Fereydoun Majlessi: Iran’s economic hardship is caused mainly by military and security expenditure, not sanctions

Fereydoun Majlessi (source: Fereydoun Majlessi)

Interview with the Iranian foreign policy expert and former diplomat about the problems with the nuclear negotiations with Iran, condition of the Iranians under sanctions and Iranian foreign policy options in times of war in Ukraine

Vladimir Mitev

Fereydoun Majlessi is a former diplomat, who served in Washington DC and in Brussels in the European community before the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Since then he has been a manager and an entrepreneur, as well as a writer and translator. He has translated Gore Vidal into Persian. At present he is a freelance journalist, columnist and a foreign policy expert. 

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Q&A about the conference on pre-revolutionary Iranian thought

Screenshot from the seminar (source: YouTube)

Vladimir Mitev responds to colleagues from the Centre for Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca

In the second part of the conference “Social and anti-colonial motives in pre-revolutionary Iranian thought” Vladimir Mitev answered questions about relations between West and East, possible academic collaborations and the rift between the worlds, as well as the significance of Ahmad Fardid and Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s thought today.

Watch the second part with subtitles in English here:

Social and anti-colonial motives in pre-revolutionary Iranian thought

Jalal Al-e Ahmad is one of the most important prerevolutionary Iranian intellectuals (source: Facebook)

English-lanaguage transcription of Vladimir Mitev’s lecture, conducted online in Romanian 

On May 27, 2022, Vladimir Mitev, founder of the blog “The Persian Bridge of Friendship,” delivered an online lecture in Romanian entitled “Social and Anticolonial Motives in Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Thought” to the audience of the Center for Near Eastern and Mediterranean Studies at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. The text below is a transcript of Vladimir’s lecture, and the discussion that took place after the lecture will be published in a separate article. The opening remarks are by Prof. Dr. Marius Lazar, Director of the Middle East Centre at the University.

Here is the video from the lecture with subtitles in English:

Why does Iran’s “looking east” policy not correspond to international realities?

In the face of serious sanctions against Iran, China is allowing it to sell its oil products, which is particularly important. However, as Majlesi points out in a recent article, “the real interests of both countries lie elsewhere” (source: YouTube)

During the Cold War the opening to the East was a wise path of peace and reconciliation. After the end of the Cold War there was no ideological and essential conflict between “West” and “East”. It is Iran who looks at the world through ideological lenses. The world powers of “The East”, however, will not turn a blind eye to their economic interaction with “The West”, because Iran wants to fight it! 

Fereydoun Majlessi

This article was published on 3 February 2022 at the Iranian reformist newspaper “Shargh” (East). It appears following the Iranian state visits to China and Russia in January 2022, its acceptance to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the autumn of 2021 and the difficult pace of the Vienna negotiations for the renewal of the nuclear agreement between Iran and the group of six international powers, led by the United States.

What are the stakes of the forthcoming Iranian parliamentary elections?

The Iranian Parliament (photo: Parmida Rahimi, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr)

The February 2020 parliamentary elections în Iran could represent the succesive recognition that the country’s attempt to get closer to the West has failed

Vladimir Mitev

This article was published on 21 January 2020 at the site ”The Barricade”.

The murder of the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and the taking down of the ucrainean airplane over Tehran in the night, when Iran fired against American military bases in Iraq, happened a little bit more than a month before the parliamentary elections in the Islamic Republic. That is why they will ceratinly influence the future political map of the country. On 21 February 2020 Iranians will vote for Islamic Consultative Assembly, which has prerogatives mostly with regard to the internal policy and the economy. Also, the members of the Assembly of Experts, which has the right to dismiss and appoint the supreme leader, will be partially renewed.