“No one has a bureau in Tehran,” he said, explaining why he thought there was a dearth of in-depth reporting from my motherland. “No one has a full-fledged bureau in Iran.”

So it was that a classmate and I set out to create one. But the more we looked into it, the more it made sense not to actually be there — not initially anyway, even if we could.

Niknejad, Kelly Golnoush.  “How to Cover a Paranoid Regime from Your Laptop.”  Foreign Policy, August 14, 2009.

This bloc led the Green Movement protests following Iran’s 2009 election — but now with its leaders under house arrest or barred from running in the upcoming election, they find themselves trying to weather this period of even greater conservative dominance.

“Almost every public move made by the Iranian regime is designed to stymie any hope for change,” one Iranian intellectual told me in an email. “And I can say, from a very personal perspective, that the regime has been successful.”

Niknejad, Kelly Golnoush.  “Iran’s Struggling Protest Movement.”  The Record, June 7, 2013.

As you see, the effort to establish Tehran Bureau found voice around 2009 and here in 2013 the idea has been established and found support beneath the wings of The Guardian.

As the Aussies say, “Good on ye,  Kelly Golnoush Niknejad.

The web has a waterfront too, and even at the speed of light, one cannot cover it all, so it seems I’ve missed this portion of coverage of Iran.  However, responding to this week’s protests and looking for an update, the only relevant piece — the only piece not related to Iranian-Turkish rivalry, NATO, Syria, and Russia — was the second cited, “Iran’s Struggling Protest Movement.”

A gem.

More from Tehran Bureau:

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been a dominant player in Iranian politics since the revolution. Its broad-ranging influence transcends that of an exclusively military institution. The organisation does not directly dictate policy or single-handedly choose presidents, but it has enough power within the regime to block major initiatives and promote its own hardline agenda.

Ostovar, Afshon.  “Iranian election: do the Revolutionary Guards have a candidate?”  Tehran Bureau, June 3, 2013.

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