foreignaffairsmagazine:

Meet Ahmadinejad’s Chosen Successor

Ahead of Iran’s presidential election in June, President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei are squabbling over the succession. Ahmadinejad wants Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, his chief of staff, to run but Khamenei disapproves. Regardless of who wins, the real loser will be Iranian democracy.

theatlantic:

Google Reader’s Demise Is Awful for Iranians, Who Use It to Avoid Censorship

RSS readers take raw feeds of data—headline, text, timestamp, etc.—and display that information in a stripped-down interface along with many other feeds, which is what makes them so efficient. (Here is the RSS feed for Quartz.) Less obvious is how many RSS readers, including Google’s, serve as anti-censorship tools for people living under oppressive regimes. That’s because it’s actually Google’s servers, located in the U.S. or another country with uncensored internet, that accesses each feed. So a web user in Iran just needs access to google.com/reader in order to read websites that would otherwise be blocked.

Read more. [Image: AP]

nationalpost:

Furious Iran photoshops Michelle Obama’s dress as it decries First Lady’s presentation of Argo Oscar
Michelle Obama’s virtual appearance at the Oscars has angered not just conservative critics but one of America’s greatest foes — Iran.

Last year Iran celebrated its first Oscar for the film A Separation. But this year, the country’s media decried the choice of Argo for Best Picture and director Ben Affleck’s comment in his acceptance speech that people in Iran are living in “terrible circumstances.”

It didn’t help that the First Lady opened the envelope.

“In a rare occasion in Oscar history, the First Lady announced the winner for Best Picture for the anti-Iran Film Argo, which is produced by the Zionist company Warner Bros,” Fars News said, revealing what they really think about the powers that be in Washington and Hollywood. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images // FARS)

nationalpost:

I want to be Iran’s first human astronaut: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he’s ready to be the first Iranian astronaut sent into space as part of Iran’s goal of manned space flight.

Ahmadinejad says he’s willing to sacrifice his life for Iran’s ambitious space program.

His comments were reported on Monday by the official IRNA news agency.

Iran sent a monkey into space last Monday, describing the launch a successful step toward Tehran’s plan to send an astronaut into space within the next five to six years. (Mohammad Agah/IRNA/AFP/Getty Images)

Iran so far away…

theatlantic:

natemcgrath:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Joined Instagram

Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran since 1989, may or may not have some interest in nuclear technology, but he is not especially known as an early adopter when it comes to social media tech. And yet the unelected septuagenarian, after successfully launching his Twitter account (almost 3,000 tweets, over 4,000 followers, and not following a soul), has taken to Instagram. Instagram!

Read more.

foreignaffairsmagazine:

Botching the Bomb: Why Nuclear Weapons Programs Often Fail on Their Own — and Why Iran’s Might, Too

(From the new issue, out next week.)

Nuclear weapons are hard to build for managerial reasons, not technical ones. This is why so few authoritarian regimes have succeeded: they don’t have the right culture or institutions. When it comes to Iran’s program, then, the United States and its allies should get out of the way and let Iran’s worst enemies — its own leaders — gum up the process on their own. Read the full article.

theeconomist:

This week’s cover: nobody should welcome the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. But bombing the place is not the answer.

Thanks to Jon!