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📢 #OnlineEvent | Join BRISMES, @merip.bsky.social & SeSaMO for the second event in our #Iran in Context series titled "Politics and Counter-Politics in Contemporary Iran" with Naghmeh Sohrabi, Mohammad Ali Kadivar & Paniz Musawi Natanzi. 🗓 2 July 2026 ⏰ 17:00 – 18:30 BST 🔗 Register: bit.ly/OP_Iran2

Combining methods from literary and legal history, Translate and Rule by Hannah Scott Deuchar shows how translated legal codes in colonial Egypt exacerbated inequities in the courtroom and transformed relations of commerce and property ownership https://ow.ly/ynlk50ZiuhE

I will take an Algeria victory so they and Iran go up…and payback for 1982

Very much a flag day here. All the flags/colours: Egypt, Iran, Pride, Palestine and once more the pre-Islamic Republic one of protest against the Iranian government.

UAW Divests From Israel Bonds After UAWD members forced the amendment onto the Constitutional Convention agenda, UAW delegates voted to divest the union’s reported $400,000 in Israel bonds, marking a victory for decades of rank-and-file organizing. www.leftvoice.org/uaw-divests-...

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

FDD is politically noxious, but these past couple of days shows that its members and analysts are also quite dim. It is a travesty that they get so much attention by journalists and are interviewed on news shows

Interesting and significant sums of money; it would important that these arrangements build institutional and multilateral forms of cooperation between Iran and GCC countries as well as Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen

Great first day of World Cup; but I already hate hydration breaks

My mayor Muslim My bagel jewish The Strait closed Knicks in five

Iran says 20,000 people left without water after US hits reservoir tanks ft.trib.al/bqpvlNi

With less than a week to go, and with fans rightfully raging about FIFA’s ticket pricing, thought it would be worth re-upping this story about how Rupert Murdoch’s Fox secured the “deal of the century” from FIFA, a giveaway TV rights deal, saving it as much $1bn www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/w...

Reports that a referee on FIFA’s World Cup list from Africa has been turned back after trying to enter the US for the tournament. Surely, this is basic stuff FIFA should have ironed out well before now. FIFA has been, as usual, contacted for comment.

More than 200 people have now been killed in U.S. military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Since September, the Pentagon has struck more than 60 vessels, claiming, without evidence, that the boats were engaged in “narco-trafficking” operations.

The World Cup is shaping up to be a real fiasco and awful example of concentrated power, commodification, and incompetence ruining a good thing.

If you are of a certain vintage this piece hits all the right notes. “If you’re 11, you’re about to watch the best World Cup you will ever see. But even if you just wish you were, it’s still the greatest show on Earth. And, trust me, there’s nothing like not being there.”

A thoughtful analysis of state building in post-colonial economies seeking to become outposts for capital

are you just going to do this for every generation

Persepolis is possibly the only book that my parents, one of ky kids, and me all read and all loved. Marjan Satrapi, as we say in Iran, may your spirit be joyful

One of my favorite genres of think tank product is “warmonger gets the war they so badly wanted and it’s sinking in how fucked it’s going”

"But the conclusion often drawn from these events—that collective action in Iran has failed—conflates short-term defeat with failure and ignores the traces these defeats leave behind in individuals radicalized, social relations altered and the boundaries of what states can and cannot do."

In a brazen attack on academic freedom, The New School has fired multiple tenured faculty, including the prominent economist Sanjay Reddy in what smells like retribution for his criticisms of the admin’s financial mismanagement.

Note the 2.5 years. It is hard to imagine serious people in Tehran will not hedge against anything in the supposed Memorandum of Understanding, even if Trump signs it

Just awful

Fired 60 Minutes-er Cecilia Vega put out this statement: "In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories. Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions."

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the US/Israeli war with Iran

Untitled (Blue Divided by Blue) https://botfrens.com/collections/25/contents/4919

- MTA bus speeds in & around the decongestion zone increased 2.3%, reversing years of decline & delivering more reliable trips. - Ridership grew on routes through the decongestion zone: subway trips +9%, local/select bus +8.4%, express bus +7.8%. - Greenhouse gas emissions in the zone fell ~6.1%

Great day — Spurs win and stay in the premier league AND Randal Kolo Muani will never play for Tottenham again #coys

Oman getting billions of dollars after doing nothing

A very good piece on Bahrain before and after the War

The assumption that there is a homogenous entity called "the people of Iran" prompted the "decapitation" strikes intended to level Iran's leadership & its entire political infrastructure. Israel & the US were wrong about the organization of power relations in the country. @keshavarziana.bsky.social

I hope the 26 vessels aren’t like the ones in the photo. Or maybe I do

“Embodying this populist current, between 2005 and 2013 Ahmadinejad presided over a DOGE-like process of dismantling the regulatory apparatus.” Ahmadinejad’s presidency features quite centrally in my understanding of how Iran has changed in the past 30 years.

Ahmadinejad?!? Mossad are fools as well as criminals

See the MESA Board's letter concerning attacks on higher education across the Middle East, especially in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. The full letter is available on our website.

A map is never neutral. Richard Harrison’s 1940 “oil drop projection” showed the world as Standard Oil executives saw it: Texas, Venezuela and Aruba at the centre, less profitable regions pushed to the margins. Cartography as corporate worldview. Beautiful and brutal. Source:

Interesting piece on the ways Iran is adapting its oil / gas mix in response to the US blockade

Well done to Sky news for covering the killing of hundreds of children in Minab in Iran by US bombs, never forget this war crime news.sky.com/video/on-the...

The militarism of tyrannical blowhards can't bend geography & politics to its will. @keshavarziana.bsky.social explains why the US & Israel's attack on Iran reinforces the need for multilateralism and courage from countries affected by this effort to collapse the Iranian state. bit.ly/4vd09Cr

I had a lovely conversation with Scott Stoneman about politics Iran, the war, and the geopolitical fantasies about the Gulf. He is a careful reader and thoughtful interlocutor youtu.be/_J2uJVb-lNw?...

I had a lovely conversation with Scott Stoneman about politics Iran, the war, and the geopolitical fantasies about the Gulf. He is a careful reader and thoughtful interlocutor youtu.be/_J2uJVb-lNw?...

A great rebuttal to NYU’s attack on FSJP and anti-Zionist Jewish students and faculty at NYU

As you can see, Arab Israelis enjoy full equalities, they even serve as public prosecutors

Last week I had a conversation with Green Planet Monitor and tried to emphasize that while true, we need to move beyond the point that Iran has defeated the U.S. strategically. Only then can we get a fuller political picture of what is unfolding in Iran

“Iranian democrats who were ‘against the war’ desire regime change no less fervently than those who petitioned Trump to attack. The difference is that they want Iranians, not foreigners, to do the job.” —Christopher de Bellaigue

It is interesting that this coverage is now normalized in establishment press. 5 months too late, if not 2 years too late

“Put it on Zionists to come up with a version of their project that does not require dispossessing some other people…I think that's the conversation we should be moving towards, not whether or not there's an acceptable form of criticizing Israel or Zionism.”