Category Archives: Iran

Pollsters in Iran

Iran


Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iranians Favor Direct Talks with US on Shared Issues,

Mutual Access for Journalists, More Trade

Poll Finds Diminished Perception of US Threat,

General Thawing of Hostility

World Public Opinion, April 7, 2008

College Park, MD—A new poll finds that although Iranians continue to view the United States negatively, they strongly support steps to improve US-Iran relations including direct talks on issues, greater access for each others’ journalists, increased trade and more cultural, educational and athletic exchanges.

While majorities of Iranians think the United States threatens Iran and is hostile to Islam, these numbers have diminished over the past year. A growing number—now two out of three—believe it is possible for Islam and the West to find common ground. Continue reading Pollsters in Iran →

The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

Iran, Poetry, Sufism

NPR has archived its December 13, 2007 program on the Persian mystic poet Rumi. At the main website you can download the podcast, read the script for the program, watch a video of a Rumi performance at Stanford University and more. This is a treat for all Rumiphiles. By the way, last September 30 was the 800th anniversary of the birth of Rumi.

Dancing in the Garden

Iran, Miniatures, Music and Dance, Poetry


Scene from the Divan of Hafiz, Herat School, 1523, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

O beautiful wine-bearer, bring forth the cup and put it to my lips
Path of love seemed easy at first, what came was many hardships.
With its perfume, the morning breeze unlocks those beautiful locks
The curl of those dark ringlets, many hearts to shreds strips.
In the house of my Beloved, how can I enjoy the feast
Since the church bells call the call that for pilgrimage equips.
With wine color your robe, one of the old Magi’s best tips
Trust in this traveler’s tips, who knows of many paths and trips.
The dark midnight, fearful waves, and the tempestuous whirlpool
How can he know of our state, while ports house his unladen ships.
I followed my own path of love, and now I am in bad repute
How can a secret remain veiled, if from every tongue it drips?
If His presence you seek, Hafiz, then why yourself eclipse?
Stick to the One you know, let go of imaginary trips.

Hafiz, Divan, Ghazal 1

Ahmadinejad and the Twelfth Imam

Apocalypse Watch, Iran, Islamic Rituals, Shi'a

by Christopher Hitchens

[Excerpt from Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great (New York: Hachette, 2007), pp. 278-280.]

On a certain day in the spring of 2006, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, accompanied by his cabinet, made a procession to the site of a well between the capital city of Tehran and the holy city of Qum. This is said to be the cistern where the Twelfth or “occulted” or “hidden” Imam took refuge in the year 873, at the age of five, never to be seen again until his long-awaited and beseeched reappearance will astonish and redeem the world. On arrival, Ahmadinejad took a scroll of paper and thrust it down the aperture, so as to update the occulted one on Iran’s progress in thermonuclear fission and the enrichment of uranium. One might have thought that the imam could keep abreast of these developments wherever he was, but it had in some way to be the well that acted as his dead-letter box. One might ad that President Ahmadinejad had recently returned from the United Nations, where he had given a speech that was much covered on both radio and television as well as viewed by a large “live” audience. On his return to Iran, however, he told his supporters that he had been suffused with a clear green light — green being the preferred color of Islam — all through his remarks, and that the emanations of this divine light had kept everybody in the General Assembly quite silent and still. Private to him as this phenomenon was — it appears to have been felt by him alone — he took it as a further sign of the immanent return of the Twelfth Imam, not to say a further endorsement of his ambition to see the Islamic Republic of Iran, sunk as it was in beggary and repression and stagnation and corruption, as nonetheless a nuclear power. But like Aquinas, he did not trust the Twelfth or “hidden” Imam to be able to scan a document unless it was put, as it were, right in front of him. Continue reading Ahmadinejad and the Twelfth Imam →

An Iranian Laptop Dance

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iran, Terrorism Issue

Iran Nuke Laptop Data Came from Terror Group

by Gareth Porter, from IPS

WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (IPS) – The George W. Bush administration has long pushed the “laptop documents” — 1,000 pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian laptop — as hard evidence of Iranian intentions to build a nuclear weapon. Now charges based on those documents pose the only remaining obstacles to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declaring that Iran has resolved all unanswered questions about its nuclear programme. But those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel’s Mossad. Continue reading An Iranian Laptop Dance →

A 16th Century Caravan

Iran, Miniatures

The title of this watercolor painting by ‘Abdol-‘Aziz is “Zal is sighted by a Caravan” and is part of a scene from the Shahname in which the hero Rostam’s father, known as Zal, was born an albino and exiled by his superstitous father to the top of a mountain, where he was rescued by the legendary bird known as a simurgh. The caravan, shown here, saw Zal and reported this to his royal father, who was glad his son was alive and would be the ehir to the throne. The painting was done in Tabriz around 1525 CE.

Illustration from Abdolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), p.370.

Woman by a Fountain

Art, Iran, Miniatures

We are accustomed to Persian miniatures which depict the “Oriental” face, but later Persian art at times draws on Italianate style. The example above is entitled “Woman by a Fountain” and was painted by ‘Ali-Qoli Beyg Jebadar, around 1660 ce, probably in Isfahan.

Illustration from Abdolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), p.370.

When Iran was Welcomed into the Nuclear Club

Environment, Iran

In all the recent back-and-forth about the capabilities of Iran to produce a nuclear bomb, it is well to remember how Iran was once welcomed into the nuclear club defending the free world (well, not that free in Iran at that time), when the Shah was in now-all-too-clear power. Iran was in fact a good example for the folks pushing nuclear power plants in our own back yards. What a difference a regime change makes … The ad above would seem quite dated, but then history does have a habit of repeating itself.