Author: Anish Shekar

In one of those shocking political turnarounds, Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist candidate and veteran parliamentarian, was elected President of Iran. In the highly contested runoff election, Pezeshkian secured 53.7% of the vote, representing a probable turn in the nation’s political path. His rival, hard-liner Saeed Jalili, secured 44.3% to record an easy defeat for Iran’s conservative leadership. This election-in which voter turnout reached a record low 49.8 percent-revealed deep-seated fissures in Iranian society. For many voters, Iran’s political system as a whole disappointed them; for others, Pezeshkian’s campaign represented one of the few opportunities for reform. A reformist agenda Pezeshkian,…

The year 2020 brought a challenge to the world in an unexpected way: the novel coronavirus, later officially named SARS-CoV-2, which swept across the globe, changing daily life, economies, and healthcare systems. Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, COVID-19 led to widespread lockdowns, social distancing measures, and an urgent race to develop a vaccine. The virus emerged in Wuhan, China, late in 2019. It continued to expand to nearly the entire globe by the early part of 2020, where governments quickly implemented very severe travel bans, including quarantine measures in virtually all parts of…