by Matthew Duss
via USIP
On April 22, Canadian authorities arrested two men who allegedly planned to derail a U.S.-bound passenger train. Officials said al Qaeda elements in Iran gave “direction and guidance” to Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35. But police have not found evidence of Iranian state sponsorship. And Tehran [...]
Interview with Colin Kahl by Garrett Nada
via USIP
What steps would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear weapon?
President Obama has estimated that it would take Iran “over a year or so” for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. But that device would likely be crude and too large to fit on [...]
By Kevan Harris
via USIP
What is the state of Iran’s economy in 2013 compared to a year ago?
Iran’s economy enters 2013 significantly worse than a year ago, particularly with higher inflation and unemployment than at the beginning of 2012. The rial also plunged from around 11,000 to the dollar at [...]
By Kevan Harris
via the United States Institute of Peace
What are the primary reasons that the Iranian rial has lost half of its value against the U.S. dollar in just one year? Iran’s currency was valued at about 10,000 rials to the dollar in the summer of 2011. It plummeted to more than [...]
Daniel Brumberg of the U.S. Institute of Peace and Barry Blechman of the Stimson Center follow up on their recent report about engaging Iran with a lengthy piece on the Middle East Channel of Foreign Policy‘s website.
“The problem,” they write, “is that democratic reform in Iran is a long-term proposition. As a [...]
The Iran-grand-bargainers, the Leveretts, have an interesting piece up challenging the notion that the Barack Obama administration was ever serious about engaging Iran. (Because I’m behind on my reading, I only picked up on it via the Progressive Realist.)
These are the same allegations that Dennis Ross, Obama’s top National Security Council official for [...]
At a release event for the U.S. Institute of Peace’s (USIP) Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Power – an exhaustive collection of new writings on the country — the opening address came from Dennis Ross, a top national security adviser to President Barack Obama on the Mid East.
Ross is an influential adviser to [...]
News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for November 19, 2010.
The Washington Post: The Post‘s increasingly neoconservative editorial board, led by Fred Hiatt, is challenging Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s opposition to a military strike on Iran. “To be clear: We agree that the administration should continue to focus for now on [...]
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and The Stimson Center’s joint study group report (PDF) on U.S.-Iran Policy calls for a massive overhaul in the U.S.’s policy of engagement of coercion and argues for a policy of “strategic engagement” to persuade Iran to abandon its alleged nuclear weapons program.
At the [...]
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'Bags of money' from Iran to Karzai mean little
The media has been buzzing about the admission from both Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai and Iran that the latter passed the former bags of cash, apparently in euros.
The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who [...]