The bad news for Amir Mirzai Hekmati, the 28-year-old American sentenced to death in Tehran on Monday for allegedly spying for the CIA, is that the state of relations between Iran and the U.S. makes Iran’s leaders indifferent, at …
Tehran
Why New Sanctions Raise Danger of Iran Building Nuclear Weapons
The White House believes the latest round of saber rattling from Iran is a sign that sanctions are beginning to bite. Perhaps. But as the U.S. and its European partners move to throttle Iran’s economy by cutting off its ability
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Baghdad Bloodbath Threatens Sectarian Chaos in Iraq: Will Iran Stoke or Douse the Fires?
A series of deadly bombings across Baghdad that killed at least 63 people and wounded hundreds on Thursday underscored the political and security peril facing Iraq amid rising sectarian tension. Officials said four car bombs and …
Tighter Sanctions On Iran: An Alternative to War — or a Road to War?
Pity President Barack Obama trying to stay off the slippery slope to war with Iran in an election year, while his challengers perform crowd-pleasing, spoken-word versions of Senator John McCain’s “Bomb Iran” adaptation of the …
Despite Downed U.S. Drone Claims, Iran War Talk May Be Overblown
Anyone cut off from all news media for the six months before December 2011 could be forgiven for imagining we’re in the opening stages of a war between the West and Iran. Sunday’s headline was Iran’s claim to have captured a …
After the Embassy Attack: Are Iran and the West Lurching Toward War?
The prospect of Iran and its Western adversaries stumbling into a military confrontation that neither side wants seems worryingly less improbable by the day. And if they do, each side will have plenty of evidence at hand to blame the other for instigating the conflagration. The latest round of brinkmanship, this week, came in the …
For Old Times’ Sake: Iranians Briefly Sack the Embassy of Their Once and Future Satan—Britain
For 18 nights in 1976, Iran was transported by the miniseries version of “My Uncle Napoleon,” a virtuosic comic novel about a Tehran household dominated by a conspiracy-minded paterfamilias who believes everything bad that happens to him is being arranged by the British.
On Tuesday, a mob overran the red brick compound on Ferdowzi …
Despite a Tougher IAEA Report, It’s Business as Usual on Iran’s Nuclear Program
The Washington spin on the IAEA resolution agreed Thursday is that it “sharply criticizes” Iran — or, more accurately, expresses “deep and increasing concern about the unresolved issues” about the nuclear program Tehran insists is purely peaceful, but which the UN nuclear watchdog has alleged may have have included research work, …
Israel and Iran: Covert Warfare Raises Risks of Retaliation, and Conflagration
If Iran’s leaders actually believe their official insistence that last weekend’s blast at the Bid Ganeh Revolutionary Guard Corps missile base was an accident, the event is unlikely to make any difference to regional stability. But if Iran, instead, believes claims — and widely held suspicions in Tehran — that the blast, which …
Will Dennis Ross’ Resignation Raise Pressure on Obama for a Tougher Iran Stance?
The abrupt resignation, late last week, of the Obama Administration’s senior Middle East adviser Dennis Ross poses more of a problem for the President’s reelection campaign than it does for prospects of securing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The “peace process”, after all, has long been dead; President Obama’s Special Envoy …
Nuke Report Unlikely to Break the Stalemate, Could Iran Be the New Cuba?
Game changer? Hardly. As the dust settles on this week’s release of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on Iran, it’s become clear that pre-release hype from Western officials that it would produce a dramatic shift in the international standoff over that country’s nuclear program appears to be wishful thinking. …
Why China Is Right Not to Yield to Pressure on Iran
Following the dissemination of the IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, we’ve now entered the predictable phase of hand-waving uproar. Short of a genuine smoking gun, the IAEA report has still emboldened those who seek tough action on Tehran. Days of war talk in Israel have padded calls in the West for a far tougher …
Bracing for the Iran Nuclear Report: Will ‘Military Action’ Rhetoric Develop its Own Momentum?
If the proverbial “drumbeat” for war with Iran has grown more insistent in recent weeks, it’s about to turn into something akin to the opening bars of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man“. That’s because the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected, in a report on Iran’s nuclear program due for release early this week, to suggest that the …