ABSTRACT: This article examines the domestic causes of the Iran–Iraq War. It delves into secret discussions among Iranian political and military elites during the conflict, their analyses of their own performance on the battlefield, and their revealing public disputes and blame game decades later. It contends that an underexplored and yet critical driving force behind Iran’s prosecution of the war was factional politics. Along with state-level geo-strategic, regime-level security and individual-level ideological concerns, factional factors must also be examined to understand Tehran's war-time decisions. Iran’s factional rivalries began between the Islamists and the nationalists; and between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the army at war’s outbreak, and eventually penetrated into the heart of the Islamist camp between the militant clerics and the IRGC.

          Reviewed in H-Diplo/International Security Studies Forum by John Limbert, December 2017
ABSTRACT: This article provides a revisionist account of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979, one of the most conspicuous manifestations of anti-Americanism in recent history. Drawing solely upon primary documents, largely from various Iranian communists and Islamists, it questions the conventional wisdom that the Islamists’ takeover of the embassy was a grassroots reaction to American policies, particularly after President Carter admitted the ailing Shah. It also challenges the argument that the radical students stormed the embassy primarily to bring down the nationalist provisional government. Instead, I introduce a critical overlooked factor and argue that the Hostage Crisis can be better explained as a preemptive act by the Islamists to outbid the leftists’ anti-American activities. I demonstrate that the United States and the Islamists were seeking to maintain normal relations during and even after the 1979 revolution. However, various communist organizations that surfaced after the revolution posed an existential threat to the new Islamist-nationalist government, quickly dominating universities, labor unions, and intellectual circles throughout the country and accusing the Islamists and their nationalist allies of collaborating with the United States. In this climate, the Islamists strategically adopted the Left’s anti-imperialist language and eventually occupied the US embassy to establish their anti- American credibility.
ABSTRACT: In nearly three years, Egypt has transitioned from a large-scale uprising against one of the region's longest-standing rulers to an even more massive revolt that led to the military ousting the country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Between the two popular uprisings, new pacts and unlikely alliances emerged, deepened, and, in some cases, then disappeared. For its part, the army evolved from being an accomplice of the old regime, to then being an uneasy partner of the ascendant Muslim Brotherhood and, most recently, on to rebranding itself as an ally of non-Islamists and a protector of the popular will. Loosely aligned liberals, leftists, and nationalists, meanwhile, shifted from offering support for democratic elections to backing a “democratic” coup out of fear that the elected Islamists might monopolize and never relinquish power in a conservative new regime. That fear came in response to the Brotherhood's own shifting position, which moved from a commitment to “participation not domination” to a strategy of controlling the legislature and the presidency, although they were ultimately forced back into hiding before they could neutralize the judiciary and the army. And finally, the other Islamist movement, the ultraconservative Salafists, initially displayed no interest in the political process, but then mobilized and ultimately enjoyed striking success in the elections of 2011–12. Surprisingly, however, despite their presumed ideological proximity to the Brotherhood, many Salafists went on to back the military's removal of Morsi in July 2013, but then did not lend support to the interim government that was constructed in wake of Morsi's fall. In this multilayered, fast-paced political environment, mass protests, arrests, and violence have become routine.

ABSTRACT: In the absence of political parties in Iran, newspapers have become the main battleground for the country’s domestic tensions. Since 9/11, the issues surrounding the United States and its relationship with Iran have become an
important part of the struggle between reformists and conservatives. Each side attempts to portray the U.S. in a way that undermines the other side in order to maximize its own influence and popularity among the people.