Articles

by:Mohamad Kawas

Political elite in Lebanon does not seem very eager to end constitutional farce that has been blocking election of only Christian president in Arab world.

BEIRUT – The flurry of consultations by former prime minis­ter Saad Hariri towards ending Lebanon’s presi­dential vacuum signals a commitment to the independent political system. Meanwhile, other fragmented Lebanese forces are trying to come up with ways to by­pass the National Pact of 1943 and the Taif agreement of 1989, which together resulted in the current power structure. Read More »

Bloomberg

· Treasury guidance allows deals with firms not under sanctions

· Rules still restrict entry of transactions into U.S. system

The U.S. Treasury Department is loosening sanctions on Iran, relaxing rules on foreigners doing dollar-denominated transactions with businesses in the nation. Read More »

An innocent handshake between Germany’s female environment minister and Iran’s female vice president caused outrage on Iranian media and social networks, which mistook the short-haired German minister for a man, while in Germany, the shake caused uproar as the Iranian VP was involved in the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. Read More »

By THOMAS ERDBRINK

TEHRAN — Rushing for a plane to Tehran because of a family emergency, the Iranian-American businessman stuffed his mobile phone into his carry-on, forgetting to turn it off. Read More »

By Kambiz Foroohar

For a decade, the U.S. and other major powers squeezed Iran’s economy to force it to rein in its nuclear program. That’s over, at least for the moment. Now what? An unshackled Iran has plenty going for it. Read More »

The prosperity gap is on full display on Tehran’s main boulevard.

by: Marc Champion / Golnar Motevalli

Valiasr Street, the 12-mile boulevard that Shah Reza Pahlavi built in the 1930s to link his summer palaces in the north of Tehran to a new train station in the south, connects two increasingly polarized Iranian worlds. Read More »

By Majid Sadeghpour

The biggest massacre of political prisoners since World War II was carried out in Iran in 1988. The Iranian regime as a whole and many senior officials in power today were the perpetrators. The indiscriminate murder of 30,000 prisoners of conscience was ordered by the regime’s then-supreme leader Khomeini and carried out by members of “death commissions” set up around the county. Read More »

The Last Bookstore presents The Saffron Tales – an evening of stories celebrating Iran, her food and her people. Join author Yasmin Khan discussing her new cookbook, The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen, with special guest Bita Milanian. Read More »

Writer Liana Aghajanian Photographer Steve Eggleston & Tino Zahedi

Discover the glamorous ghost of parties past at Iran’s long-abandoned US embassy
Architect: Unknown
Date: 1959

For nearly 40 years, the Iranian Embassy in Washington DC has remained eerily vacant. Just across the street from the Brazilian Embassy and flanked by large trees, it now stands as a piece of lost history, seemingly frozen in time as the world around it moves on. Read More »

By: Gareth Smyth 29 September 2016

Some academics argue the Safavid Shahs gave Iranian Shiism a rule-fixation and abandonment of spirituality it has never lost

The crowning of Ismail as king of Iran in Tabriz in 1501 was low-key, as was his announcement that Shia Islam would henceforth be the official state religion. And yet this was a turning-point in Iranian history, with repercussions up to the present day. Read More »