Paris,” he said. “I need foreign exchange to help her out. I don’t know what to do.”

Amid rising tensions in the region, the national currency has been sliding for weeks, but it went into free fall on Saturday. The government blames unilateral United States sanctions that continue to limit bank financing, despite the 2015 nuclear agreement that lifted international banking sanctions. Market insiders say that fears are also rising that President Trump will withdraw from the nuclear agreement…

Ordinary Iranians agree with most of these explanations, but also blame the government for poor planning and bad management of the economy. They also view the black-market rate as one of the few trustworthy indicators of the country’s economic health.

Earlier this year, complaints about economic conditions and corruption exploded into a more general protest against political conditions in more than 80 cities across Iran. There are no signs so far that the current troubles are leading to unrest…

The currency slide is taking its toll on business, with many firms selling foreign products halting all sales, unable to determine prices…

While Iran has endured similar currency crises in the past, some commentators said they were not seeing light at the end of this particular tunnel. “Our economy is based on bad planning — it’s wishy-washy,” said Farshad Ghorbanpour, an analyst close to the government. “Don’t expect things to get any better.”

Labels: economics, Iran, legitimacy, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments

Trivia to me - vital ethnic identity to some Iranian Arabs

Iranian security forces, backed by units of anti-riot police and the Revolutionary Guard, suppressed night demonstrations on the fourth day of protests by Arab citizens in the center of the city on Saturday…

Videos and images shared on social media and local Ahwaz TV channels showed protesters holding up signs in Arabic, English and Ahwazi calling on the UN to stop the discrimination against Arabs by Iranian authorities…

According to the Ahwaz Human Rights Organization, protesters called for the release of political prisoners and an end to demographic changes that are in favor of migrants, not Arabs.

Other demands included an end to the marginalization of the Arab Ahwaz, efforts to combat poverty, unemployment and pollution.

See also: The Phantom Emirate of Ahwaz.

Labels: cleavages, Iran, protest

posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM 0 comments