Iran’s recent protests shattered the myth of the Islamic Republic’s solid base among Iranian working class and traditionalist rural-dwellers and the simplistic narrative of middle class versus working class protesters.
What we see happening in Iran is the emergence of a new discourse that combines old traditions and new ideas that will strengthen a home-grown democracy.
Without addressing head-on the drivers of the protests and pursuing popular reform, the Iranian leaders are only buying time until the next standoff between the state and the society.
The gap between power and society is also growing inexorably in Iran.
Trump-MBS strategy has not made significant headway. Will they succeed in escalating anti-Shia confrontation against Iran and its allies?
How is the Saudi-Iranian rivalry overwriting the Arab Spring’s key messages?
Asef Bayat talks about revolutions and revolutionary ideas, the place of ordinary people in social transformation, and what we can learn from the “Tahrir moment.”
Who controls Syria’s borders? The US and Israel are encouraging Syrian Kurds to fight the regime and its allies for border control. The ensuing mayhem might unravel the Mideast and far beyond.
The colonial image of Persians as hypocritical and unreliable is so deeply entrenched in western imagination, that it affects policymaking on the highest levels.
The Saudi Monarch’s 4 November purge threatens the kingdom’s longstanding policy on dynastic rule, and paves the way for Salman’s abdication of power to his son Mohammed.
NATO’s current nuclear strategy is untenable. Crises during the Cold War reveal that nuclear strategies become dangerous exactly in the circumstances they are intended to deter, in political confrontations.
