Hazhir Teimourian is one of the best-known commentators on the Middle East. He gives hundreds of radio and television interviews each year to major Western broadcasters, from ABC in Australia to NBC and CBS in the United States.
He was born in Iranian Kurdistan in 1940 and at the age of nineteen came to England to study. In 1968, he became a broadcaster with the Persian Service of the BBC in London and stayed there until 1980, when he was invited by The Times to join it as a writer specialising in the Middle East.
Teimourian seems to have been on sabbatical for a while, but his essays from a decade and more ago, pre and post 911, still read well. See for example (most recent first):
During the crisis of the eviction of Iraq from Kuwait, he wrote a daily column in The Times and was employed by BBC Television News as one of its main commentators. During the second Iraq war, he was a mainstay of Britain’s ITN and contributed to many others, including the BBC. Since 1996, he has been a freelance writer and commentator.
- "Islam a year after Manhattan", The Scotsman, 12 September, 2002. Here.
- "The World After Manahattan", New Humanist, Winter 2001. Here.
- "A new apartheid in the making", OpenDemocracy.net, 26 September, 2001. Here.
- "Political Islam, religious Islam", The Times, February 25, 1991. Here.
