{"id":476654,"date":"2026-06-04T23:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/476654\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T23:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T23:08:15","slug":"iranian-kurdish-parties-say-they-received-no-weapons-from-israel-or-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/476654\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Kurdish parties say they received no weapons from Israel or US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published this week, Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran has drawn attention at policy forums in Washington and New York, where its authors discussed Iran\u2019s modern history, the resilience of the Islamic Republic and the country\u2019s uncertain future after war, economic collapse and the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei.<\/p>\n

The New York Times Book Review described Stolen Revolution as \u201cone of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery of repression but the fragile forms of hope that survive beneath it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted Torbati, the New York Times Iran correspondent, and Sharafedin, the Head of Digital at Iran International and a former Reuters Iran correspondent, on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The discussion was moderated by Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar and vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne theme that runs throughout the book is the constant push and pull between the nation and the state,\u201d Sharafedin said at the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Islamic Republic tries to project an image of continuity, to show it is business as usual and they are in full control. Much of the people\u2019s struggle against the system has been an effort to break that continuity. Yet the system has proved quite resilient. Even foreign intervention was unable to create a rupture or break that continuity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sharafedin said the succession of Mojtaba Khamenei after his father was a sign of that continuity.<\/p>\n

\"Authors\"Authors<\/p>\n

100%<\/p>\n

Authors Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin speak at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, on June 3, 2026, in a discussion moderated by Suzanne Maloney.<\/p>\n

The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in late February plunged the country into its most perilous crisis since the 1979 revolution, leaving the Islamic Republic struggling with the aftermath of war, a collapsing economy and the military’s expanding role in state affairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what we’ve learned over the last 10 or 12 weeks\u2014and what also became clearer to us while writing the book\u2014is that individuals play a very important role in shaping the trajectory of events,\u201d Torbati said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, the system is bigger than any one person\u2014whether a supreme leader, a general, or a national security adviser. It is a system deeply committed to its own survival and self-preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Torbati said Iran is projected to face around 70 percent inflation this year. Food prices have soared, and layoffs have followed the war. Yet the system and its leadership appear willing to absorb those costs, and have ordinary Iranians bear much of the burden, in order to survive and avoid capitulating to the United States and Israel.<\/p>\n

\"Yeganeh\"Yeganeh<\/p>\n

100%<\/p>\n

Yeganeh Torbati<\/p>\n

\u201cBy contrast, American leaders must contend with public opinion. President Trump has to worry about public support, and his party has to worry about the midterm elections,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, the Iranian government can often tolerate far more pain and pursue tactics for much longer than its American counterparts. I think that helps explain its survival up to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a separate discussion hosted by the 92nd Street Y in New York on Wednesday night, journalist Scott Anderson, the author of King of Kings, joined Torbati and Sharafedin to assess Iran’s modern history and the fallout from the US-Israeli war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIranians have expressed [they want democracy] many, many times, and they’ve been machine-gunned for it,\u201d Anderson said, referring to the January massacre in Iran that killed tens of thousands.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran is not a closed society like North Korea. Iranians have a very good concept of what’s happening in the outside world. Yet it’s just this massive monolithic structure that has the guns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Bozorgmehr\"Bozorgmehr<\/p>\n

100%<\/p>\n

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin<\/p>\n

The book traces how a revolution that promised to build an egalitarian society gradually transformed into what the authors describe as a mafia state. It tells that story through the lives of six Iranians whose experiences span the arc of modern Iranian history and who undergo profound transformations themselves.<\/p>\n

One of them is Mehdi Karroubi, a devoted follower of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who rose to the highest ranks of power. Over time, however, he became a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic after seeing corruption, especially the growing role of the Revolutionary Guards in the economy. He paid a heavy price for his criticism and ultimately spent years under house arrest.<\/p>\n

Another is Said Rahmani, who returned to Iran hoping to spark a startup boom in his country. Instead, he encountered a ruthless security state that seized much of his business empire and eventually forced him into exile.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion, this is a book that will be of great interest both to those who have never read anything about Iran but are watching the news and want to better understand the country, and to those of us who already have large libraries of books on Iran,\u201d Maloney said.<\/p>\n

Former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw called the book \u201cextraordinarily powerful,\u201d while Jonathan Blitzer, an American journalist and writer, described it as \u201ca masterwork of reporting.\u201d <\/p>\n

David Hoffman, author of The Billion Dollar Spy, called it \u201ca brilliant investigative history of modern Iran,\u201d and the BBC\u2019s Lyse Doucet said it was \u201ca rare and riveting chronicle of a major political story of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

100%<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published this week, Stolen Revolution: Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran has drawn attention at policy forums in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,87,98127,98124,98123,20889,98125,59417,92,98122,98126,47,43,40,38,41,39,81563],"class_list":["post-476654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-iran-and-china","tag-iran-covid","tag-iran-economy","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-media-iran-and-the-united-states","tag-iran-news","tag-iran-nuclear","tag-iran-politics","tag-iran-us","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-sanctions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}