This week, after 30 years of low-profile, back-door meetings, the United States government is openly meeting with the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A relationship that never ended is publicly renewing its vows to much fanfare, but the main topic at hand, and the circumstances surrounding this...

In an irony that will not be lost on him, Roman Polanski chose a rather ill-timed moment this week to get arrested for the 1977 incident that closely follows most biographical descriptions of the Oscar-winning director.

Polanski, having avoided the United States for 31 years allegedly because he...

Today a long time tradition of the Islamic Republic of Iran was transformed into nationwide mass protests against the government.

Qods Day (or Jerusalem Day) is an annual event in the Islamic Republic, ostensibly held in honor of the suffering of the Palestinians but whose other major theme is anti-Israel...

The list grows.

This week, two more official accounts come out of Iran, confirming the extent of violence that is taking place in Iran's detention centers and prisons, against members of the public who chose to publicly protest their grievances against the Iranian government.

All is not well in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For some time now, even its own ranks have turned against it. Perhaps none more so than cleric Mehdi Karroubi, whose most public split happened in 2005 when, among others things, while campaigning for the Presidential election,...

Iranians have been protesting for centuries -- if you could read Persian, you'd know.

They are a nation with a keen sense of their rights, and an audacity to speak up for themselves, whether it's in the streets, on the page or on the web.

They are also...

First there was Neda. Then there was Sohrab. Now there is Taraneh.

The names and stories of the Iranians who have been brutalized or killed in the aftermath of the post-election protests are gradually seeping into a memorial vault of the...

Ten years ago today, tens of thousands of students took to the streets of Iran in a rush of latent anger and deep disappointment. July 9, 1999 marked the beginning of the biggest ever anti-establishment protest in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran up till that date.

As reports intensify of how the Iranian government continues to attack, arrest, and otherwise attempt to prevent the Iranian people from protesting, at least one good thing is happening in the midst: Obama.

Many Iranians, in the country and abroad, shudder to think of what might...

Do the clerics really think that the Iranian public will sit back and quietly wait out the next 9 days as they deliberate on the recount?

Maybe the clerics should look out their windows to the streets below.

Either the clerics are so out of touch with what...

When the streets fall silent in the next days and the dissidents once again head underground, the Islamic Republic of Iran will still be standing, buoyed by the last vestiges of a revolutionary platform: anti-Americanism.

In 1979, when the Islamists overtook the popular revolution and established an irreversible...

In the wee hours of the night, the Iranian public packs up its banners and whistles and heads home for some rest till the next day of campaigning begins.

The unprecedented levels of street gatherings that are taking place in the last days and nights before the Iranian presidential...

The air in Cairo is noticeably cleaner than usual and the stifling traffic has been veered from its heart this week. Shops have been closed, streets have been blockaded, and the Egyptian police state has outdone even itself with the massive security presence throughout the city. Obama is in town...

It was not so long ago that Lahore was the safest major city in Pakistan.

Its ancient status as the literary and cultural capital of Northwest India yet lingered in the decades after its name was changed to Pakistan. The architecture, the Shalimar gardens and all the rest...

This year, for the first time in the over 30 year history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the government announced that there would be no objection to women standing for President.

It seemed like a notable improvement on a policy that had previously stated that women "lacked...

There is something profoundly venerable about an artist who is not afraid to speak up.

In this age of vapid celebrity personalities who gurgle amidst a significant burgeoning of global political consciousness, too few of the high profile artists of our world offer anything in the way of honest...

Rumor has it -- and hopefully it's just a rumor -- that George Clooney might be seeking higher love, so to speak, in the form of Benazir Bhutto's niece: the poet, journalist and outspoken critic of Benazir, Fatima Bhutto.

Fatima, unlike her aunt -- so far -- has...

As the Obama administration takes its first step into the Iran negotiations game, another game today shed a light on Iran's internal negotiations: with its people.

For the first time since the Iranian revolution -- and perhaps for the first time ever in Iran -- a professional...

As Barack Obama makes history because of his father's race, the legacy of his other, white, parent yet looms. Will Obama remember his mother's humanist values as he embarks on a presidency that seeks to unite not only Americans, but the world?

Stanley Ann Dunham was, like her President son,...

As the anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination comes and goes, some people in Pakistan have quietly concluded that getting assassinated was the best thing she ever did.

Not because she saved Pakistan by doing it but, as the logic goes, because she hadn't done a great deal of good...