Iran and the Shanghai cooperation organization : ideology and realpolitik in Iranian foreign policy

The Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). In doing so, Iran has appeared to be unfazed by the prospect of allying with Russia and China, two countries which have systematically suppressed their Muslim minorities for decades. Similarly, the SCO's Central Asian member states are led by individual leaders who are generally believed to rule in spite of their populations. As a result, Iran's eagerness to join the SCO may appear to contradict its self-promoted image as the champion of Muslim interests, but in reality it sits nicely within its overarching enmity for the USA. Indeed, the SCO is seen as a geopolitical counterweight to the USA. For Iran, this geopolitical opportunity overrides ideological imperatives, with the gap between ideology and geopolitics most evident under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Daily goals, cognititions and depression in Australia and Iran

 A new scale, the Daily Goals Scale was developed and validated as a measure of propensity to set and achieve small daily goals in three independent, follow-up studies among Australian, Iranian, and Iranian-Australian community samples. It demonstrated adequate psychometric properties as an easy-to-use self-report measure.

Contextualizing palimpsest of collective memory in an urban hertigae site : case Study of Chahar Bagh, Shiraz - Iran

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a ‘palimpsest’. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.

'This is not our country': Declining diversity in the Islamic Republic of Iran

The expulsion of Christians from Mosul by the Islamic State (IS) in the summer of 2014 marked the first time in nearly 2000 years that the Iraqi city lacked a Christian population.1 Along with the conflict in Syria and the other upheavals that have accompanied the phenomenon variously known as the Arab Spring, al-thawra or the Islamic Awakening, the emigration of Christians from their homes has accelerated in recent years. The Roman Catholic Pope Francis mentioned this during his visit to the region in May 2014, noting that these historic communities, among the oldest in the world, are decreasing to the point where their long-term existence is uncertain. This is because Christians in more stable parts of the Middle East are also leaving. This paper discusses one such example: the continuing emigration of Armenian Christians from Iran. For Iranian Armenians, the main incentive for emigration is the feeling of exclusion and alienation from the wider society. This has largely come about by the Islamic Republic’s promotion of a Shi’a-based Iranian identity which does not count minorities as full citizens. This in turn has led to the development of a sense of foreignness in Iranian society among Armenian youth. The lack of belonging makes their ties to Iran much less solid, and therefore makes migration a much less painful process. Furthermore, their parents, who were raised in the more pluralistic Iran of the last Shah, find it easier to identify as Iranians than their children.

Iran in the world president Rouhani' s foreign policy

This book evaluates Rouhani's foreign policy track record during his first two years in office, looking at case studies of Armenia, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Turkey, and Syria and the high profile Iran-US relationship.

Women's rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran: the contribution of secular-oriented feminism

A cornerstone of the conservative gender ideology of Iran’s clerical eliteis the conviction that biological differences between men and women arecause for them to have different roles and functions in society. Differentroles and functions translate to different (read unequal) legal rights.Notwithstanding the discriminatory gender policies of the state, Iranianwomen have refused to renege on their claims to equal rights. In the faceof intense political pressure to withdraw from the public arena, women inthe Islamic Republic have maintained a foothold in the political, socialand legal realms.

Iran, war, displacement and my choice of Joan of Arc

This paper discusses the personal perceptions that have shaped my poetics in writing La Pucelle: an Epic of Joan of Arc as part of a PhD candidature in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University.

Corporate financial disclosure practices in Asian and Middle Eastern countries

This paper investigates the financial disclosure practices of corporate annual reports published in Asian countries including Bangladesh, Indonesian, Malaysia and the Middle East countries including Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The purpose of the study is to measure the financial disclosure diversity in these countries, with a view to developing a classification of their similarities and differences in respect to their compliance with International Accounting Standards (IAS). Annual reports of 126 public companies liisted on the countries' stock exchanges are the central data source, supplemented with other relevant information about financial disclosure practices in each country. A disclosure checklist adopted from all IASs and summarised in 306 individual items of financial disclosures is used as a means of extending an understanding of financial reporting in these countries. Results show the relative degree of conformity with IASs for each of the countries included in this study. 

A conformity test of corporate financial disclosures in Asian and Middle East countries

This paper investigates the financial disclosure practices of corporate annual reports published in Asian countries including Bangladesh, Indonesian, Malaysia and the Middle East countries including Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The purpose of the study is to measure the financial disclosure diversity in these countries, with a view to developing a classification of their similarities and differences in respect to their compliance with International Accounting Standards (IASs). Annual reports of 132 public companies listed on the relevant countries stock exchanges are the central data source, supplemented with other reliable information about financial disclosure practices in each country. A disclosure checklist adopted from all IASs and summarised in 306 individual items of financial disclosures is used as a means of extending an understanding of financial reporting literature. Additionally, it provides an indication of voluntary progress towards harmonisation of international accounting practices in several Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Results show the degree of conformity with IASs from less to high conformity is: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bangladesh, Iran, Bahrain, Jordan, Pakistan, Oman, Turkey, Malaysia, Kuwait and Indonesia.