Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s official trip to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar has prompted anxiety in Tehran. Erdogan arrived in Riyadh on Monday night after a visit to Bahrain, and he is scheduled to go to Qatar next.
Iranian media have been speculating about reasons why Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitryi Rogozin this week canceled his planned trip to Tehran. Rogozin was due to hold talks with top Iranian officials, including Defense Minister Hossein Dehgan.
The U.S. Department of State released a statement this afternoon calling for the immediate release of former Iranian opposition leaders and presidential candidates Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, as well as Mousavi’s wife and women’s rights activist Zahra Rahnavard.
In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Eran Etzion, Alex Vatanka, Gerald Feierstein, Randa Slim, W. Robert Pearson, and Marvin G.
The New York Times reported on February 12 that Defense secretary Jim Mattis last week was exploring whether the U.S. Navy should “intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen.” But according to unnamed U.S.
U.S. media reports that the Trump White House might list Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.) as a terrorist entity has been met by considerable trepidation in Tehran.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has strongly defended the regional policies of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.). In particular, Zarif defended General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force, which is the I.R.G.C.’s expeditionary force. “I have had a close relationship with General Soleimani for over 20 years. When I was the head of the [Iranian] negotiating team involving questions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I had a very good working relationship with General Soleimani,” Zarif stated.
Iranian Navy Commander Habibollah Sayyari on Sunday discussed Iran’s latest progress in developing the capabilities and expanding the operational and geographical scope of the country’s naval forces. He announced that he had deployed 20,000 naval personnel to the Makran region on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” hundreds of thousands of pro-regime Iranians rallied on Friday to renew allegiance to the clerical establishment and commemorate the 38th anniversary of the country’s Islamic Revolution, Iranian state-run media reported.
The top American commander in Afghanistan told Congress yesterday that Iran and Russia are supporting the Taliban to undermine the U.S. mission to stabilize the war-ravaged country. Army Gen.
Mehdi Khazali, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime who was arrested by the security forces this week and sent to Tehran’s Evin Prison, has decided to go on hunger strike. Khazali’s hunger strike was reported by a number of reformist-leaning outlets in Iran.
