The Fire Next Time

The argument is simple. Europe produces deniability through distance. Part of the left repeats the same logic in reverse. Instead of fighting the arms factory, the weapons shipment, the deportation flight, and the border regime at home, it outsources anti-imperialism to the “Axis of Resistance”...

Migration, War, and the Dirty Work of Empire Last night, I had a long discussion with an anarchist friend about the movement that today calls itself anti-imperialism. The result was this: I returned to a text I had written a few weeks ago and…

Ecocide in Tehran: When War Reaches the Air People Breathe

The issue is not simply the bombing of several oil depots. The real issue is that in modern wars, energy infrastructure is no longer just a military target. It has become the point where war, economy, environment, and everyday life intersect. When fuel storage facilities in Tehran, Rey, Shahran, Ghoochak, Fardis, and Alborz are attacked, it is not only gasoline, diesel, or natural gas that burns....

Ecocide in Tehran: When War Reaches the Air People Breathe The issue is not simply the bombing of several oil depots. The real issue is that in modern wars, energy infrastructure is no longer just a military target. It has become the point where war, econo…

Bread, Freedom and Organisation: Esmail Bakhshi on Iran Today

Esmail Bakhshi is a well-known Iranian worker and labour activist. His name is mostly associated with the struggles of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers, the fight for independent workers’ organisation, and his own experience of prison, torture, dismissal from work, and resistance to repression. Over the past years, he has not been known as the spokesperson of a party or an outside political project, but as a voice from inside the working class; a voice speaking about poverty, repression, lack of rights, and the need for independent organisation. In this conversation, Bakhshi starts from something that has itself become one of the clearest signs of the situation in Iran today: the internet. He explains that just to take part in a simple online conversation, he had to rely on friends, a VPN, technical configurations, and a heavy cost. This is not just a technical problem. The point is that even the internet in Iran has become class-based. What should be a basic public means of communication, information, and dialogue has turned into a privilege for those who have money, contacts, tools, and special access. Workers, wage earners, families of prisoners, protesters, the unemployed, and the poor are not only pushed out of the streets and official media; they are also pushed out of the digital space. Internet shutdowns and control here are not only censorship. They are a new form of class repression. The main pillar of Bakhshi’s argument is that Iran today is under the weight of several crises at the same time: poverty, war, repression, unemployment, rising prices, the psychological collapse of society, and the hijacking of people’s protests. He calls war “absolute evil” and sharply rejects phrases like “humanitarian intervention.”...

Bread, Freedom and Organisation: Esmail Bakhshi on Iran Today Esmail Bakhshi is a well-known Iranian worker and labour activist. His name is mostly associated with the struggles of the Haft Tappeh sugarcane workers, the fight for independent workers’ organisa…

Inside Tehran, Under Bombs, Arguing About War and Power

One month after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a long conversation was recorded in Tehran between Sobhan Yahyaei, a media researcher and host of the Panorama podcast, and Mohammad Mehdi Ardabili, a philosopher and public intellectual. This was not just an abstract discussion. In the middle of the conversation, they say they could even be arrested for saying these things. The sound of explosions and air defense can be heard in the background. That alone gives the conversation a special weight. But its importance is not only about the conditions in which it was recorded. It matters because it brings up one of the central political questions in Iran today: when a country is under military attack, how should the relationship between opposition to foreign aggression and opposition to domestic despotism be understood? As the interviewer, Sobhan Yahyaei moves the discussion through ideas like homeland, war, responsibility, and everyday life under bombardment. Mohammad Mehdi Ardabili, known as a philosopher shaped by Hegel, continental philosophy, and theoretical debates on politics and suffering, tries to respond to the exceptional condition of war. He clearly says that he is sympathetic to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, that he does not deny the Islamic Republic’s repression, and that he does not defend domestic despotism. But from these same starting points, he reaches a conclusion that has both serious listeners and serious critics in Iran today: in wartime, priority must be given to resisting foreign aggression, even if that means temporarily suspending conflict with the Islamic Republic. This article is written neither to rush into condemning that position nor to defend it. The point is to understand what is actually being said in this conversation, why it sounds reasonable to part of Iranian society, and at the same time what limits and dangers this framework carries....

Inside Tehran, Under Bombs, Arguing About War and Power One month after the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, a long conversation was recorded in Tehran between Sobhan Yahyaei, a media researcher and host of the Panorama podcast, and Mohammad Mehdi A…