This study advances neorealist theory by examining how systemic constraints shape state behavior through economic statecraft, focusing on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Iran’s strategic calculations. Employing methodological triangulation – network analysis, discourse examination, and institutional assessment – this research explores the strategic logic underpinning the China-Iran engagement. For Iran, the BRI emerges as a mechanism for institutional resilience and sanctions circumvention, though its integration remains constrained by systemic limitations and regional competition. For China, the BRI serves as a geopolitical infrastructure strategy to expand influence and secure resources, despite concerns over economic sustainability. By framing economic statecraft as a strategic response to systemic constraints, this study challenges conventional materialist and militaristic paradigms of international relations. It critically assesses the generalizability of BRI partnerships, illustrating how states, bound by structural limitations, use economic instruments to reshape their strategic environments. Ultimately, the research offers nuanced insight into emerging power dynamics in a multipolar world, extending beyond traditional power-centric models.

This article examines the challenges of subject formation within state-building efforts by analyzing Keyhān-e Bachcheh-hā (Children’s Universe), a widely circulated Iranian children’s magazine during the post-revolutionary period. Through analyzing the magazine’s content from 1979 to 1989, when the Islamic Republic was consolidating its power and building institutions, this study reveals how the publication served as a key informal education platform, attempting to create politically conscious yet ideologically compliant young citizens. While the magazine aimed to cultivate revolutionary consciousness through anti-imperialist rhetoric and Islamic values, it simultaneously imposed rigid behavioral and ideological boundaries to produce what I term “docile revolutionary children.” The research demonstrates how political themes permeated every aspect of the magazine—from stories and poems to puzzles and contests—transforming it from an entertainment platform into a vehicle for political socialization. Through examination of revolutionary and wartime discourses, gender representation, and the promotion of social humility, this study argues that Keyhān-e Bachcheh-hā embodied a fundamental tension in the state’s vision of ideal citizenship: the simultaneous demand for revolutionary agency and absolute submission to clerical authority. This research contributes to our understanding of how post-revolutionary states employ cultural institutions to shape young citizens and the inherent contradictions in such efforts at political socialization.

The works of prominent contemporary Iranian composers Hossein Alīzādeh and Parvīz Meshkātīān demonstrate a novel approach to the text-music relationship, characterized by a new understanding of the interaction between music's internal syntax and structure and the external world. This innovative approach, which can be described as “musical realism,” strives to represent textual meanings through musical gestures, particularly within the tasnīf genre, a metrical, pre-composed song with a pre-determined way of accompaniment, which developed over the past century.1 This approach, emerging primarily in contemporary compositions, is exemplified by the above two composers, who illustrate textual meaning through the intricate utilization of innovative treatments of modes, rhythm, melody, and texture relying on the potentials of the core of Persian musical tradition, the radīf – a collection of traditional Iranian melodic figures passed down orally through generations and serving as the foundational framework for improvisation and composition.2 By examining select instances from these composers’ works, I highlight the growing emphasis on a realist music-text relationship and its interplay with both the inner structures of Persian classical music and the broader context of Iran's modern position in the world.

This paper provides a sociolinguistic and grammatical synopsis of Bavadi Bakhtiari, spoken in Chahar Mahal va Bakhtiari Province, Iran. The results presented here are based on the collection of linguistic and cultural data through field research, including ethnographic research, recording of oral texts, elicitation of a language data questionnaire, and follow-up interviews with speakers of the language. In addition to providing a linguistic snapshot of the Bavadi variety of Bakhtiari in its social context, this study offers a novel contribution to the documentation of Iran’s linguistic heritage through the presentation and analysis of culturally important oral texts of various genres. While one text belongs to the controlled and formulaic genre of the folktale, two other texts are based on free conversation among groups of speakers.

Writing, as a beacon of democracy, is crucial to the ability of citizens to think critically and to exercise their agency in the twenty-first century. Yet the full epistemic and critical potentials of writing are realized only if writing is properly theorized and understood. Although it is commonly held to be a matter of skill or personal creativity, writing is alternatively conceptualized as process, genre, social practice and sociopolitical action. This paper examines discourses of writing and its pedagogy in Iran’s secondary education writing textbooks, known as Negāresh. Analysis of the writing tasks and activities of the textbooks attests to the dominance of discourses (skills, process, and creativity) that narrow the domain of writing to the writer and textual output. More socially oriented discourses of writing are not foregrounded. The findings carry implications for Persian writing pedagogy.

English words and phrases have been creatively adopted, adapted, and appropriated by Persian speakers, resulting in a Persianized form of English that is widely used in daily conversations in Iran. This article aims to identify and describe various English loanwords and phrases commonly integrated into everyday Persian discourse, reflecting Iran’s sociolinguistic globalization. The research is guided by two key questions: How do Iranians Persianize English words and phrases in daily conversations? And what broader patterns emerge in this Persianization process? To address these questions, a qualitative analysis was conducted to examine the prevalence and patterns of English loanwords in Iranian discourse. The findings suggest that Persianized English creates a hybrid mode of expression that blends Persian linguistic traditions with contemporary English influences, shaping identity and communication within Iranian society. The study concludes by recommending further research on the effects of Persianized English on public discourse, media, education, and the daily cultural practices of Iranians.

This compact book offers a closely researched account of the early years of the Qajar dynasty and state, whose political development was permanently marked by the territorial struggle with the Russian Empire in the South Caucasus in its first three decades. Behrooz's work builds on Muriel Atkin's classic Russia and Iran 1780–1928 (1980), and although unlike Atkin he does not make use of any sources in Russian, the range of Persian-language material he draws upon is much greater, and the two books complement each other well. The first two chapters effectively set the political scene, providing a review of the circumstances of Aqa Muhammad Khan's rise to power, his struggle with the Zand rulers of Shiraz, and the extensive preparations he made to secure the succession of his nephew, Baba Khan Jahanbani, the future Fath Ali Shah. These bore fruit when Aqa Muhammad Shah was murdered by his own servants in Shusha in 1797. Significantly, this took place during a campaign to subdue Qarabagh. The central figure of the book, and of the wars against Russia, is Fath Ali's son Abbas Mirza, but a particular strength of Behrooz's account is his close understanding of the family and intertribal relationships among the Qajar elite, as well as of the petty dynasties that ruled in Qarabagh, Iravan, Badkubeh (Baku), and Derbent in this period.

The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Iranian police in September 2022 triggered protests both within Iran and across the global Iranian diaspora. This article explores how representations of collective memory and identity were articulated by the Iranian diaspora in Sweden at that time, exploring the concepts of memory, nostalgia, and identity, among others, through a constructionist framework. Key findings show hope as a central theme in diasporic engagement with the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, expressed as a desire for revolution and potential return to a liberated and democratic Iran. This study underscores the complex, multifaceted nature of diasporic activism, shaped by contested memories, subject-positions derived from lived experience and political interests, and historic and ongoing ideological tensions.