Tehran Bureau

From Safavid coffeehouses to Instagram-era roasteries, Iranian cafés have been venues of commerce, performance, surveillance, and dissent.

A paper takeout cup is what closed the café down. In late March, as war with the United States and Israel escalated, authorities in Iran turned off the lights at over forty

Despite a tightening economic vise, the Islamic Republic still lavishes precious funds on self-promotion.

For over two months, Iran’s streets and squares have routinely been occupied by members of the new jan-fada movement, ordinary citizens who have pledged themselves as the regime’s “devotees unto death.” Crowds of these ardent su...

The military standoff over control of the crucial strait is mirrored by a statutory conflict that mocks international law.

At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles across—so narrow that the sovereign territorial waters of Iran and Oman overlap. The oil that routinely passes through this chokepoint accounts for o...

In 21st-century Iran, yesterday’s “oppressed” are increasingly recast as today’s expendables.

January’s uprising that saw mass protests across Iran was sparked by people from little-known cities, from neighborhoods with power outages, water scarcity, and overcrowded housing. In the old 1979 revolutionary playbook, they would have been “the o...