Jean-Pierre Cassarino

A senior aide to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has rejected the prospect of renegotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers in July 2015. “We have honored our commitments, and the JCPOA is not open to renegotiation and review under any circumstances,” Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister who now holds several senior positions, told reporters.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said today that Iran is the most powerful country in the Middle East and will defy international pressure on defense capabilities, particularly its missile program. “The repeated defeats of America, the Zionist regime [Israel] and the European and regional allies of Washington and Tel Aviv in proxy wars and Takfiri terrorism – which have turned out to be contrary to their expectations – are a reminder of the undeniable fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the undisputable No.

The commander of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, a conglomerate of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has

Some Iranian citizens who had joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Afghanistan have tried to enter Iran to conduct terrorist attacks,

With the absence of multilateral diplomatic forums in the Middle East and the Trump administration scaling back on U.S. diplomatic outreach, the role of backdoor diplomatic channels, known as “Track II” dialogues, has seldom been more important. Randa Slim, director of MEI’s program on conflict management and Track II dialogues, and Robert Ford, former US ambassador to Syria, join Paul Salem to discuss the role of these dialogues in addressing issues ranging from the Syrian civil war to the conflict in Yemen and regional tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In the wake of his announcement to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, President Trump has also vowed to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) by 83 percent, in a stated effort to bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table. International governments and NGOs swiftly condemned these funding cuts by the United States, citing the critical role UNRWA plays in promoting security and stability in the region through health, education, and assistance programs for Palestinian refugees.

A series of devastating terror attacks orchestrated by the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network in the past two weeks have unnerved both the United States and Afghanistan. Visibly upset over the lack of success of his recently announced strategy on Afghanistan, President Donald Trump has declared that “We don’t want to talk to the Taliban.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, you will visit Ankara this weekend and next week to address what is now a crisis between the United States and Turkey. We are on a collision course over dramatically opposing goals. The United States is determined to eliminate ISIS as a threat in Syria and prevent its return. Turkey is determined to block any coalition of Kurdish forces from having a viable military presence on its borders. Over the past few years, each country has tried—and failed—to persuade the other to support its strategy.

On Wednesday, the Bahraini Foreign Ministry announced that the country’s security forces have arrested four members of a “terrorist cell” involved in a bomb attack on an oil pipeline and claimed that the suspects had received training in Iran by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

In a telephone conversation earlier today, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the latest developments in the Syrian conflict. According to Iranian and Turkish media outlets, the two leaders agreed to continue to cooperate to tackle regional security and terrorism problems.

A senior official of Harakat al-Nujaba, an Iranian-supported militia group fighting in Iraq and Syria, issued a threat against the US military in Iraq and called on Washington to pull out its troops from the country, the Iranian media reported. “We will never forget the atrocities of the United States in our country and we still have not settled a score with America,” Nasr al-Shamri, an executive director of the group said in a live interview with Al-Furat TV in Iraq.

With ISIS militarily defeated, Iran’s militia allies in Iraq are increasingly threatening violence against American troops and calling for the US withdrawal from the country. On February 7, Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-supported unit within Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), issued a statement, warning that its fighters will begin to militarily confront American troops “at any moment” if Washington decides to keep a long-term military footprint in Iraq.

The below testimony was delivered to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Charles Lister on February 6, 2018. See also testimony by Amb. Robert S. Ford, delivered at the same hearing, or the video webcast of the proceedings.

The below testimony was delivered before the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Amb. (ret.) Robert S. Ford on February 6, 2018. See also testimony by Charles Lister, delivered at the same hearing, or the video webcast of the proceedings.