The Fire Next Time

The argument is simple. Europe produces deniability through distance. Part of the left repeats the same logic in reverse. Instead of fighting the arms factory, the weapons shipment, the deportation flight, and the border regime at home, it outsources anti-imperialism to the “Axis of Resistance”...

Migration, War, and the Dirty Work of Empire Last night, I had a long discussion with an anarchist friend about the movement that today calls itself anti-imperialism. The result was this: I returned to a text I had written a few weeks ago and…

Komalah, Communism, and the Political History of Iranian Kurdistan

In a recent episode of Asraneh, Ebrahim Alizadeh, the First Secretary of Komalah, the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran, gave a long interview about the history of Komalah, the Iranian left, the Kurdish question, the formation of the Communist Party of Iran, the later splits, and the current political situation in Iran. The interview matters because it is not only a memory exercise. It is not just an older political figure going back over organizational history. For a non-Iranian and non-Kurdish audience, the conversation opens a window into a political history that is usually flattened from the outside. Iranian Kurdistan is often reduced to mountains, armed groups, borders, ethnic conflict, or geopolitical calculations. Alizadeh’s account gives a different picture: Kurdistan as a political society, as a space of left-wing organization, as a place where the relationship between class, national oppression, armed struggle, women’s liberation, social solidarity, and state repression was tested in practice....

Komalah, Communism, and the Political History of Iranian Kurdistan In a recent episode of Asraneh, Ebrahim Alizadeh, the First Secretary of Komalah, the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran, gave a long interview about the history of Komalah, the …

Ecocide in Tehran: When War Reaches the Air People Breathe

The issue is not simply the bombing of several oil depots. The real issue is that in modern wars, energy infrastructure is no longer just a military target. It has become the point where war, economy, environment, and everyday life intersect. When fuel storage facilities in Tehran, Rey, Shahran, Ghoochak, Fardis, and Alborz are attacked, it is not only gasoline, diesel, or natural gas that burns....

Ecocide in Tehran: When War Reaches the Air People Breathe The issue is not simply the bombing of several oil depots. The real issue is that in modern wars, energy infrastructure is no longer just a military target. It has become the point where war, econo…

On International Workers’ Day, Goahar Eshghi, the mother of Sattar Beheshti, published a message to the workers of Iran.

Bread, Speech, and Prison: Remembering Sattar Beheshti on Workers’ Day On International Workers’ Day, Goahar Eshghi, the mother of Sattar Beheshti, published a message addressed to workers in Iran. It is a short text, but it carries the weight of a whole political his…

Bread, Freedom and Organisation: Esmail Bakhshi on Iran Today

Esmail Bakhshi is a well-known Iranian worker and labour activist. His name is mostly associated with the struggles of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers, the fight for independent workers’ organisation, and his own experience of prison, torture, dismissal from work, and resistance to repression. Over the past years, he has not been known as the spokesperson of a party or an outside political project, but as a voice from inside the working class; a voice speaking about poverty, repression, lack of rights, and the need for independent organisation. In this conversation, Bakhshi starts from something that has itself become one of the clearest signs of the situation in Iran today: the internet. He explains that just to take part in a simple online conversation, he had to rely on friends, a VPN, technical configurations, and a heavy cost. This is not just a technical problem. The point is that even the internet in Iran has become class-based. What should be a basic public means of communication, information, and dialogue has turned into a privilege for those who have money, contacts, tools, and special access. Workers, wage earners, families of prisoners, protesters, the unemployed, and the poor are not only pushed out of the streets and official media; they are also pushed out of the digital space. Internet shutdowns and control here are not only censorship. They are a new form of class repression. The main pillar of Bakhshi’s argument is that Iran today is under the weight of several crises at the same time: poverty, war, repression, unemployment, rising prices, the psychological collapse of society, and the hijacking of people’s protests. He calls war “absolute evil” and sharply rejects phrases like “humanitarian intervention.”...

Bread, Freedom and Organisation: Esmail Bakhshi on Iran Today Esmail Bakhshi is a well-known Iranian worker and labour activist. His name is mostly associated with the struggles of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers, the fight for independent workers’ organisa…

National Wealth, Private Misery

When we talk about oil, the main issue is not always what we see at first glance. The usual question is this: under war, blockade, and disruption in maritime routes, how much oil can Iran still sell? But perhaps the more urgent question is this: how much of the oil it still produces can Iran actually store? This may sound like a technical difference, but it is decisive. If part of Iran’s oil had already left the danger zone before the escalation of war and blockade, and is now floating at sea in areas around Malacca, Malaysia, or Singapore, oil exports may not be completely frozen in the short term. For one or two months, there may still be some room for sale, transfer, or trade. But the real crisis is not necessarily where the markets and the media are looking. The main knot may form somewhere else: in the chain of production, storage, the arrival of empty tankers, port capacity, insurance, payment systems, and the return of foreign-currency revenue. An oil well is not like a water tap that can simply be turned off and then turned back on whenever needed. Oil production is a technical, expensive, and time-consuming process. If wells are shut down, bringing them back into production is not easy. It costs money, requires operations, takes time, and may make part of production capacity vulnerable. So production has to continue. But when production continues, the oil must be stored somewhere. This is where the issue of empty tankers becomes important. Under a naval blockade, the problem is not only whether full tankers can leave Iran. Sometimes the arrival of empty tankers near Kharg or Jask becomes even more important. Because if empty tankers cannot enter, storage is disrupted. If storage is disrupted, production comes under pressure. And if production comes under pressure, the oil export crisis turns from a sales problem into a crisis across the whole cycle of production, storage, and revenue. This is the point from which we need to understand a naval blockade more seriously. This is not just sanctions. It is not only economic pressure either. When the arrival of empty tankers, oil storage, exports, and the continuation of production are targeted, we are dealing with an act of war. It is an act that aims to lock the country’s economic and operational capacity from within. War here does not move only through missiles and bombs. It also moves through ports, insurance, tankers, payment delays, bank accounts, storage capacity, and the slow return of oil revenue....

