Attiya Ahmad

Read the full article at The Cipher Brief

Iran on Sunday blacklisted 15 American companies in retaliation for new sanctions by the Trump administration targeting the Iranian missile program.

Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior said on Sunday that it has dismantled an Iran-backed group that planned terrorist attacks in the island kingdom, including assassination of high-profile government officials.

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry is refusing necessary medical treatment to Jamaloddin Khanjani, an 83-year-old former community leader of the Baha’i minority who has spent more than nine years in an Iranian jail.

Major General Ahmed al-Assiri, the spokesperson of the Saudi-led coalition forces, has accused Iran of intensifying and prolonging the Yemeni conflict by supporting Houthi rebels, including sharing missile technology with the militants.

Afghan and U.S. officials say Iran and Russia have teamed up to undermine the U.S.-led stabilization efforts in Afghanistan by sheltering, training, funding and arming Taliban insurgents. They claim that the two countries have not only expanded their diplomatic engagement with the Taliban leadership, but are also providing advanced weapons to the insurgents that are fighting the Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition forces in the country.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denounced as “selective and spiteful” the U.N. Human Rights Council’s resolution to renew the mandate of a U.N. special rapporteur to investigate human rights situation in Iran, the Press TV reports.

A top aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has warned that “a number of opportunists” intend to wage a “political expedition” to empower “secular” movements in order to seize power in the country.

President Donald Trump’s Persian New Year message to the Iranian people is a plot by the U.S.

Six years after the fossilized authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak was swept from power by a tide of popular discontent, Egypt continues to face a multitude of economic and other challenges. This essay discusses the role that India has played, and could play in helping set Egypt’s economy on a more stable footing while broadening and deepening the bilateral relationship.

Lebanese protesters were out on the streets again over the weekend, this time against a new national budget that includes a number of tax hikes. The government claims the tax hikes are necessary to fund an overdue pay raise for public sector employees. In a country steeped in overt corruption—Lebanon ranks 136 of 176 states in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index—that message was always going to be a tough sell.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on March 28 in Moscow, the

Security authorities in Iran have arrested a prominent reformist journalist, the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) reports.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators today introduced a bill that would impose tighter U.S. sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program and other non-nuclear activities, Reuters reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s March 22 remark that the United States and its allies will remain engaged in Syria and Iraq long after the Islamic State is defeated has provoked an angry reaction in Iran.