The Squandering of a Milestone: When Preconditions for Democracy Are Not Enough/ Majid Shieh-Ali

Many political researchers who study political transformations, comparative political systems, and topics such as revolutions, democratization, and similar subjects tend to have a relative theoretical consensus regarding the types of revolutions that can lead to democracy. They consider elements such as global political developments in different periods, the level of industrialization and development in society, […]...

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The Authoritarian Legacy for a Future Democracy/ Majid Shia’ali

In recent years, experts in various fields have spoken of deeply rooted crises in Iran. Among these are crises stemming from conflict with nature, such as the drying of lakes and rivers and, as a result, land subsidence in various regions to the extent that the habitability of this land is seriously endangered. On one […]...

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From Execution Square to the Square of Distrust/ Majid Shia’Ali

After several decades of failure in economic development, democratization, and the strengthening of human rights observance, our society is now looking back at its previous experiences. Our society sees that despite experimenting with various revolutionary and reformist strategies, from parliamentary methods to violent confrontations, and experiencing multiple revolutions and social movements, it has still not […]...

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Hope or fear after the ceasefire?/ Majid Shia Ali

  The twelve-day war has ended, but the war conditions have not ended. The shadow of war still looms over Iranian society. The threat of war, missile attacks, explosions, assassinations, and Israeli security operations in Iran are still serious. The continuation of the war situation, the inability of the government to take action to address […]...

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Attack on Prisons During Wartime: Solution or Tragedy?/ Majid Shia Ali

There is precedent in modern military history for air assaults on prisons. In some cases, such incidents result from operational errors or misfires during broader military campaigns. One of the most tragic examples occurred in May 1999, when NATO launched strikes in response to the Serbian army’s ethnic repression of Kosovar Albanians. Among the multiple […]...

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Why Insist on Maintaining Filtering?/ Majid Shia’ali

One of the main promises of the Pezeshkian administration was to lift the filtering of social media platforms. In recent months, reformists have tried to achieve a symbolic success for the unsupported Pezeshkian administration by lifting the ban on some social networks amidst the current crises. However, despite all these efforts, the administration’s achievements have […]...

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Can Civil Resistance Transform the Face of Governance in Iran?/ Majid Shia’ali

In recent years, our country has constantly been aflame. The widespread protests of December 2017, November 2019, the protests over the Ukrainian airplane tragedy, the Mahsa Movement, protests against the serial poisoning of schoolgirls, and the ongoing civil disobedience of Iranian women against mandatory hijab are just part of society’s resistance to the ruling regime. […]...

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Unequal Education: A Threat to Democratization in Iran?/ Majid Shia’ali

The Iranian Parliament Research Center recently published a study indicating that nearly 55% of students ranked in the top 3,000 in the national university entrance exam come from the top two economic deciles. The study warns that access to higher education in Iran, both in terms of quantity and quality, is significantly unequal. One major […]...

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The government of “National Unity” and its promises / Majid Shia’ali

Today, a government has come to power in Iran that considers its slogan to be national unity; a slogan that more than two decades ago, the movement for freedom – as part of the opposition to the government inside Iran – demanded through its statements and has been brought up again in political discussions in […]...

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“Jenbesh-e Mahsa, Iranian Civil Resistance and the Role of Women / Majid Shia’ali”

The contemporary history of our country is filled with violent protests and nonviolent resistance for changing the political power structure; so much so that it could be considered the first civil resistance of the 20th century by Iranians. This is because the Constitutional Revolution of Iran in 1905-1906 is listed as the first nonviolent revolutionary […]...

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General Amnesty in Bahman 1401 and Repentance in Vakilabad/ Majid Shia’ali

Each of us has heard many stories of repentance in detention centers and political prisons in the 1990s. Bitter stories that in many cases put a person between death and repentance. As we have heard a lot about the executions of 1967, the issue of “being executed” or “surviving” became a criterion for those who […]...

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Why can’t they hear our voice? / Majid Shia Ali

In recent years, what has separated our society from serious governance and has led to widespread despair from any political action, is the lack of response from the government to the demands of the majority of our society. During these years, these demands have been expressed in various ways, such as through participation in election […]...

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