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Iranian Revolution

A bicyclist rides past the front entrance of the former Embassy of Iran.

Iran’s govt buildings in DC are vacant. But they’re full of stories.

History

Two neighboring Embassy Row properties in Washington, DC, have been boarded up for years. The buildings are caught in a unique sort of real estate limbo as diplomatic relations between the US and Iran are suspended. But if walls could talk, wild parties might be on the tip of their tongues.

Iranians walk past a burned and destroyed bank.

The Iranian government admits to killing protesters

Protest
Ken Kraus receives a medal in front of an airplane

A Marine remembers Tehran

three women take a selfie with a rainbow umbrella covering them from the rain

Forty years on from the Iranian Revolution, could the country be at risk of another one?

Roya Hakakian and Reza Aslan

The poetic heart of Iranian culture

Arts

Masters of Persian Music

Arts, Culture & Media

Persian classical music goes back more than two thousand years, predating Islam. Maybe that’s why the tradition has had such a rocky relationship with the dominant religion over the years. Curtis Fox traces the renaissance of Persian classical music back to the Revolution of 1979, when nobody knew at first if music itself would survive.

An Iranian Air Force F-5F fighter plane takes off during manoeuvres in southern Iran.

Where did Iran get its military arms over the last 70 years?

Global Politics

Did the international sanctions affect Chinese and Russian arms supplies to Iran?

A boy holding a placard poses for camera in front of a model of Simorgh satellite-carrier rocket during a ceremony marking the 37th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, in Tehran on February 11, 2016.

Once a young Iranian revolutionary, now a self-made exile

Conflict

In the 1970s, young Iranians wanted change. They got it through a revolution. But it’s not the kind of change Shahram Aghamir hoped for. Now he lives in the US.

President Obama talks with Cuban President Raul Castro before the thaw in US-Cuban relations was announced on December 17, 2014.

Iranians are jealous of the new US-Cuba thaw

Global Politics

If Washington can bury the hatchet with Havana after more than a half century, why can’t it do the same with Tehran? That’s the question that many Iranians are now asking.

The 1979 Revolution game

A video game designer wants to introduce a different side of his native Iran to the world

Culture

Navid Khonsari was 10 when the Islamic Revolution swept through his home country of Iran. His family had to leave the country and start a new life in Canada. He’s now making a video game that captures those tumultuous days.