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The Iranian regime’s repression of students and universities has reached one of its highest point in the post-revolution era, as authorities are determined to nip any unrest in the bud, and push on with plans to make society even more repressively Islamist.
Iran’s revolutionary regime insists it wants Israel destroyed and has threatened a regional war, but its actions are ambivalent, suggesting it may fear a regional war that would hasten its demise. As a result, it may decide to stop supporting Hamas in Gaza.
Germany’s Die Welt newspaper has had access to information from secret services that reveal Iran’s trail of support of anti-Israel terrorist groups that go as far as the Sahara. A militia is developing there that supports Hamas — and aims to plot deadly attacks against Israel and its interest wherever possible.
Recovering from the shock of Iran’s 2022 mass protests, the clerical regime has vigorously resumed its campaign to enforce Islamic hijab rules. But it is also pushing for gender segregation in other important ways across society
Russia is largely discrediting itself as a viable leader in diplomacy after siding so plainly with Hamas.
Whom should we blame for the death and destruction in Gaza: terrorists, Israel or ‘warmongers’ beyond them, notably the Tehran regime that envisaged, decades ago, a regional war as the prelude to spreading its “Islamic revolution.”
The kidnapping of more 200 Israelis by Hamas suggests that its patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is exporting its terrifying and lucrative methods at home to the rest of the Middle East.
Many Iranians fear unchecked immigration, mostly by Afghans but also Iraqis, will overwhelm a fragile economy that is weakened by the many qualified employees leaving Iran.
What happens next in the Middle East, including a possible expansion of the war at the Israeli-Lebanon border, will be determined by choices that are made in different capitals. Keep your eye on Tehran.
For decades now, the Islamic Republic of Iran has created, armed and trained paramilitary groups in several Middle Eastern states, all of which are believed to stand at the ready to strike Israel and Western targets at Tehran’s command.
Hamas has shown callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians living in Gaza, but this was inevitable given its history and the inspiration of its patrons – Iran’s hangman regime.
The widely believed inability of Lebanon to control Hezbollah has sparked fears among Lebanese that the Iranian-backed group will join Hamas’ war against Israel and dragged their troubled nation back to a dark chapter in history.
Blaming intelligence and military failure for the Oct. 7 assault diverts attention from Israel’s real weakness — a distracted and divisive political leadership that ignored the fact that people just a few miles across the border are confined in a living hell.
Russia has both the means and potentially motivation for triggering mayhem in the Middle East, including the benefits of distracting the West from its war in Ukraine.
Hamas’ unprecedented onslaught has hit Israel at a moment of weakness. But the attack could unite a divided Israeli society against a common enemy — and finally end the terrorist organization’s rule.
Iran denies direct involvement with the Hamas assault on Israel, even if it has given it its full backing and praise, and has offered support over the years. The specter of Israel striking Iran is driving fears that the war is bound to spread across the region.
With $6 billion freed up to go in the coffers of the corrupt and repressive regime in Tehran, nobody is happy. But sometimes there is no alternative to the imperfect nature of international diplomacy.
The BRICS economies’ inclusion of new members like Iran may not make business sense, but it fits with the Sino-Russian strategy of drawing states of the Global South into their orbit in open confrontation with the U.S. and the rest of the West.
Iran’s regime has tightened its grip on the population ahead of the September 16 one-year anniversary of the death that set off the country’s biggest revolt of recent years.
For the third year in a row, Nahid Taghavi, a retired architect and German citizen, is in Tehran’s brutal Evin Prison, where she has been mistreated after being wrongly convicted on trumped up charges as the Iranian regime exploits her foreign citizenship for money and influence.
Is the Biden administration following President Obama’s counterproductive recipe of handing Tehran large sums of cash hoping for good conduct and a tepid détente?
A scandal of the secret gay life of a senior Tehran official set off ricocheting accusations in the regime. Now compromising photos have emerged of a top state broadcasting manager with a female employee, who nonetheless kept her hair covered. The piousness of the Islamic Republic is ever more called into question.
With the suppression of last year’s anti-regime protests in Iran, its people can barely stomach the West’s resumption of its business-as-usual approach with the Islamic Republic. The key to challenging the renewed status quo, the author writes, may very well lie with the country’s women.
A 15-year-old girl is murdered by her parents in Iran, three years after her arranged marriage, in yet another possible “honor” killing the Islamic Republic is loath to punish.
Iran can expect few real economic benefits from joining the China-dominated SCO, but its leaders hope China and Russia will help the regime tighten its grip at home.
Mass protests which lasted for months in Iran last year galvanized Iranians at home and abroad, in a way not seen since the 1979 revolution. That unity must be maintained as political capital for the next time Iranians challenge the Islamic Republic.
The Biden administration’s bid to revive a nuclear agreement with Iran is seen by some as a “weak” approach to exercising power in the Middle East. However, it may be an attempt to restrict Russia’s strategic influence inside Iran, which may serve both the West and Tehran.
Iran is reacting mildly to recurring Taliban provocations on its frontier. Is this due to diplomatic weakness, policy incompetence or is there some murky complicity inside Iran with the Afghan drug trade?
Impatient to be rid of a 40-year dictatorship, many Iranians have sunk into despair at the failure of protests last year to topple the Islamic Republic. They must be patient and sober in their immediate expectations, before a longer, ongoing process of change turns Iran into a free nation with the rule of law.
Among the Islamic Republic of Iran’s very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America’s left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.
Iran and Afghanistan have long had a tense relationship. Recent skirmishes at their shared border indicate that conflict is escalating, but the causes are unclear.
Russia attacks Ukraine with Iranian shahed drones, thinks about buying Iranian missiles, sells Iran Su-35 fighters, and starts repairing its civilian aircraft. How is it that Iran has become Russia’s main ally?
Finding themselves amid a range of strategic, economic and regional interests, Iranians in a post-regime future will have to deftly maneuver their country toward a peaceful, constitutional state. Bahram Farrokhi writes about the good, the bad and the worst-case scenarios.
Despite the official “consensus” by Arab League nations to welcome Syria back to the organization after 12 years of suspension, several key countries were opposed on principal — including key questions still open in North Africa.
A spate of recent attacks in Iran on clerics, seminarians and even state agents are prompting some to self-defense classes, while others are holing up inside.
Iran must one day write the history of the violence perpetrated on its women, especially under the 40-year Islamic Republic, if historiography is to serve its progress toward a peaceful, democratic society.
Media coverage of Iran’s mass protests of 2022 failed to truly show how most Iranians thought about the hijab or a general dress code for women. Centering the whole fight for justice in Iran around the headscarf has its risks.
Sure, financial instability in the U.S. and the weaponization of the dollar have raised crucial questions about how long the dollar can remain the world’s de-facto currency. But France’s leading business daily says don’t expect major changes any time soon.
Iran’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei recently sent out a special envoy to ease tensions with wealthy Arab neighbors. He’s hoping to end the country’s international isolation and dismal economic conditions that contributed to last year’s mass protests.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have announced they will restore diplomatic relations. The news may have proved startling — especially China’s role — but is unlikely to dispel long-standing distrust between two regional rivals.