Over the last decade, "youth" has become increasingly central to politics and public debates in Iran – whether as a symbol of social change or a political actor. Like the Arab Spring revolutions, Iranian youth played a pivotal role in the Women, Life, Freedom movement of 2022, as well as two other significant uprisings in 2017 and 2019 within the country. This paper examines how and why young people in Iran have turned into radical change agents by looking into the economic downturns and the youth’s failure to launch. I investigate the political economy of the youth in Iran as a “precarious and rebel generation” in the context of a neoliberal state and a fundamentalist authoritarian regime. This paper is part of my broader research on the extensive involvement of residents from low-income neighborhoods in social movements in Iran, with a focus on the Women, Life, Freedom movement. My research brings to light the question of how class divisions are negotiated through the political mobilization of the youth for decent life chances.

Governments worldwide claim that privatization leads to economic growth. However, not all privatization attempts are equally effective. In post-revolutionary Iran, scholars have documented pseudo-privatization, raising concerns about the influence of state-linked entities, particularly military forces, on the privatization of public assets. This paper seeks to tease apart the relationship between the military-industrial complex and privatization. Prior research has outlined two perspectives on the beneficiaries of Iranian privatization initiatives. One perspective reveals that pseudo-privatizations notably favor (para)military forces, contributing to a praetorian state. Yet, some argue that the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) occurs decentralized, suggesting that the post-revolutionary Iranian state operates as a subcontractor state. I argue that achieving a comprehensive empirical understanding of the case of privatization in Iran requires new theoretical efforts that can fully demonstrate who gets what and how. Such theoretical endeavor is only possible through a relational understanding of power. This paper brings the relational understanding of power back into the conversation in order to scale this literature into a larger network analysis. A network analysis of power elite relationships within the context of privatization in Iran highlights a relational perspective on power, emphasizing the actors embedded within the network and the dynamics that emerge from their interactions. I have developed four network-based hypotheses to accomplish this objective. Data have been collected from various sources. First, the names of the SOEs that went through privatization from 1993 to 2023 have been gathered. After obtaining the core list, I gathered two data types for each company. The first is relational data, offering public records of entities and providing corporate networks of different companies. By cross-referencing compiled names with content from these websites, I identified boards, beneficial owners, managers, officers, shareholders, registered agents, and other pertinent figures of privatized companies. The second data set, attribute data, is derived from archival research on news agencies for each privatized company and individual in the previous dataset. I used Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to test the hypotheses. ERGM is used to model the probability of observing a specific network structure based on a set of specified network features or characteristics to help understand the processes that generate the observed network. Early results provide encouraging evidence for all four hypotheses, laying the groundwork for a concept I have termed ‘Spiderweb Militarization.’

This paper aims to show how political necessities in the Middle East have instigated a shift in contemporary Twelver Shia discourse. The study relies mainly on evidence from the region, focusing on the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a participant observer, I approach the phenomenon with a nuanced understanding of its emergence within a complex social system. I use discourse analysis to examine different aspects of the recent rise of a sectarian and divisive version of Shia doctrine that is gradually becoming the dominant discourse among the mainstream Shia in the Middle East and diaspora. While scholars and analysts have aptly underscored political factors over religious causes in current sectarian conflicts, there remains an unexplored dimension: the influence of the political power struggle on shaping religious sectarian identity in unprecedented ways. According to Hashemi and Postel (2017), Sectarianization is a purposeful tactic utilized by political actors such as authoritarian regimes in specific settings to promote their agendas by leveraging public emotions associated with particular religious identities. Adversaries also employ sectarianization to undermine each other's political power. This descriptive study illustrates how taking advantage of the provoked emotions of Shia believers through religious rituals for political purposes has caused a transformation in the religious discourse within mainstream Shia communities with the potential to breed hatred and violence. Apart from geopolitical concerns, several other factors have contributed to the rise of immoderate Shiism. The advancement of technology and the widespread use of social media, for example, have played significant roles in propagating this narrative. Despite this gradual transformation unfolding over a decade, its noticeable indicators are not apparent to outsiders or those who do not regularly interact with the general religious population, mainly because the changes have predominantly influenced religious beliefs, convictions, and rituals. However, promoting extreme Shia discourse may exacerbate sectarian conflicts, as we have witnessed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently, Iran. In the Middle East, people are already grappling with challenging political, socioeconomic, and environmental issues. The impending consequences of sectarian conflicts threaten to aggravate the situation for all. Investigating this issue can offer researchers and policymakers a more comprehensive view of present and potential future tensions in that region, enhancing their ability to address the underlying complexities.