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During Ayatollah Khomeini's insurrection against the Shah in the fall of 1979, educated Muslim women protestors wore the chador as a political symbol in support of Khomeini. This article explores the reactions of middle-class, educated Jews in Shiraz to the resurgence of the chador. For the Jews, the chador represented a return to their debased status as a najes (unclean, polluted) religious minority. They feared that an impending Islamic regime would revive the Shi'ite regulations against them that the Shah and his father had overturned., In the fall of 1978, the anti-Shah insurrection, guided from afar by Ayatollah Khomeini, gained momentum. As they demonstrated in the streets, many educated, non-religious Muslim women protesters wore the [...]

The ceaseless efforts of women to overcome gender barriers in post-revolutionary Iran that depicts that the developmentalist policies of the ancient regime in Iran have changed the self-image and expectations of women positively is discussed. Women have gathered confidence to challenge the Muslim reformists' stand regarding women's rights.

Iran is trying to counter the rising drug abuse by focusing its counter-narcotics policy on interdicting opiate supply lines from Afghanistan. The efforts undertaken by Iran to combat the opium trade are examined.

After nearly a quarter-century of isolation, Iran is again admitting foreign archaeologists. Although politics could easily derail this exciting new development, Western and Japanese researchers are willing to take the [...]

The issue of land reform divided the ruling Islamist groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s into two broad factions: a radical faction advocating a sweeping programme [...]

Introduction A key question in research on the Middle East, and on Iran in particular, has been the relationship between the state and its resident tribes, especially nomads, during the [...]

The post-revolutionary government in Iran presents its approach to women as a template for other Islamic nations to follow. By reconstructing the Koranic laws to meet the demands of time, it argues that Muslim women have secure and eternal independent economic and social rights. This is not so. Since the revolution Iranian women have systematically lost out in the formal labour market. But in recent years they have made a concerted effort to capture the Islamic discourse to contest the legitimacy of some of the formal obstacles placed on their access to paid employment.

TEHRAN -- Destitute villagers in southeastern Iran have uncovered what appears to be a Bronze Age civilization that flourished between ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia and Harappa in the Indus River [...]

An Iranian woman discusses her affair with an Iranian lover and the attitude towards sex in the country amidsts the background of the country's totalitarian regime. She tells of the sexual tension that was palpable in get togethers and how women who walked alone would be followed by men who would call out something suggestive.

Several examples of the largely unknown fight for rights to liberty and self-government that are brutally suppressed in Iran are presented.