Articles

By: Saeed Kamali Dehghan 3 February 2017

The US president’s attacks on Iran are coming thick and fast, but they’re likely to prove counterproductive

Distorting realities, ignoring nuances and hijacking people’s fears: that’s the recipe for a demagogue who lives not on his own wits but others’ miseries. It is particularly bad when the person or the country being targeted by that demagogue does little to straighten things out, which is exactly what is happening right now with Iran and Donald Trump. Read More »

In this file photo from Sept. 11, 2014, members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq organization are seen inside the Liberty refugee camp in Baghdad. A cabinet nominee of U.S. President Donald Trump and one of his advisers gave paid speeches for the Iranian exile group.

By Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press Posted: Feb 05, 2017

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao gave speech to political wing of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq

An official in U.S. President Donald Trump’s cabinet and at least one of his advisers gave paid speeches for an Iranian exile group that killed Americans before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, ran donation scams and saw its members set themselves on fire over the arrest of their leader. Read More »

By Colin Taylor

The Trump administration’s efforts to provoke an international conflict have taken an extremely alarming turn. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just publicly accused the Islamic Republic of Iran of firing upon an American warship – but the Pentagon denies that this ever happened. Read More »

by Greg Thielmann

Iran’s January 29 flight test of a medium-range ballistic missile helped prompt an ominous if ambiguous warning by U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on February 1: “As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.” Since it is facing so many other international crises, it is curious that the new administration gives such a prominent place to Iranian missile testing, which poses no existential threat to the United States or its allies and is not prohibited by the Iran nuclear deal or any other widely accepted rules of international behavior. Read More »

By: THE EDITORIAL BOARD NEW YORK TIMES

Plenty of presidents have had prominent political advisers, and some of those advisers have been suspected of quietly setting policy behind the scenes (recall Karl Rove or, if your memory stretches back far enough, Dick Morris). But we’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon — nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence. Read More »

H.J.Res.10 – Authorization of Use of Force Against Iran Resolution

To authorize the use of the United States Armed Forces to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Read More »

By: KARIM SADJADPOUR

In Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, he describes a “general rule” of politics that “never or rarely fails.” “He who is the cause of another becoming powerful,” Machiavelli wrote, “is ruined. Because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.” This is an apt political epitaph for former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died Sunday at age 82. In 1989, nearly 500 years after The Prince was published, Rafsanjani helped anoint his longtime comrade Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader of Iran. He would spend the next three decades of his life trying, unsuccessfully, to wrestle power back from the man he enthroned. Read More »

The wall is a symbol of how Trump wants to deal with everything he doesn’t understand: get it out.

By: Vicente Fox

The big and beautiful wall that Donald Trump is promising could be built with bricks of ignorance – and paid for by Americans with their taxes. With a speech loaded with religious symbolism, President Trump pretended to be a messianic leader to secure power. By being stubborn and authoritarian, he is stepping further away from ever being a leader of the future. Read More »

By: Yeganeh Eghbalnia / 22 January 2017

Recent fluctuations in the rial/dollar exchange rate have prompted a lively debate among economists and financial experts in Iran over forecasting currency movements. Read More »

BY: Adam Kredo

Iran backers met more than 30 times with senior Obama admin official

Two high-level Iranian government backers, including a former Islamic Republic official and another accused of lobbying on Tehran’s behalf, were hosted at the Obama White House for more than 30 meetings with top officials at key junctures in the former administration’s contested diplomacy with Iran, according to White House visitor logs that provide a window into the former administration’s outreach to leading pro-Iran advocates. Read More »