FINAL OFFENSIVE Trump has given some of his most hawkish officials, particularly Mike Pompeo, carte blanche to squeeze and punish the Islamic Republic as aggressively as they wish. By: Erin Banco – Asawin Suebsaeng – December 1st, 2020 President Donald Trump may only have seven weeks left in office, but he’s given his top advisers the green light to batter the Iranian regime—anything that doesn’t hazard a full-on war before Joe Biden is inaugurated. According to multiple U.S. officials familiar…

By Paul Adams - Diplomatic Correspondent - 18 November 2020 US President-elect Joe Biden says the international system is "coming apart at the seams". He's promised to salvage America's reputation and says he's in a hurry. "There will be no time to lose," he wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year. On his long to-do list is a pledge to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to give it its formal…

By: Ranj Alaaidin, October 9th 2020 come Forty years ago, a major war between Iran and Iraq set the stage for far-reaching and lasting regional dynamics. The conflict — which began in September 1980 when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, and ended in a stalemate in 1988 — was the nascent Islamic Republic’s first major military test. It was an existential battle for the Iranian leadership, coming just one year after the 1979 revolution in Iran. The war claimed at least…

By: Maziar Motamedi Tehran, Iran – With Armenia and Azerbaijan locked in a fresh conflict over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, neighbouring Iran finds itself in a delicate balancing act, with political, historical and ethnic considerations. Iran’s official stance, after having tried to resolve the long-running conflict in previous decades through diplomatic means, remains one of mediation, calling for an immediate ceasefire and dialogue. Iran also recognises several United Nations resolutions that stipulate Nagorno-Karabakh, which is controlled by ethnic Armenians…

BY: BARNETT RUBIN - SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 Eight years ago, I took part in a meeting among people from several different countries — Iran, various European countries, Afghanistan, Turkey, and the United States. I was a part-time consultant to the U.S. government at the time, and most of the group had been or — at least — were close to government officials. These are known as “track-two meetings.” During one of the sessions, a European participant charged Iran with supplying…

By: Joe Biden - September 13th 2020 When Donald Trump ran for President, he promised a "better deal" to constrain Iran's nuclear program and pledged to pressure Tehran into curbing its aggressive behavior across the Middle East. Like so many of President Trump's promises, these proved to be just empty words. Instead, he recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat. This past month has proven…

The Abraham Accord is threatening decades of foreign-policy planning in Tehran. BY MAYSAM BEHRAVESH, HAMIDREZA AZIZI | SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 When U.S. President Donald Trump announced the Abraham Accord, which normalized relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, on Aug. 13, the world took note of it as a historic moment. In Iran, the agreement also registered as a grave threat. In a remarkable show of unanimity, diverse officials across the political establishment denounced the accord and warned about…

The secret execution this morning of wrestling champion Navid Afkari, without prior notice to him, his family or lawyer, after a grossly unfair trial, is a horrifying travesty of justice that needs immediate international action. “Navid Afkari was a young man with a promising future ahead of him. Carrying out his death sentence with such utter disregard for the basic principles of justice further demonstrates the cruelty of the death penalty. A series of judges in different courts used forced…