All Policy Analysis by Mohsen Sazegara

On On June 16, 2009, Mehdi Khalaji, Mohsen Sazegara, Patrick Clawson, and Michael Singh addressed a special Policy Forum at The Washington Institute to discuss the disputed reelection of Iran's incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad on June 12 amid a wave of mass protests and charges of vote rigging. Mehdi Khalaji

On May 13, 2006, Mohsen Sazegara wrote an open letter to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to Ahmadinejad’s letter to President Bush earlier that month. Mohsen Sazegara is a visiting associate professor at Yale University’s Center for International and Area Studies, having previously served as a visiting fellow at

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian society has been transformed. Urbanism, literacy, industrial growth, international contact, and involvement by women in social and economic affairs have all increased, pushing the country toward democracy. Intellectual life is no longer dominated by revolutionary ideas, but rather by a new paradigm of liberalism

Mohsen Sazegara, recently a visiting fellow at The Washington Institute and now at Yale University, posted on several Persian-language websites (including gooya.com) a long open letter to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hossein Khamenei. Below are translated extracts from that letter. Dear Mr. Khamenei: Let go of these strange thoughts

Iran's bold August 7 decision to resume uranium conversion -- previously frozen under an agreement with Britain, France, and Germany -- came only four days after new president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad took office. This confrontational step suggests that the new administration may take strong actions to advance its hardline agenda. At

On June 29, 2005, Iran’s Guardian Council confirmed Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad as winner of the June 24 presidential election, as dictated by Iran’s constitution and in accordance with the wishes of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He will take office on August 4. The fact that Ahmadinezhad won the election would have

Once again the Iranian nation is at a fork in the road: a choice between worse and worst. It is not clear when it will have the possibility of choosing, under a democratic structure, between better and best. A problematic election and the intervention of the armed services in politics

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has gone through three distinct political stages. The first stage, which began with the victory of the revolution and ended with the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was a period in which the revolutionary regime was established and consolidated. This stage, which also witnessed

As this month's presidential election campaign gets underway in Iran, the Iranian government is emphasizing that the country enjoys the rule of law and elected government. In fact, both statements are false. To understand why the rule of law and representative government are absent in Iran, it is necessary to

On May 20, 2005, Rola Dashti, Hisham Kassem, Habib Malik, and Mohsen Sazegara addressed The Washington Institute's Soref Symposium. Rola Dashti is chair and chief officer of FARO International, a management consulting firm, a leader in the campaign for women's rights in Kuwait and sn associate professor at Kuwait University