Worldcrunch
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.
In 1979, Iran was seduced by a cleric who promised freedom and delivered tyranny. In 2025, a chaotic U.S. president may be using lies of his own to help dismantle that same regime.
Eight decades after the UN Charter was signed, the so-called rules-based order is looking pretty battered. Still, the fact that someone breaks a rule doesn’t make it invalid. Law and reality never fully align. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need law.
As war broke out with Israel, Iran plunged into an unprecedented internet blackout — cutting off 91 million people, silencing civil society, and tightening the regime’s digital grip.
After the bombs, Iran stands at a crossroads, torn between dynastic succession, military takeover and revolutionary implosion.
Benyamin Netanyahu made his point clear yesterday on ABC news: killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, “would not provoke an escalation. It would end the conflict” with Iran. Netanyahu reveals his end goal: the fall of the Tehran regime.
Donald Trump was hoping to buy time for negotiations with Iran. But Israel’s prime minister undercut the plan with a military strike, just ahead of Trump’s birthday and military parade.
In a bold move, Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and leadership in an operation that may have been years in the making, much like last year’s attack on the pagers of Hezbollah members.
Israel has killed thousands of Hamas fighters. But the Gaza-based terrorist organization has not yet been completely destroyed, nor have its allied militias in the region.
Members of the Tehran regime are cautiously broaching the question of who will be Iran’s next Supreme Leader, but is this of real public concern or a ploy to distract an exasperated population from the country’s dismal socio-economic conditions?
The death of Iran’s hardline president might create some political terrain for moderates there and stabilize relations with a complacent West and especially the Biden administration, eager to put a lid on the Middle East before November’s presidential elections.
Iran’s constitution effectively allows any Shia theologian to become Supreme Leader, and the maneuvering to succeed Ali Khamenei now appears to include Hassan Nasrallah, longtime influential leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. It could redraw the map of the Middle East, but would ordinary Iranians and politicians stomach such an audacious imposition?
Faced with the resilience of the national protests, Iran’s security forces are now facing unusual acts of sabotage on state installations, and clerical authorities have started to wonder which of their loyalist forces can be firmly relied on still to defend the regime.
After months of trading barbs with Ukraine’s allies in the West, Tehran is now fully engaged alongside Moscow in the conflict, most notably with supplies of so-called Kamikaze drones. Although the fact that Iran still denies its activities is a sign that the partnership is loaded.
After years of ignoring or downplaying domestic protests in Iran, Western states and media have begun to imagine — and even prepare for — the still slim but growing possibility of a regime change in Tehran.
While cheering the Russian attack on Ukraine, Iranian state media have also drawn the “lesson” from this war that a state can only be strong if it has a nuclear arsenal.
While most of the attention around Iran is related to its nuclear program, an open ended deal may give China the legal foundations it needs to take a controlling stake in Iran’s economy, and in time, undermine its independence.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claims he has no interest in engaging with Washington. But the U.S. president, fighting right now to win reelection, tells a different story.
After the U.S. assassination of General Soleimani and Tehran’s accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, rising economic and political pressures have put Islamic rule in its most fragile state in memory.
SARI — On this frigid January night, Maliheh Salimi’s home is brimming with excitement. A rental company delivered metal chairs and tables early in the morning. Pink and white balloons were inflated; lace was knotted in the shape of a butterfly and pinned on the walls. Large pans, full of rice that Maliheh had left […]
-Analysis- Fox News opted for the verb “slam” to describe the first significant comments about Iran from new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. “Tillerson slams Iran nuclear deal as “failed approach,”” the conservative network headlined its story yesterday, following Tillerson’s remarks about the 2015 nuclear accord inked by President Obama. But there is another […]
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 […]
With the choice of controversial retired Gen. Michael Flynn to be White House National Security Advisor comes a new flurry of anticipation (and worry) that American foreign policy will be turned on its head with the election of Donald Trump. Take the Iranian nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama Administration, which Trump has called “the […]
U.S. AND CUBA MAKE HISTORY IN PANAMA U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez met last night in Panama City in what represented the highest-level meeting between the two countries in more than 50 years. The meeting preceded the Summit of the Americas, which begins there today. A U.S. State […]
Courrier International, April 9, 2015 “Should we be afraid of Iran?” asks Courrier International on its cover, featuring a cartoon of an Iranian cleric with an atomic symbol as an eyeball. With or without a nuclear deal, fears of Iran’s expansionism are sending shivers down the Middle East’s spine, according to a series of articles […]
As Iranian envoys and representatives of world powers ended their last round of talks intended to define the scope of Iran’s contested nuclear program, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a gathering in Tehran Wednesday that Iran’s negotiators should not “give in to unjust demands.” Talks are set to resume during the first half […]
Iran’s top atomic official says the country would not “retreat” over its nuclear technology and could reverse its commitments to suspend high-level uranium enrichment “within hours” if the West violated its own pledges, the official IRNA agency reported. Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, was speaking Monday to a gathering of Iranian […]
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 […]
Iranians hope a deal on the country’s nuclear program and a softening of sanctions mark a turning point. But what will Iran’s hardliners say?
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 […]