Tehran Bureau

In an overlooked 2022 interview, former state media chief Mohammad Sarafraz provides rare insight into Iran’s enigmatic figurehead.

The people of Iran have almost no direct knowledge of Mojtaba Khamenei, the man the Islamic Republic has proclaimed as its third Supreme Leader. Iranians have never heard a meaningful speech from him, they know ...

Nearly a decade since Hassan Rouhani signed the treaty, the Majles is being pushed to formally approve it, even as major issues remain unresolved.

As late as the mid-1980s, residents of the southernmost shores of the Caspian, watching the sun set over this beautiful body of water, the largest on Earth not connected to the world ocean, could ...

The country has no shortage of laws against financial wrongdoing. But it repeatedly fails to enforce them, while precious savings disappear.

By summer it was quiet most every hour of the day in the Tehran gold bazaar. War and recession had extinguished much of the market’s customary bustle. Then one morning, in late July, the hush in one of ...

One Tehrani’s account of the battle over Sanai Street and the capital’s public spaces.

They came at night—not to arrest anyone, nor to seal yet another café. Without warning, they smashed the curbside planters and ledges, eliminating any surface on the sidewalks of Sanai Street where people might sit for a while and shoot the breeze. Closed ...

An eyewitness recalls the 1999 events that made clear the regime would “use any level of violence to preserve itself,” including Ahmadinejad’s role.

The Kooy-e Daneshgah protests of 1999 were among the largest instances of Iranian student activism since the 1979 Revolution and are widely regarded as a turning point, the first in what built i...