The Fire Next Time

Komalah, Communism, and the Political History of Iranian Kurdistan

In a recent episode of Asraneh, Ebrahim Alizadeh, the First Secretary of Komalah, the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran, gave a long interview about the history of Komalah, the Iranian left, the Kurdish question, the formation of the Communist Party of Iran, the later splits, and the current political situation in Iran. The interview matters because it is not only a memory exercise. It is not just an older political figure going back over organizational history. For a non-Iranian and non-Kurdish audience, the conversation opens a window into a political history that is usually flattened from the outside. Iranian Kurdistan is often reduced to mountains, armed groups, borders, ethnic conflict, or geopolitical calculations. Alizadeh’s account gives a different picture: Kurdistan as a political society, as a space of left-wing organization, as a place where the relationship between class, national oppression, armed struggle, women’s liberation, social solidarity, and state repression was tested in practice....

Komalah, Communism, and the Political History of Iranian Kurdistan In a recent episode of Asraneh, Ebrahim Alizadeh, the First Secretary of Komalah, the Kurdistan Organization of the Communist Party of Iran, gave a long interview about the history of Komalah, the …

Iran’s Geopolitical Weight, and Its Political Trap

Iran’s place in the world cannot be understood only through the language of its ruling regime. It has to be read as a geopolitical unit positioned at one of the most sensitive crossroads of energy, trade, and security in West Asia. This matters because not all states occupy the same place in the global order. Some shape the rules. Some are forced to live under the protection of stronger powers. And some try to remain in between: not fully subordinate, but not powerful enough to dominate. Iran belongs to this third category. That in-between position gives Iran a real kind of weight. The Strait of Hormuz, its regional links, and its deterrent capacity mean it cannot simply be ignored or removed without consequences. The recent war made this very clear. Iran was not shown to be invincible, but it was shown to be costly to confront. At the same time, the war also exposed the limits of its position. Russia and China offered diplomatic backing, but not a military shield. This is the core contradiction of Iran’s place in the world: bargaining power without guaranteed protection, structural importance without stable hegemony. Iran is neither a global rule-maker nor a passive client. It is a regional power trying to survive, maneuver, and endure inside a deeply unequal world order....

Iran’s Geopolitical Weight, and Its Political Trap Iran’s place in the world cannot be understood only through the language of its ruling regime. It has to be read as a geopolitical unit positioned at one of the most sensitive crossroads of energy,…

A Diaspora Misrepresented: Yasmine Mather on War and Media

The war against Iran has made it even harder to sustain the neat, one-dimensional image that many Persian-language and Western media outlets try to present of Iranians living abroad. In this dominant narrative, the “Iranian diaspora” is treated as if it naturally supports foreign intervention, the escalation of war, and even the destruction of Iran’s infrastructure. But according to Yasmine Mather, this image is not only false, it is deeply misleading. Yasmine Mather, a senior researcher at Oxford and editor of the online journal Weekly Worker, speaks about the political, social, and class divisions among Iranians abroad: the differences between monarchists, layers of former reformists who have shifted to the right, professional migrants, students, and refugees; and why pro-war voices get far more media attention than their real social weight deserves. She also discusses the role of Western and Persian-language media in amplifying these voices, and in the end, she looks at Donald Trump’s latest threats and the wider horizon of war....

A Diaspora Misrepresented: Yasmine Mather on War and Media The war against Iran has made it even harder to sustain the neat, one-dimensional image that many Persian-language and Western media outlets try to present of Iranians living abroad. In this domina…