Spring of freedom

The most common form of violence against women in Iran is the state-sponsored measures to impose the compulsory veil. Dozens of video clips were posted on the social media over the past year, revealing the savagery of the so-called guidance patrols in dealing with Iranian women on the streets and parks. A report published in summer by the research center of the mullahs’ parliament (Majlis) indicated that some 70% of Iranian women do not believe in the compulsory dress-code, namely the head-to-toe black veil or  Chador , imposed by the regime. They are among the “improperly veiled” and protest the compulsory veil. The report confirms that Iranian women observe the veil only through coercion and harsh restrictions. [i] As the center puts it, more than 85% of the “improperly veiled” do not believe in the value of Chador and do not approve of government intervention to control this issue. The research indicated that young educated women residing in large cities and metropoli...

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster during the U.N. General Assembly in New York The efforts of the foreign-policy establishment to defend the Iran nuclear deal are boosting the case for Trump to change it. The prevailing narrative about the Trump administration’s foreign policy in the mainstream media is that a gallant band of “adults” have spent the last year keeping the barbarians at bay. But with the firings of Rex Tillerson and General H. R. McMaster, the walls have been breached. With Mike Pompeo at the State Department and John Bolton now serving as national-security adviser, there will be no stopping Trump from the one thing the foreign-policy establishment most fears: launching an all out effort to replace or scrap the Iran nuclear deal.   The effort to depict policy debates within the administration as between adults and children was always a not terribly subtle way for the foreign-policy establishment and its che...