National Wealth, Private Misery When we talk about oil, the main issue is not always what we see at first glance. The usual question is this: under war, blockade, and disruption in maritime routes, how much oil can Iran still sel…

Iran’s Geopolitical Weight, and Its Political Trap

Iran’s place in the world cannot be understood only through the language of its ruling regime. It has to be read as a geopolitical unit positioned at one of the most sensitive crossroads of energy, trade, and security in West Asia. This matters because not all states occupy the same place in the global order. Some shape the rules. Some are forced to live under the protection of stronger powers. And some try to remain in between: not fully subordinate, but not powerful enough to dominate. Iran belongs to this third category. That in-between position gives Iran a real kind of weight. The Strait of Hormuz, its regional links, and its deterrent capacity mean it cannot simply be ignored or removed without consequences. The recent war made this very clear. Iran was not shown to be invincible, but it was shown to be costly to confront. At the same time, the war also exposed the limits of its position. Russia and China offered diplomatic backing, but not a military shield. This is the core contradiction of Iran’s place in the world: bargaining power without guaranteed protection, structural importance without stable hegemony. Iran is neither a global rule-maker nor a passive client. It is a regional power trying to survive, maneuver, and endure inside a deeply unequal world order....

Iran’s Geopolitical Weight, and Its Political Trap Iran’s place in the world cannot be understood only through the language of its ruling regime. It has to be read as a geopolitical unit positioned at one of the most sensitive crossroads of energy,…

A Diaspora Misrepresented: Yasmine Mather on War and Media

The war against Iran has made it even harder to sustain the neat, one-dimensional image that many Persian-language and Western media outlets try to present of Iranians living abroad. In this dominant narrative, the “Iranian diaspora” is treated as if it naturally supports foreign intervention, the escalation of war, and even the destruction of Iran’s infrastructure. But according to Yasmine Mather, this image is not only false, it is deeply misleading. Yasmine Mather, a senior researcher at Oxford and editor of the online journal Weekly Worker, speaks about the political, social, and class divisions among Iranians abroad: the differences between monarchists, layers of former reformists who have shifted to the right, professional migrants, students, and refugees; and why pro-war voices get far more media attention than their real social weight deserves. She also discusses the role of Western and Persian-language media in amplifying these voices, and in the end, she looks at Donald Trump’s latest threats and the wider horizon of war....

A Diaspora Misrepresented: Yasmine Mather on War and Media The war against Iran has made it even harder to sustain the neat, one-dimensional image that many Persian-language and Western media outlets try to present of Iranians living abroad. In this domina…

Inside Tehran, Under Bombs, Arguing About War and Power

One month after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a long conversation was recorded in Tehran between Sobhan Yahyaei, a media researcher and host of the Panorama podcast, and Mohammad Mehdi Ardabili, a philosopher and public intellectual. This was not just an abstract discussion. In the middle of the conversation, they say they could even be arrested for saying these things. The sound of explosions and air defense can be heard in the background. That alone gives the conversation a special weight. But its importance is not only about the conditions in which it was recorded. It matters because it brings up one of the central political questions in Iran today: when a country is under military attack, how should the relationship between opposition to foreign aggression and opposition to domestic despotism be understood? As the interviewer, Sobhan Yahyaei moves the discussion through ideas like homeland, war, responsibility, and everyday life under bombardment. Mohammad Mehdi Ardabili, known as a philosopher shaped by Hegel, continental philosophy, and theoretical debates on politics and suffering, tries to respond to the exceptional condition of war. He clearly says that he is sympathetic to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, that he does not deny the Islamic Republic’s repression, and that he does not defend domestic despotism. But from these same starting points, he reaches a conclusion that has both serious listeners and serious critics in Iran today: in wartime, priority must be given to resisting foreign aggression, even if that means temporarily suspending conflict with the Islamic Republic. This article is written neither to rush into condemning that position nor to defend it. The point is to understand what is actually being said in this conversation, why it sounds reasonable to part of Iranian society, and at the same time what limits and dangers this framework carries....

Inside Tehran, Under Bombs, Arguing About War and Power One month after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a long conversation was recorded in Tehran between Sobhan Yahyaei, a media researcher and host of the Panorama podcast, and Mohammad Mehdi A…

Iran Beyond the Myth of a Unified People

One of the laziest clichés about Iran is the idea that a single, unified “people” are standing against a single, unified “regime.” This formula works well for headlines, for rushed journalism, and for simple moral commentary. But when it comes to understanding real politics, it is almost useless. Iranian society is not a homogeneous block. It is a field of conflict between opposing political projects. War, repression, the dead end of reform, the collapse of political legitimacy, and the memory of bloody uprisings did not create these divisions or invent them. They simply brought them back to the surface. This is exactly where the importance of Yashar Darolshafa’s essay begins. He is not merely trying to say that Iranian society is diverse. Everyone already knows that, and repeating it does not clarify much. His real point is something deeper: in today’s Iran, “the people” is not the name of a political unity. It is a site of struggle. Every political project creates its own people, names its own enemy, defines what costs are acceptable, and gives its own shape to the future. That is why the main question is no longer “what do the people want?” The real question is: which people, with what understanding of freedom, survival, justice, war, and change?...

Iran Beyond the Myth of a Unified People One of the laziest clichés about Iran is the idea that a single, unified “people” are standing against a single, unified “regime.” This formula works well for headlines, for rushed journalism, and …