Politics

Of Fire and Rain

It was sometime in the afternoon, checking my phone for news from home, that I saw the flames.

March 14, 2026

Longing for My Tehran

On the Israeli news, I watch as the country whose citizenship I hold devastates the one where I was born.

March 14, 2026

Iran Transformed

To understand the regime the US now seeks to obliterate, we have to return to the political and economic convulsions that produced last January’s uprising.

March 8, 2026

The Gaza Doctrine

Over the course of two years, Israeli forces systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system. Their attacks in Iran and Lebanon follow a disturbingly similar pattern.

March 22, 2026

‘There’s Nothing for Me Here’

What caused Venezuela’s collapse, and who is responsible? A recent memoir tells the story as so many families have lived it.

May 29, 2025 issue

Chavismo’s Chokehold

The party of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains a strong hold on state institutions, but it has lost the people’s mandate. Will there be a transfer of power to the opposition candidate, Edmundo González—the true victor of this summer’s election?

September 19, 2024 issue

The Triumph of a Musical Adventure

“Over the last forty years, through a succession of often controversial political regimes, Venezuela has become widely known for a highly developed system of orchestras and socially directed musical education that is now being adapted and much imitated.”

September 24, 2015 issue

The Last Caudillo

All these years later, it’s still hard to know whether his was a dictablanda (a soft dictatorship) or not. For all his anti-imperialist fulminations, the flow of Venezuelan oil to US ports was not interrupted for a single day. For all his socialist preaching, his country remained firmly capitalist.

March 6, 2013