Conversation with Kimia In this conversation, we sat down with Kimia to unpack identity, diaspora politics, and the way Iranian narratives are being shaped in real time across digital and political spaces. We began with a simple question of identity, and Kimia framed it through the lens of the Iranian diaspora. For her, there is a strong sense of pride in what the community has become—especially the growing number of people documenting events, amplifying Iranian news, and pus

The European Union has moved today to extend and expand its sanctions regime against Iran, citing ongoing and serious human rights violations across the country. In a decision adopted by EU foreign ministers, the bloc renewed its existing restrictive measures targeting individuals and entities linked to repression in Iran, extending the framework until April 2027. The sanctions include asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions on the export of equipment that could be used

In Iran, the labels “right-wing” and “left-wing” can mean something quite different than in Western countries. As one analyst notes, the definitions of “Right” and “Left” set by a country don’t always match those used in the US. In the US, being “right-wing” often implies free-market economics and strong ties with the West, while “left-wing” suggests more government intervention in the economy. Iran has its own history and context. Iranians chant the name of the exiled Monarc

Cenk Uygur is one of the clearest examples of how modern political discourse collapsed into ideological paranoia disguised as intelligence. “This is Cenk Uygur. A professional genocide denier turned political commentator.” That line sounds extreme until you actually look at the history. In the 1990s, Uygur publicly denied the Armenian Genocide in university publications, arguing that the massacres were essentially propaganda rather than historical reality. He later walked par

The idea that “the CIA destroyed Iran in 1953” has become one of the most repeated simplifications in modern political discourse about Iran. It’s often used as a catch-all explanation for decades of Iranian history that followed, as if a single covert operation in Washington erased all internal complexity inside Iran itself. What actually happened in 1953 is far more documented and widely discussed than the simplified version suggests. Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s prime ministe

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said Wednesday that his government was reviewing an American plan to end the war, hours after President Trump put pressure on Iran to agree to a deal to end the war and renewed threats, fueling uncertainty around the negotiations. Mr. Baghaei said that Iran had yet to respond to that proposal. “After finalizing its considerations, Iran will convey its views to the Pakistani side,” he said in an interview with the semiofficial

The story of Shahnameh is not just mythology—it’s political memory. Written by Ferdowsi over a thousand years ago, it preserves a pattern Iranians still recognize: the rise of tyranny, the normalization of fear, and the eventual eruption of resistance. At the center of that pattern stands one of its darkest figures—Zahhak. Zahhak begins not as a monster, but as a man who makes a deal with evil. In the epic, the devil—Ahriman—corrupts him, and from Zahhak’s shoulders grow two

Football in Iran isn’t just a sport. It’s a filtration system. On the surface, it looks like any other football ecosystem: academies, leagues, national pride, packed stadiums chanting for their teams. But behind the scenes, the pipeline that produces players for top clubs and the national team runs through institutions far removed from sport—most notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij. This isn’t accidental. Since the early years after the revolution, the

At the Met Gala, symbolism travels faster than truth. Sergey Brin shows up wearing a Lion and Sun pin—a quiet nod to Iran’s people—and for a moment, the room notices. Cameras flash, captions circulate, the gesture is decoded and reposted. And then, like everything else about Iran, it fades into the background noise of global indifference. Because beyond the red carpet, there is no metaphor. There is only reality—and it is brutal. In 2025 alone, at least 1,639 people were exec

Prices of everyday goods, are at a ridiculous all-time high, as people are trading products with food, and products like meat or chicken, are considered a luxury. In Iran today, the idea of “everyday goods” has been fundamentally altered. Items that were once considered basic components of daily life—meat, chicken, eggs, and dairy—are increasingly out of reach for a large portion of the population. This is not simply a case of inflation in the abstract; it is a lived economic

A lot of political conversations online today feel strangely repetitive. Every global conflict gets reduced into the same formula: one side is imperialist, the other is oppressed. One side is evil, the other is righteous. And while those frameworks can sometimes capture part of reality, history—especially Middle Eastern history—is rarely that clean. The other day, I came across a comment saying that Iranians should primarily be angry at Israel and the United States because “g

When Reza Pahlavi told European journalists that tens of thousands of Iranians had sacrificed their lives for democracy, he wasn’t simply making a political claim—he was pointing to a historical pattern that resists easy categorization. Iran does not fit neatly into the ideological boxes that dominate Western political language. And yet, much of the global conversation about Iran insists on forcing it into those boxes anyway. This mismatch begins with a flawed assumption: tha

Let’s begin with a small experiment in intellectual honesty. Imagine someone, with unwavering confidence, telling you that the United States would lose a war to Iran, that Iranians overwhelmingly adore their regime and could field “90 million soldiers,” and that Iran has somehow extracted trillions of dollars from warfare. You would not be wrong to pause and ask a very basic question: is this the product of careful study, or the sound of someone mistaking conviction for compe

Every political struggle eventually reduces to a single question: who has the right to decide how a people lives? Not how they should live in theory, not what ideology suits them best—but who ultimately holds authority over their existence. Zionism answers that question in one way: the Jewish people themselves. The Iranian struggle for freedom answers it the same way: the Iranian people themselves. Different histories, same principle. The Moral Logic of Self-Determination At

We usually think of propaganda as something obvious—loud slogans, obvious bias, or state television repeating the same message. But modern propaganda rarely looks like that anymore. It behaves more like a living system: adaptive, subtle, and designed to blend into the environment it spreads through. To understand how groups like the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) operate in the information space, it can be useful to borrow a metaphor from biology: propaganda as a vi

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The notion that the Iranian diaspora is somehow “separate” from Iran—or worse, an obstacle to activism—isn’t just incorrect. It reflects a misunderstanding of how modern political movements actually function. For millions of Iranians, leaving the country was never about abandoning it. It was about survival, seeking opportunities, or simply escaping restrictions that made a normal life unattainable. Today, an estimated 5 to 7 million Iranians re

You don’t have to spend long on the internet to notice something: everyone is an expert. On any subject you can imagine—how to brew better coffee, how geopolitics works, whether war is justified, or who has the right to defend a nation—you’ll find confident, polished opinions presented as fact. The real question isn’t whether arguments exist. It’s whether they deserve to be taken seriously. So what actually makes an argument valid? A good place to start is the opposite: under