Photo source: The Economist By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront After the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurd, who died in a coma, with skull injuries on a ventilator, for ‘inappropriate dress’ by the moral police in September, 2022,  the intellectual assertions of George Orwell become fitting for Iran’s new protest movement. He believed that revolutions didn’t come by chance, but by reason and that revolutionaries of the past become new tyrants, only to be toppled again. Iran’s foundations as a theocracy seem wobbling because this is not the first time in recent memory that Iranians are at odds with their leaders. In 2009, millions of adults took to the street over alleged fraud in the presidential election. It was called the Green Movement, which was largely urban and middle class. At that time, they rallied around two losing candidates, waved massive banners demanding democracy, and women wore headscarves, sashes, and paint in a vivid shade of green. As a cou...

Photo source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront After Ebrahim Raisi won the Iranian presidential election 2021, the reformist illusion, which the West subscribed to, seems to be over. It is because there was never a strong reform movement really existing in Iran that could challenge the supreme leader.  Infact, it was the greatest trick that the ultra conservative clergies ever pulled. Iranian politics has been filled with these illustrations. In the past, when Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997 and elected again in 2001, his elections were hailed in Iran, and the West, as a victory for reform movement because  he promised to transform the Islamic Republic into a fully democratic state, wanted to palliate the political, social and religious restrictions, and initiate modernising of the economy. He even called for improvement of relations with the neighbours, the far outside world, and attracting foreign investments. But, his rule resulted in the sam...

Photo source: Arab News By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront P olitical rivalries, between the US and Iran, have been inflamed, yet again, after Donald Trump, in 2015, withdrew from 2015 nuclear agreement, and reinstated sanctions on the petrochemical industry, in the Persian Gulf, quite recently.   As a back clash, Iran calls this move as a form of ‘economic terrorism.’ In Iranian markets, inflation has been soaring lately, due to Trump's sanctions, which has risen upto fifty percent. The oil exports have been slashed drastically, and there are also sanctions on medicines, with the result. For a while, Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, as international investigators have found several times, when the deal was drafted, that the country was in compliance with the agreement. But, this perspective is falling upon deaf American ears, as per Iranians, or perhaps, America wants to isolate them, for an antipathy of the past. During May 2019, Iran ...