• About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:

Alex Shams

  • About me
  • Reporting
  • Opinion
  • Academic Work
  • Contact me
Search for:
Tag:

Israeli War on Iran

Featured Iran

Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran’s Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice

Posted on March 16, 2026 by Alex Shams

Originally published in TIME magazine on March 14, 2026. Translated to Spanish and published in Nexos Mexico. I knew he was watching. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s portrait is everywhere in Iran.

  • Share
Iran Israel Reporting

Quiet Solidarity: The Underground Networks that Defied Israel’s War on Iran

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Alex Shams

Originally published on The Public Source on August 14, 2025. On the morning of Thursday, June 12, Tehran moved to its familiar rhythms. Students crammed for finals in packed cafés and

  • Share

About me

Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

follow me on

Recent posts

  • “Why Did So Many People Think This War Was a Good Idea?”
  • CBS Interview: How people in Iran feel about ceasefire with U.S., upcoming peace talks
  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran’s Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • Iran After Khamenei
  • Iran’s Protesters Are Caught Between State Repression and Foreign Intervention
Search for:

About

Born and raised in an Iranian-American family in Los Angeles, Alex Shams has long been fascinated by the stories that places can tell us. Growing up, he learned Persian and Spanish; in college, he learned Arabic and studied abroad at the American University of Cairo before moving to Beirut after graduation. After receiving his master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, he moved to Bethlehem, Palestine, where he was a journalist at Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent Palestinian news organization. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in Sociocultural Anthropology. His dissertation, entitled “Constructing Islamic Modernity: Power, Religion, and Masculinity in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was based on three years of ethnographic research in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as archival research in the British Library and Ba’ath Party Archives.

follow

Popular posts

  • Hormuz: A Psychedelic Ride through a Geological Wonder
    Hormuz: A Psychedelic Ride through a Geological Wonder
  • Persianate Futurism: First Time on the Overnight Train from Tehran to Samarqand
    Persianate Futurism: First Time on the Overnight Train from Tehran to Samarqand
  • Bulgarian Habibi: How Orientalist Stereotypes in Chalga Music Recover Memories of the Balkans’ Ottoman Past
    Bulgarian Habibi: How Orientalist Stereotypes in Chalga Music Recover Memories of the Balkans’ Ottoman Past
  • Interview: Nadia Abu El-Haj on archaeology and the Zionist project
    Interview: Nadia Abu El-Haj on archaeology and the Zionist project
  • Happy Nowruz from Ajam: 1398 in Review
    Happy Nowruz from Ajam: 1398 in Review
  • Muscat: Where the Arab World Meets the Indian Ocean
    Muscat: Where the Arab World Meets the Indian Ocean
  • The Iraqi soldiers who sacrificed everything to defend Palestine in 1948
    The Iraqi soldiers who sacrificed everything to defend Palestine in 1948
  • Becoming Iranian-American
    Becoming Iranian-American
  • How Nowruz is Celebrated Around the World
    How Nowruz is Celebrated Around the World
  • Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien
    Sofreh aqd : à la découverte du mariage iranien

Archive

Categories

  • Academic Work
  • Arab World
  • El Salvador
  • Featured
  • India
  • Iran
  • Iraq
  • Israel
  • Lebanon
  • Mexico
  • Oman
  • Opinion
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
  • Reporting
  • USA
Back to top
Copyright © 2009–2026 Alex Shams