• 2020-06-29

    Researchers at an Iranian university have designed and built the largest 3D printer to produce fibre-reinforced composites in various industries.

  • 2020-06-29

    Marriage practices in the Islamic Republic of Iran have evolved in the twenty-first century as unfulfilled expectations of emotional intimacy in marriages which have caused an increase in divorce rates and the tendency to postpone marriage and engage in unsanctioned sexual relationships. Over the past decade, the emergence of white marriages, or cohabitation, has made some of these unsanctioned relationships more visible. In response, clerics and state actors publicly condemned the practice because it violates Islamic values, and potentially the law, given Iran’s hybrid Islamic-civil legal system. Still, some Iranians prefer this conjugal arrangement to sanctioned marriages. While scholars who address the question of gender and sexual politics in post-revolutionary Iran have addressed temporary marriage, Iranian women’s mobilization of the law, and the relationship between women, shari’a (Islamic law), and the state in negotiating rights, they have yet to examine white marriage. Through an analysis of narratives from legal experts and practitioners of white marriage in Iran, this article reveals the motives for electing this practice, and the ways in which it is made legally and socially navigable. This article finds that through their everyday practices, white marriage practitioners have sparked a public discussion on the politics of intimacy and have forced state actors, clerics, and law makers to revisit legal and Islamic debates about gender and rights. When situated within official state discourses and implementation of gender laws, this analysis brings to light the power and agency that Iranians have in controlling gender and sexuality norms and discourses.

  • 2020-06-29

    This essay offers an account of the contemporary treatment of transsexuals in Iran, situating the official process in a discursive nexus that includes the law and psychology as well as psychiatry, and is engaged in establishing and securing a distinction between the acceptable “true” transgender/sexual and other categories that might be confused with it, most notably the wholly unacceptable category of the “true” homosexual. In this process, the category of “transgender/sexual” is made intelligible as an acceptable form of existence by the condensed working of the legal, the Islamic jurisprudential [fiqhi], the bio-medico-psycho-sexological, and the various contingents of the forces of coercion – which we often call “the state” — that is, necessarily and simultaneously subject to it. The analysis suggests that this complex nexus constitutes and authorizes a category of non-normativity as a legitimate acceptable category, a process of subjection which is partly based on transgender/sexuals’ own actions and therefore also self-definitions and self-productions. In all of this, distinguishing between “trans-” and “homo-” has become a critical marker.

  • 2020-06-29

    Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Mohsen Baharvand said Iran and France have finalized the date to read the black box of a Ukrainian plane that was mistakenly downed near Tehran.

  • 2020-06-26

    France said on Friday it would download the black boxes from a Ukrainian airliner shot down by an Iranian missile in January, easing a stand-off over where they should be read. France’s BEA crash investigation agency said it was acting at the request of Iran, which remains responsible under global rules for conducting a formal accident probe after acknowledging that the Boeing 737 was downed by its forces.

  • 2020-06-25

    Iran plans to export oil from a port on its Gulf of Oman coast by March, the president said on Thursday, a shift that would avoid using the Strait of Hormuz shipping route that has been a focus of regional tension for decades. [...] Rouhani said Iran aimed to export 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil by March from Bandar-e Jask, a port on Iran’s Gulf of Oman coast, just south of the Strait of Hormuz. Hit by U.S. sanctions, Iran’s oil exports are estimated at 100,000 to 200,000 bpd, down from more than 2.5 million bpd that Iran shipped in April 2018. The Islamic Republic’s crude production has halved to around 2 million bpd.

  • 2020-06-24

    Iran’s production of aluminium powder for use in missiles, which hasn’t previously been reported, was developed amid international sanctions designed to block the country’s efforts to acquire advanced weapons technology. The United States and allies view Iran’s missile capabilities as a threat to the region and the world.

  • 2020-06-23

    Iran’s actions regularly capture global attention, but there remains too little understanding of the country’s internal priorities and politics. This includes Western governments seeking to negotiate directly with Iran. The words and actions of would-be negotiators – especially those in the United States and Europe – resonate loudly in Iran. After the long-haul diplomacy that led to the nuclear deal in 2015, the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran has pushed the mainstream of Iranian politics away from support for engaging with the West. Meanwhile, arguments put forward by political forces inside Iran that present themselves as protectors of the 1979 revolution have gained traction. If European capitals wish to advance their Iran policy, especially in light of the upcoming US presidential election, they should seek deeper insights into what influences decision-makers in Tehran.

  • 2020-06-22

    In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Rabbi Yehuda Garami, chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Iran, explains about their daily lives and why he paid a condolence visit to the family of assassinated Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

  • 2020-06-19

    Facing declining oil prices and rigid sanctions by the United States, the Iranian government needs to find new ways to fund its public spending. The solutions might prove unpopular both with the public and the powerful elites. ... The new legislators admit that the infrastructure for the successful implementation of new taxes is lacking, but they cannot wait. Fearing that such fees would impact capital markets and saving patterns across Iran, pushing Iranians to invest in the highly volatile Tehran Stock Exchange, many economists are warning the parliament to study their potential consequences carefully. The government is searching for new ways of selling its holding in various companies via new privatization programs or directly via the Tehran Stock Exchange. Some officials propose to impose taxes on religious foundations and their associated conglomerates, something which has never happened in the past.

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