Al Majalla dedicated the first cover story of its relaunched print edition to Iran, posing the question: Will the Iranian regime fall?
As of today, Al Majalla will be publishing, on its digital platforms, articles by Arab and foreign journalists and experts, addressing this question in its entirety.
John Raine, a British expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, delves into the depths of the Iranian security and military machine and how it is confronting the protests.
From there Sami Moubayed puts the current protests in historical context, shedding light on the tradition of women protests in Iran that goes back decades.
Al Majalla’s Managing Editor for Politics Houssam Itani then draws a map of Iranian "imperial" intervention in the region and the possibility of this intervention being impacted by any change in Tehran.
Meanwhile, Adel Salmi details Iran's various media tools, its use of “soft power" in the Arab world and how Arabs are dealing with it.
Meanwhile, freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson goes on two field assignments to Iraq.
She first visits Karbala to talk to people about their view of neighbouring Najaf and the city of Qom in Iran and then travels to Iraqi Kurdistan, where she visits shelled areas targeted by Iran — a “retaliation" for the demonstrations at home.
However, discussing Iran’s regional expansion is incomplete without addressing Hezbollah.
Here Executive Editor of Al Majalla, Ibrahim Hamidi, reveals official Syrian documents, which the late Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam had carried with him to Paris in 2005 before defecting, on how Damascus facilitated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) access to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and the establishment of Hezbollah in 1982.
Hamidi also monitors the various stages of the relationship between Damascus and Tehran, focusing on the Syrian army's clash with Hezbollah members in Beirut where many of them were killed in the mid-1980s.
The documents highlight Iran’s anger over the incident, Tehran and Hezbollah's rush to save the Syrian regime after the protests of 2011, and Syria turning into an arena for the Iranian-Israeli proxy war under the auspices of America in eastern Syria and Russia in its west, centre, and south.
Al Majalla then returns to Iran, where Managing Editor for Business and Economy Khaled Kassar presents a comprehensive report full of facts and figures on impact of Western sanctions on Iran’s economy.
On his part, Shadi Ala Aldin details the crucial role of women in Iran’s cultural revolution.
The print edition concludes with Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi’s opinion piece on the role of the murder of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in igniting the recent protests, calling her "the girl who was born twice."
