Salt storms are an emerging threat for millions of people in north-western Iran, thanks to the catastrophe of Lake Urmia. Once one of the world’s largest salt lakes, and still the country’s largest lake, Urmia is now barely a tenth of its former size.
The supreme leader’s youth-washing strategy could keep detente with the United States off the table for years. In just under a year, Iran will elect a new president. Coming after the U.S. election this November, there is some hope that the occasion could usher in improved U.S.-Iranian relations. Yet, given the way Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been narrowing the field of candidates, that seems unlikely.
My name is Mitra Aliabouzar. I was a member of the Islamic Student Association at Tehran Polytechnic (AUT) and Sharif University of Technology (SUT). I was arrested three times after the disputed presidential election in 2009. I left Iran in 2013 and joined the George Washington University (GWU) for a Ph.D. program. I received my doctoral degree in mechanical engineering in 2018 and right now I am a postdoc fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (UMICH).
Thank you for your invitation. My name is Hajir Attari born in 1982, graduated from Industrial Engineering, Systems Analysis Dept. from Azad University.
I was raised in a politically active family. My father worked for Iranian railways and at night for “Eteelaat” newspaper. We almost always had daily and weekly journals in our house.
The powerful images of hopelessness came one after another, creating mounting waves of shock for Iranians who may have thought themselves inured to tales of desperation, destitution, and political angst.
A few days after I arrived as a refugee in America in 1985, when I was 18, relatives already living here came to take me sightseeing. My mother and I had resettled in New York, and naturally my relatives wanted to show me the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. Instead, I wanted to see Harlem.
On April 6, 2020, a letter arrived in the mailbox of the International Sociological Association, where I serve as a member of the executive committee. Signed by Hossein Serajzadeh, president of the Iranian Sociological Association, the letter calls attention to the combined impact of US-imposed economic sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic on the profession of Iranian sociology. The situation is dire, wrote Serajzadeh, as he invited international colleagues to stand in solidarity with their Iranian counterparts against the sanctions.
The goal is to improve the relationship among these forces, as well as to create a platform for inviting other Republican forces to join these collaborations and to unite with them.
Currently, the Islamic republic and Iranian people are primarily dealing with the adverse effects of the corona pandemic. The regime and people has been dealing with the effects of sanctions on one hand and as such as resources are getting extremely limited, the public has zoomed in on the corruption and combined effect is continuous delegitimization of the Islamic Republic.
