If we take the Constitutional Revolution as the first moment when Iranian music closely engaged with a social movement, the last century of political upheaval leaves a clear record in song.

Even if hope is an illusion, we must hold onto it, share its light, however scant and brief, because otherwise we will never change the world, we will give injustice the last word. This much is certain: despair and indifference lead nowhere.

If the “telos” of a historical narrative is 1979, then all roads lead to the fall of the shah and the rupture that occurred in the US-Iran relationship during the hostage crisis. In those narratives, most of which are political in orientation, the shah’s reform program is not taken seriously.

Despite changes in Iran’s drug policy over the past decades, dehumanisation of people who use substances persists. What is the nexus between language, images and treatment that dehumanise people who use substances and the violence that is committed against them and why should we all care about the manner in which people who use drugs are depicted?

I had arranged with a couple of friends to go, one morning, to the gates of Evin Prison, simply to stand with the family of our friend behind bars, if only to offer a little encouragement, to let them know they were not alone, not abandoned in their vigil. 

Corruption is often described as one of the greatest obstacles to justice and prosperity worldwide. In countries such as Iran, where corruption is part of the governing structure, who can hold the corrupt accountable?

Jack Goldstone is a historian of revolutions, although he spends a great deal of time studying them, whether it is sixteenth-century Europe or the twenty-first-century Middle East. His central preoccupation is fundamental change in human societies.

A city of such richness and glory as the Paris of 1911 served as the gateway of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s entry into Europe, this in the latter days of the Qájár era, and at the depth of the abasement of the Iranian people in the eyes of the world. 

memories and narratives of the war, referred to by the state as the ‘sacred defence’ , have remained an ideological pillar of governance by the Islamic Republic and vital to the state’s claim to political legitimacy and the ability to exert social control