Women are right to boycott Iran’s chess tournament

Not since 1979, when leading American feminist Kate Millett joined thousands of women in protest of Iran’s revolutionary officials’ plan to reinstitute mandatory veiling, have Iranian women had a global advocate. That changed this September, when Georgian-American chess champion Nazi Paikidze announced she would not don the hijab to attend the 2017 World Chess Tournament […]

Commentary: An Iranian refugee on becoming American – legally, then in spirit

It’s lucky that my mother and I were admitted as refugees to America before the topic of immigration became so contentious. If the current laws were to change to add skills or financial requirements, we could have never gotten in. Hell, I myself, a bitter teenager then, thought us perfectly useless and was stunned that […]

Iran’s short-lived nukes celebration

When my jubilant relatives in Tehran told me of street celebrations over the nuclear deal, I was reminded of the Yiddish folktale about the wretched farmer who sought his rabbi’s wisdom in solving the problem of his overcrowded home. To better get along with six children and two sets of grandparents in the cramped quarters, […]

How Iran Kept Its Jews

“How Iran Kept Its Jews.” It was with a murder that the most critical moment in the modern history of Iranian Jewry took shape. And in what followed, Tehran’s policy toward the local Jewish community, still precariously in effect, came into being. The day was May 9, 1979, nearly three months after the victory of […]

Rooting for the Women Fighting ISIS in Syria

“Never again,” the world vowed in the middle of the last century. But here we are—again. Our ‘never’ is proving heartbreakingly finite. In between our last vow and today, there was Bosnia, Rwanda, South Sudan, and others. But the plight of the Kurds, manifested in the struggle against ISIS over the Syrian city of Kobani, is different. […]

Smelly Little Orthodoxies of Iran’s Left

On a pleasant afternoon in early September of 1987, I was among a group of Iranians gathered under the overpass on the southeast corner of 42nd Street and First Avenue in New York City to protest President Ali Khamenei’s visit to the United Nations for the annual meeting of the General Assembly. Those were the good old days when the opposition spoke out, when their fury with the regime surpassed self-pity, nostalgia, and empty patriotism.

A Cappuccino with the CIA

The invitation came in an email, written in the ingratiating tone of the Nigerian prince looking to wire his millions into my checking account, and delivered the same jolt of giddy disbelief: Officers of the Near East Affinity Group at the Central Intelligence Agency wanted me to address them on a variety of topics, including Persian poetry and literature. My day with them would be as long or as short as I wished it to be, and could include a tour of the C.I.A. museum, a luncheon and a visit to the gift shop.

The Ayatollah’s Disarming Wit

On the streets and in taxicabs, political jokes abound. No one, especially the leadership, is spared, and no perspective is more telling or reliable than the anonymous satirist’s. A popular joke during the last presidential election invited Syrians also to vote: “After all, our president will be your finance minister, too!”

I Heart Khomeini

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s “Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms With the Islamic Republic of Iran” is a long and elaborate promotional brochure designed to sell Americans on the mullahs and their nuclear program. The husband-and-wife authors both served in government, including stints on the National Security Council […]

Daughter of the Storm: An Iranian Literary Revolution

“Daughter of the Storm: An Iranian Literary Revolution.” Adolescence is a universally grave hour. Mine was made graver by a revolution in 1979 in my beloved birth country of Iran. The mutiny I felt within had an echo in the world without. On the streets, martial law was in effect. Tehran was burning, bleeding. A […]