Firsthand reports from contributors inside Iran
My sister sent me a satirical video last night: someone joking that instead of adjusting the clocks for daylight saving, Iran's government is dragging 85 million people back and forth. It hit a nerve.
Another disaster, more Iranians killed, no one held accountable, the media gagged: the port blast on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast was news and not news at the same time.
I’ve grown the habit of checking the dollar exchange rate every few hours, even though I sold all that I had a few months ago—or perhaps because I sold all that I had a few months ago.
My 23-year-old cousin, Ali, newly married and the father of a two-month-old baby, was killed in the Iran-Iraq war in 1985. From that moment, everything in my uncle’s family changed.
It starts with a text message on social media by an established cafe. A few million rials deposit, and a promise of a night unlike any other in Tehran.
US president Donald Trump has sent Iran’s leader a letter, we’re told, and that it’s significant. It probably is, but nobody I know seems to think so.
Last week I took my teenage niece to a concert at Tehran’s iconic Vahdat Hall, where two large portraits hang high on stage walls, watching over the audience. “What’s the Islamic Republic doing here,” my niece joked.
Almost four in ten marriages in Iran end in divorce, according to the latest official figures, giving rise to theocrats' cries of a crisis that may not be as obvious to some of the women gaining their freedom.
A vast, dark cloud blankets Tehran. We don't even need to say when: it’s almost all the time, with fewer than ten days of clean air last year.
Tehran's art scene is moving underground with exhibitions and performances that defy pervasive censorship, turning home venues into sanctuaries for creative self-expression.
"I can’t remember the last time I was so shaken as I was watching images of Assad’s prisons," says Fatemeh, who has seen the inside of Iran’s prisons for her activism. “My country funded these crimes. Syrians have every right to hate us."
Mahmoud looks spent; he’s 45 but looks older. Grey-haired, unshaven, bespectacled — financial anxiety has worn him out. He owns no home, holds no significant assets and dares not think about the future. "Let’s make it to tomorrow is our motto," he says.
Iranian perspectives on the conflicts in the Middle East are mostly dominated by the prevailing resentment toward their own rulers.
Donald Trump won. Some Iranians are thrilled, seeing him as a catalyst for the collapse of the Islamic Republic. Others are gutted, thinking Kamala Harris would have meant less sanctions and some relief from unbearable economic pressure.
A few days after a university student in Iran was bundled into an unmarked car by security forces for removing her clothes in an apparent protest at hijab-enforcers on campus, her identity and fate remain unknown.
Israel’s air strikes revived the specter of war long gone - a ghastly déjà vu for Iranians who weathered the nigh decade-old struggle with Iraq and a grim induction into its sights and sounds for those too young to remember.
Tehran, a city of contrasts, where the glow of high-rises hides the struggles of those who keep it moving. For many internet taxi drivers from distant provinces, driving through Tehran’s jammed streets isn’t just a job—it’s a desperate bid for survival.
Iran's missile attack on Israel has reignited talk of war, leaving many anxious. Some hope an Israeli strike could free them from the Islamic government. But most remain silently apprehensive—numbed, perhaps, or resigned to their helplessness.
Watching YouTube in Iran feels like torture. So does downloading an app from Google Play, or even sending a voice message on WhatsApp. In short, using the internet here is like living with a chronic disease—you may learn to cope, but you'll never stop hating it.
The 2024 US presidential campaign is being closely followed in Iran, as many Iranians believe the outcome will directly impact their lives, especially with Donald Trump once again on the ballot.
Iran’s 2024 presidential election -- held almost a year early, after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May -- gave rise to a President that few had heard of a few weeks before.
One of the more telling features of the election campaign in Iran was that no candidate seemed to appeal to Generation Z first-time voters. Perhaps they assumed it was a lost cause, believing Gen Z wouldn't vote.
Iranians can vote for a new president on June 28, after the death of Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month. How many will vote, we just don’t know - a report from Tehran.
