BY ALI AROUZI 28 MAY 2016
TEHRAN — Plastic surgery is big business in Iran.
Whether in a shopping mall, bazaar, on the crowded streets of Tehran or perusing Instagram posts, the parade of bandages temporarily hiding new-and-improved body parts make clear people from many walks of life have dabbled in some form of cosmetic surgery. Read More »
by:John Ribeiro
The latest move could further extend the country’s control over domestic Internet activity
Iran has ordered foreign messaging apps to transfer data and activity records of Iranian users to local servers within a year, a move that will give the country a greater ability to monitor and censor the online activity of its people. Read More »
The supreme leader is clipping the wings of the reformist president
ABOVE the grimy car-choked streets of Tehran, Iran’s down-at-heel capital, a new poster campaign is under way. Beside the brooding black-turbaned features of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, slogans extol the virtues of the “resistance economy”. The regime, it seems, is not ready to let go of the isolationist days of Iran’s worst confrontations with the West. Read More »
Updated by Hanif Zarrabi-Kashani on May 26, 2016
On May 28, Iran’s newly elected parliament will be sworn in. It will be the 10th — and potentially the most consequential — elected assembly since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Read More »
Strarfor Analysis MAY 27, 2016
Forecast
The terms of Iran’s new oil contract, once finalized, will be a significant improvement over the country’s old buyback model. Read More »
By: Nader Habibi May 26, 2016
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his policies are set to get a boost this week after voters elected a parliament that favors reform. Read More »
By: Kourosh Ziabari 23 May 2016
When Iran and the six major global powers reached an agreement last summer to put an end to the controversy surrounding Tehran’s nuclear programme by announcing the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iranians flocked to the streets en masse, celebrating and rejoicing at what they believed would be the emergence of a new horizon in their lives.
Most of them were youths, and the freshness of their teenage years had been spoiled by the adventurous policies of the former hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who failed to fortify Iran’s oil-dependent economy in the years when the price of crude oil was at its all-time high and the nation allegedly earned something between $531bn and $800bn in oil revenues, all of which was literally frittered away due to mismanagement. During those turbulent years, corruption and embezzlement plagued the country like an infectious disease and foreign relations were aggravated as a result of Ahmadinejad’s inability to resolve the nuclear dilemma in a reasonable and sound manner.
By: Holly Dagres 20 May 2016
Iranians were elated when they discovered that actor Leonardo DiCaprio had shared on his Instagram account a photo of Iran. DiCaprio, a champion environmentalist, republished The Weather Channel’s photo of drying Lake Urmia to bring attention to climate change. What he didn’t know was that so many Iranians — at home and abroad — would show an outpouring of love and support for his small gesture of raising awareness of this issue.
The Instagram post went viral, receiving more than 313,000 likes and 117,000 comments, including, “Leo thanks for being concerned about what’s happening all around the world especially my motherland Iran, it’s truly humbling” and “Iranians appreciate it. Love you Leo.”
“What Mr. DiCaprio did is praiseworthy,” Gary Lewis, the United Nations resident coordinator in Iran, told Al-Monitor. “And it is important because as a result of his action to publish the picture a vastly larger number of other people on this planet now know about this problem. This will bring a sense of hope that others might get more involved to support efforts to overcome the Lake Urmia challenge and other similar challenges in Iran and beyond.”
TEHRAN — A house visit by a daughter of a prominent ayatollah to a female leader of the persecuted Bahai religious minority touched off a debate this week in Iran about the harsh treatment of a group deemed pagans and impure by the country’s dominant clerics.
The issue was raised last week when the Iranian news media reported that Faezeh Hashemi, 54, a daughter of the former president, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, had sat down for tea with Fariba Kamalabadi,52, a Bahai leader.
Updated by Afshon Ostovar
Despite the historic nuclear agreement between the US and Iran, and talk of the rising political influence of Iran’s “moderates,” who favor easing tensions with the US, the fact is that a core constituency in the Iranian regime remains vehemently opposed to warming relations with America. Read More »
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