And the 'sparkly paper' amid it all.
 | By Jyoti Thottam Deputy Op-Ed Editor |
Is there another way to look at American foreign policy toward Iran? As with so many other things, it has turned into a deeply partisan issue. The Trump administration abandoned the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, criticizing it as a capitulation to an Iranian government that has often been a destabilizing force in the region. President Biden has made it a top priority of his White House to rebuild the deal that the Obama administration spent so much diplomatic energy to reach. |
It's not clear whether that will happen, but it isn't really possible to understand what's at stake with this policy without getting close to some of the people who are living through its consequences. That's exactly what Azadeh Moaveni and Sussan Tahmasebi have done in their recent essay for Times Opinion. I've been following Azadeh's work for years — we were foreign correspondents at about the same time — and she's known for her intimate, deeply reported examinations of life, especially for women, during periods of social, political and economic change. |
She and Sussan explain how years of sanctions, inflation and then the pandemic have decimated the lives of middle-class Iranian women, the very people most likely to support reform. They spoke to a publisher who had to stop using "sparkly paper" for her books — if she can even find anyone to buy them. "People are moving closer to the poverty line, they're spending on meat and diapers," the publisher told them. "We're trying to lower prices, but we also can't give books out for free." |
The best opinion writers make you see the world a little differently, whether or not you come to the same conclusions. I never thought of sparkly paper as a bellwether for anything. But I do now. |
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