Latest on the Iran War

Regional Cooperation Series

This Policy Paper is part of the Middle East Institute’s Regional Cooperation Series. Throughout 2016, MEI will be releasing several policy papers by renowned scholars and experts exploring possibilities to foster regional cooperation across an array of sectors. The purpose is to highlight the myriad benefits and opportunities associated with regional cooperation, and the high costs of the continued business-as-usual model of competition and intense rivalry.

On December 7, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Brigadier General Gholamhossein Ghaib-Parvar as the new commander of Iran’s Basij organization. Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, former head of Basij, will direct the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC’s) cultural and social affairs.

In the latest act of political repression and human rights violation in Iran, a Special Clerical Court has defrocked regime critic Ahmad Montazeri and sentenced him to six years in jail for publishing an audio recording in

Despite uncertainty surrounding the future of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, international energy giants are competing fiercely to invest in Iran’s rich oil and natural gas sectors.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said he would not allow President-elect Donald Trump to tear up the 2015 nuclear agreement and warned of “bitter response” if the next US administration failed to honor the deal.

More than seven years since the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, controversies related to the disputed polls and the regime’s subsequent crackdown of the protest movement continue to haunt the Islamic Republic. As the country is gearing up for next year’s presidential vote, Iranian conservatives and reformists are yet again at loggerheads over the house arrest of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Herman Franssen, Charles Lister, W. Robert Pearson, and Marvin G. Weinbaum provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including OPEC’s agreement to reduce oil output, the continuing offensive in Aleppo, Erdogan’s increasing executive powers, and deteriorating relations between Pakistan and India.

OPEC Deal a Win for Iran
Herman Franssen, MEI Scholar

On November 30, hundreds of people gathered in the Iranian city of Qom to attend the funeral procession of several Afghan and Pakistani Shiites killed in Syria.

The Iranian media reports that the country’s Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence for Babak Zanjani, an Iranian billionaire convicted in a high-profile oil corruption case. In March, a court in Iran had convicted him of being “

In Tehran, the November 30 decision by OPEC to cut oil production by member states was predictably a big deal. This, however, was not just about the economics of the event. Sure, the price of crude oil shot up by 10% on the announcement. It was the first time in eight years that OPEC states had agreed to a collective production cut.

But in Tehran, the other big news was that Iran – OPEC’s third-biggest producer – had escaped the call for it to cut back its production. On the other hand, Iran’s biggest regional rival, Saudi Arabia, agreed to a steep cut.

Mehdi Rajabian, an Iranian musician serving a three-year jail term at Tehran’s Evin prison, is being treated for internal bleeding at a hospital. But the country’s judiciary has demanded that he return to prison, disregarding his serious medical condition.

A Revolutionary Court in 2015 found Rajabian, his filmmaker brother Hossein Rajabian, and their musician friend Yousel Emadi guilty of “insulting Islamic sanctities” and “illegal audio-visual activities.”

Iran’s Fars News Agency (FNA) reports that Syria’s army has formed a new elite force called the Al-Filq Al-Khamis-Eqteham (Fifth Assault Corps) and is calling on volunteers to join the group.