Daniel Aaron Lazar

The Last Ayatollah

The Green Movement’s bloody street protests may not have toppled Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—but they will.

An argument worth reading (from Newsweek)

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Kandahar (2001)

A conundrum: the Islamic Republic of Iran, no friend of Western-style liberty, somehow nurtured (well, permitted) the great humanist cinema of the 90s. We’ll let the political scientists explain that one, and just note that men like Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami have directed on their own, and encouraged in others, films whose stripped-down, but never simple, artistry touches souls around the world. The stories are often about children —poor ones, blind or lame ones —who fight long odds not to triumph but simply to survive.

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31st anniversary of the Iranian revolution

Jason Rezaian offering a dispatch from Tehran for Slate

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Show Trials in Iran

In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations. Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic. This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions.

Laura Secor on Iranian Show Trials (2009, 2 pages)

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Laura Secor on Iran Elections

Journalist Laura Secor details the recent suppression of the post-election Mousavi opposition in Iran and the intellectual roots of the detention, torture, and forced confessions hoisted upon civil leaders over the preceding decades.

View the video from the American Academy in Berlin

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THE SUNNI-SHIA SPLIT

In 680, near Karbala in Iraq, a man was killed in the desert. His name was Husayn, and he was the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. His death was a crucial episode in the growing split between two groups of Muslims – who would come to be known as the Sunni and the Shia.

And yet this dispute did not begin violently. Arguably, it was not at first a political or theological schism either, but a personal disagreement. And the two groups agree on many of the fundamentals of the religion.

So how did this profound split develop?

Listen to Melvyn Bragg conduct this round table discussion

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The New Democrats: An intellectual history of the Green Wave

What we are witnessing right now in the streets of Tehran is, first and foremost, a political battle for the future of the Iranian state. But closely linked to this political fight is also an old theological dispute about the nature of Shiism–a dispute that has been roiling Iran for more than a century.

Shiism, like most religions, is no stranger to heated schisms. Shia and Sunnis split over the question of whether Muhammad had designated his son-in-law, Ali, as his successor (Shia believed he had). Some Shia, called Alawites, believe the only divinely designated successor was Ali, while another group, Zaydis, believe there were four imams. A large, intellectually vibrant third group is known as the Ismailis because it believes the line of imams ended with the seventh, Ismail. And the largest Shia sect is called the Ithna Ashari–or the Twelvers. Dominant in Iran, they believe in twelve imams and posit that the last imam went into hiding some 1,100 years ago. His return, bloody and vengeful, will mark the redemptive dawn of the age of justice.

Read more about how the election protests have a deeply-rooted religious and intellectual history

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2009 Iranian Presidential Elections

“I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin,” Mousavi  in Tehran.

From the BBC

Wikipedia

Who Cares Who is the President of Iran? from Slate

BBC Video on Election Protests

On the Iranian Baby Book (and Youth Voters)

Newsweek predicts the fall of Islamic theocracy—though not necessarily the current regime—in Iran. The regime, based on the “divine” appointment of a supreme leader, now faces more dissent than ever: Top clerics are divided, and there are millions of Iranians who no longer believe in the government’s ideology. It will now be able to maintain power only by military intimidation. When it comes, the end of a 30-year experiment in political Islam will make waves across the Muslim world

A profile of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei describes how the idealistic Shia cleric who loved poetry about oppression has become “that cold, hard weight of authority” he once chafed under. His complicated relationships with other members of the government go back decades, and his “indulgent” support for President Ahmadinejad suggests power has given him “tunnel vision.”

The Weekly Standard argues that whatever happens in Iran, the Islamic Republic as we know it is over. The government’s decision to announce the election result so quickly—without even making reasonable efforts to have it appear genuine—”shows how insular and insecure Khamenei, a politicized cleric of some intellectual sensitivity, has become.” Questions about the future of a “supreme leader” in Iran were being discussed before this month’s election, and Khamenei’s handling of the situation has all but ensured he’ll be the end of the line.

The Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrews University offer this analysis of the numbers.

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Everything you know about Iran is wrong

Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What’s the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that “developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.” Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini’s statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.

Read on From Zakaria in Newsweek

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Iran: A Familiar Face to Challenge Ahmadinejad

Will Mohammed Khatami run for a third term as president of Iran, or won’t he? That’s the question dominating the political conversation in Tehran ahead of the June poll, in which hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who succeeded the reformist Khatami in 2005 — is standing for reelection. Pressure has been mounting on the former President to run again, with many seeing him as the only candidate able to defeat Ahmadinejad. There has even been an unprecedented public “Invite Khatami” campaign whose nostalgic theme song ends, “This time, we will truly appreciate your presence.”

Read on from Time magazine

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