via LobeLog
by Derek Davison
As talks aimed at a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran continue, with principals from Iran and world powers meeting in Vienna this week, two recent analyses of the negotiations have compared the talks to a “Rubik’s Cube.”
A May 9 report from the International Crisis Group [...]
via LobeLog
The Iran experts at the Rand Corporation, including Alireza Nader, who has written for LobeLog, are always worth reading. That’s why Iran-watchers like me can willfully spend part of a slow-news Friday reading a Rand report on what regional responses to a final deal with Iran over [...]
via LobeLog
by Alireza Nader
Hassan Rouhani’s June 2013 election to Iran’s presidency raised the hopes of millions of Iranians suffering from the calamitous policies of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani has accordingly done much to fan the flames of optimism in Iran. He has promised to decrease Iran’s isolation, improve its [...]
via LobeLog
by Alireza Nader
Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) came tantalizingly close to reaching a nuclear deal this past weekend in Geneva, but the talks ended without an agreement.
Although both Iran and the United States expressed optimism that much was achieved, a blame game [...]
by Alireza Nader
via IPS News
From Tehran’s perspective, the current negotiations between Iran and the United States may be best described as a wrestling match.
Before President Hassan Rouhani’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA), his boss, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke of “heroic leniency” toward the United [...]
by Alireza Nader
via USIP
Iran has mixed feelings and conflicting interests in the Syrian crisis. Tehran has a strategic interest in opposing chemical weapons due to its own horrific experience during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. For years, President Saddam Hussein’s military used chemical weapons that killed thousands of Iranian soldiers. So [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jasmin Ramsey
Dennis Ross, President Obama’s former top Middle East aide, writes that the exclusion of Hashemi Rafsanjani from Iran’s June 14 election signals that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is uninterested in a nuclear deal:
I say that not because Rafsanjani would have been capable of initiating [...]
by Jim Lobe and Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, May 18 2013 (IPS) – A nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the United States and its regional allies like Israel and the Gulf Arab monarchies, according to a new report released here Friday by the Rand Corporation.
Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: [...]
via IPS News
As Iran faces economic unrest, discussion is intensifying over the impact sanctions are having on Iran’s economy.
But experts doubt that the current situation portends the end of the Iranian regime or Iranian capitulation to Israeli and Western-led demands that it change its nuclear stance.
“You have now a market [...]
By Jim Lobe and Jasmin Ramsey
via IPS News
In a move certain to ratchet up already-high tensions with Iran, the administration of President Barack Obama will remove a militant anti-regime group from the State Department’s terrorism list, U.S. officials told reporters here Friday.
The decision, which is expected to be formally announced before Oct. [...]
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