by Jeffry R. Halverson The Arab Spring showed the world how social media can help organize mass political dissent. In the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, single issues coalesced online into far broader and diverse campaigns that toppled ruling regimes. Recently, outside of the Arab world, discriminatory government policies  in Iran against Afghans have come [...]

by Jeffry R. Halverson Recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been abuzz over the release of a video entitled “The Coming is Very Near,” a 28-minute production created by a group of Twelver Shi‘a devotees of the Hidden Imam al-Mahdi, known as the Harbingers of the Coming (perhaps associated with the Hojjatieh Society). It [...]

by Jeffry R. Halverson and Steven R. Corman Recent events in Egypt have led some quarters to suggest we are witnessing a case parallel to the 1979 revolution in Iran. Back then, the fall of the Shah left a political vacuum that allowed religious hardliners to take control and create a new theocratic and stridently [...]

by Steven R. Corman The CSC has released a new white paper by Jeffry Halverson entitled A Counter-Narrative for Iranian Tyranny.  The executive summary is below, and you can find the full paper here. The ruling regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran is increasingly known for a militant foreign policy posture, abuse of the [...]

by ZS Justus A recent audio recording from al-Qaeda #2 Zawahiri sends a series of “messages” to President-elect Barack Obama. News outlets have quickly grabbed one of the more provocative excerpts from the recording, Zawahiri’s labeling of Obama as a “house negro.” Several blogs have followed suit including hotair, gateway pundit, commentary magazine, the moderate [...]

In the introduction of Ahmadinejad, Bollinger’s openly challenging, oppositional and isolating framework, despite being cloaked in an offer of a podium, meant only that another moment for effective strategic communication was lost.

How did both the Iranian government and members of the U.S. Marines identify with the film 300? The answer to this question is more complicated than it appears.