As the region transforms after October 7, Berlin needs both empathy for Israel and the courage to rethink its own foreign policy doctrine.
Tag: ayatollah
Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have resumed. While Europe demands guarantees that Tehran will not build a nuclear bomb, Trump is also pushing for a deal. Is the regime willing to give ground, or is it bluffing?
Europe, Iran and global powers are meeting in Istanbul on Friday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. The talks may determine whether dialogue or confrontation will shape their future relations. It’s also a reminder that diplomacy is a better way than war to settle disputes.
As Netanyahu visits Washington, Israel’s intelligence gears up for a covert campaign against Iran, aiming not just at military targets but at the very core of the regime’s power.
Like Spain after Franco, La Stampa’s Bernard Guetta argues, Iran faces a crucial choice between authoritarian decay and democratic renewal. Before time runs out.
After the bombs, Iran stands at a crossroads, torn between dynastic succession, military takeover and revolutionary implosion.
With Trump’s return to power, Russia is rapidly moving closer to the United States; Putin has even agreed to mediate talks between Washington and Tehran. But can Iran still trust Russia? Or is it, like Ukraine, just another bargaining chip?
The incoming Trump administration will likely abandon its predecessor’s efforts to persuade the Iranian regime to change its disruptive and violent policies. Yet for ultimate survival, Tehran may be counting on an unexpected factor: Trump’s erratic mindset.
The release of journalist Cecilia Sala from Iranian prison after 21 days is a triumph of diplomacy and urgency, orchestrated by the Italian Prime Minister herself. Meloni used an urgent meeting with Donald Trump to help unlock the negotiations.
Tehran seems to be paving the way for a moderate to become the country’s next president. But the regime’s goal is not to make life better for Iranians, but to leave him with the daunting task of handling a second Trump administration.
Iran’s exiled and surprisingly popular crown prince Reza Pahlavi is the son of the last shah, and is uniquely positioned to help unite opponents against the country’s brutal regime. But he can only do that by reaffirming his royal status, rather than responding on calls to renounce his title.
Iran’s revolutionary regime is believed to have aided Russia against Ukraine and goaded Hamas into attacking Israel. Could its insidious backing for Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping finally end the West’s appeasement of a hooligan state.
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.
The showdown between Iranian protesters and the clerical regime is another episode in a decades-long clash of theocracy and Western-style secular modernity. Its outcomes will reverberate across the entire Islamic world, so the West needs to pay attention.
The arch-conservative Ibrahim Raisi’s election to the Iranian presidency is pushing its regime closer to Russia and farther from the West — and leaving a big question mark on relations with China.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ruled a remarkable 28 years, and counting. As the successor to Islamic Revolution founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader’s mix of pious rigor, domestic authority and geopolitical cunning have long kept him a step ahead of his rivals, at home and abroad. Rumors that his health was […]
TEHRAN — “Indecent dressing,” or “bad hijabi” in Persian, isn’t worse than before in Iran, according to a deputy-governor of the Tehran province. Shahabeddin Chavoshi, who is responsible in the capital province for social and political affairs, chided critics who accuse the government of Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani of neglecting public morals. “Studies show […]
One of Iran’s senior clerics today chided people he said were “surreptitiously” trying to build ties with the United States, warning they would get “nowhere” without broad Iranian support. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the Guardian Council that vets and approves all elections, candidates and parliamentary bills in the country, said during Tehran’s nationally broadcast […]
There seemed to be confusion among Iranian politicians about the Supreme Leader’s “real” position on Iran’s negotiations with the West on its nuclear program, the Persian language edition of Radio France Internationale is reporting, citing several Iranian press reports. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iran’s key domestic and […]
Listen closelyAn Iranian parliamentarian reminded his colleagues — if they needed reminding — that all their mobile telephones were very likely bugged, Radio Free Europe’s Radio Farda website reported, citing several Iranian newspapers. Tehran Member of Parliament Ali Mottahari told a Dec. 9 student gathering in Tehran that his own office was bugged, with listening […]
The Russian leader is expected to try to jumpstart negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program with the new president, considered more moderate than his predecessor.
As Iran voted in an apparently more moderate successor, Hassan Rouhani, the country and world could look back and ask what is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s true legacy.
PARIS – For the past eight years, the Western world has loved to hate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Propelled onto the front of the political scene by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian president declared, before being elected in 2005, that the Iranian people hadn’t participated in the revolution for democracy. Since then, Ahmadinejad hasn’t missed an opportunity […]