Iran International
Behrouz Turani is the author of Iranian Media, A Non-Linear History. He has been advising governments on both sides of the Atlantic during the past three decades as a senior Iran expert. His career as a journalist includes working with internationally renowned media organizations including the BBC. He has also been teaching courses on media studies.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards intelligence chief has confirmed he is driving efforts to tighten restrictions on social media, linking the initiative directly to the country’s security apparatus and the expansion of the so-called “national internet.”
Student walkouts at schools across Iran this week underscored the continuing political presence of a younger generation that has remained deeply engaged despite months of arrests and repression.
Forty days after Iran’s deadly January crackdown, senior officials repeated claims of foreign influence while some insiders—even from the hardline camp—offered sharply different explanations.
Rising bread prices have become a growing source of concern within Iran’s political establishment, with warnings that further increases could trigger unrest as inflation erodes living standards.
President Massoud Pezeshkian’s increasingly public confrontations with Iran’s state broadcaster have exposed the limits of his authority, underscoring how one of the country’s most powerful institutions operates beyond the reach of its elected government.
The message coming out of Tehran on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution was that Iran is willing to negotiate with the United States, though it remains unclear how its declared “red lines” can be squared with Washington’s demands.
Iran’s January protests were the predictable result of years of ignored economic and social warning signs, according to one of the country’s most prominent economists, who says the state failed to recognize how close society had come to the brink.
Tehran appears to be speaking in two voices about diplomacy with Washington: one calibrated for foreign capitals, the other aimed inward, shaped by fear, factionalism, and propaganda.
As Iranian and US negotiators met in Oman on Friday to discuss the framework for renewed talks, Friday prayer leaders across Iran used their sermons to dismiss the process, expressing near-uniform pessimism about the prospects for diplomacy.
As hopes for talks with the United States flicker and fade, Iran’s chronic factional infighting once again appears to have torpedoed a diplomatic opening—even before it properly began.
