Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (L) received President Masoud Pezeshkian and his cabinet ministers, Tehran, Aug. 27, 2024 Iran’s new foreign minister Abbas Araghchi in an interview with Japan’s Kyodo news agency on August 22 set the foreign policy compass under President Masoud Pezeshkian in a new sequencing of priorities. Araghchi said as a crucial step …
EU cracks the whip (gently) on Iran
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (L) with Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, Tehran, July 27, 2022. (File photo) The European Union has returned to the ritual of sanctioning Iran to leverage its foreign and security policies. The highlight of the EU Foreign Affairs Council ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday was the imposition of …
US internationalises Iran’s unrest
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (C) received Russian President Vladimir Putin (L). Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi is on the right, Tehran, July 19, 2022 The ongoing unrest in Iran since mid-September following the death of a Kurdish woman in police custody shows no signs of abating as of now. The unrest has drawn support …
The West bullies Iran, again
A police officer inspects parts of a drone at the site of a Russian strike on fuel storage facilities, Kharkiv, Ukraine, Oct 6, 2022 The manner in which Tehran handled its drone deal with Russia has been somewhat clumsy. The fact that the first ‘leak’ on this topic originated from none other than President Biden’s …
Where JCPOA, oil conjoin stands OPEC+
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and then Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at G20 summit, Hangzhou, Sept. 5, 2016, where they planned an oil output task force that fructified as OPEC+ The news that made the headline today is that the Biden Administration may have inched closer to restarting the 2015 nuclear deal with …
US-Iran deal dangling in the air
Author Salman Rushdie, an ‘X’ factor in JCPOA (File photo) In an interview on The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro Show, the former prime minister of Israel — and the likely next PM — Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that he had an ingenuous Plan B for forcing regime change in Iran. Netanyahu said, “With low-flying …
Iran at the crossroads of history
Iranian envoy to the IAEA in Vienna, Mohsen Naziri Asl, leaves Palais Coburg, venue of closed-door nuclear talks, August 5, 2022 From the look of it, the US-Iran rapprochement is getting on to a bumpy start. The usage ‘rapprochement’ is deliberate — and will be disputed — because in the near term at least, what …
Russia-Iran relations take a quantum leap
When the US National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan first spoke about a potential Iran-Russian drone deal, Moscow kept quiet and Tehran issued a pro forma rebuttal, which, taken together, suggested that it is a work in progress. Sullivan’s disclosure appeared at the fag-end of a White House briefing for President Biden’s forthcoming West Asia tour …
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US, Iran let hopes shape their future — not hurts
Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani (R) with EU envoy Enrique Mora who will shuttle between the US and Iranian sides at the talks in Doha, Qatar, which began on June 28, 2022 There could be a feeling of déjà vu over the news that indirect talks began between the United States and Iran …
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US recruits Israel against Russia
Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield (File photo) For more than one reason, the US President Joe Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday is hugely consequential. This has been Biden’s second phone conversation with Bennett in four weeks. On March 30 Biden called to express his “deepest condolences” following the terrorist attacks …