One lesson from the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 2011 Arab revolutions is that activists seeking to promote women’s rights, human rights and the transition to democracy must challenge patriarchy from within the Muslim legal tradition.
The United States, Israel and other military powers continue to seek the perfect weapon - from "unmanned aerial vehicles" to "directed energy". They forget how the story ends.
In order to achieve long-term security in the Middle East, it is necessary to address the root cause of conflict rather than its symptoms.
The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is at the heart of Syria's destructive stalemate. This proxy conflict, with Baghdad providing crucial help to Tehran, highlights the scale of the blowback from the United States's war in Iraq.
Threats of attack and sanctions have proven to be a double-edged sword, inflicting real damage on both the Iranian regime and its democratic opposition, with real costs for the fragile European economy and America’s strategic power.
Too often the history of Iran is reduced to a string of despotisms interrupted by moments of fanatical violence and foreign intervention.
Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons. What does its disregard mean for his ability to project authority to both international actors and domestic audiences?
Today sees the launch of a new Global Campaign to Stop Stoning. Rochelle Terman examines the history of this gendered practice of violence against women. With stoning, as with all forms of culturally-justified violence against women, it is very difficult to see where culture ends and politics begi
Iran's strategic and ideological investment in the Assad regime may force smaller, unpalatable political compromises to secure a 'solution' in Syria.
The biggest threat to the survival of the Islamic Republic might not come from sanctions imposed by the west, but from growing divisions that are disintegrating the regime from the inside.
The Shari’a is largely irrelevant to most important issues of policy and administration in the economy and in government. Its historical and symbolic locus is on family and sexuality: patriarchal rights, segregation of the sexes, enforced female modesty.
