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Most Read This Week In Iran

Most Read This Week Tagged "Iran"

On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer

King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation

The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story

The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World

Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare

Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History

L'usure d'un monde: Une traversée de l'Iran

The Eagle and The Lion: Rome, Persia, and an Unwinnable Conflict

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran's Women-Led Uprising

Zwischen den Welten: Von Macht und Ohnmacht im Iran

The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents

Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror

Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave

Maryam's Magic: The Story of Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani

The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen

Всем Иран. Парадоксы жизни в автократии под санкциями

Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House

King of the World: The Life of Cyrus the Great

Journal de bord d’une jeune iranienne hantée par une vieille folle moralisatrice

How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare

Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East

Woman Life Freedom: Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran

An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville

The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East

The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty (Council on Foreign Relations Books)

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“ Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a fo Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews? I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action. ...more ”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

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“ A message was sent by the regime to the faithful: to survive they would have to be loyal to only one interpretation of the faith, and to accept the new political role of the clergy. Father felt that this spelled the end of Islam in our country, and he did have a point. 'No foreign power,' he said, 'could destroy Islam the way these people have. ...more ”
― Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About

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