Research & Commentary Results

The July 29 suicide drone attack on the Israeli oil tanker Mercer Street, which left two British and Romanian crewmembers dead in the Arabian Sea, was carried out by Iran and was intended to cause human casualties and physical damage, according to the investigative report from U.S. Central Command(CENTCOM). While Tehran denied any hand in the strike, the G7 directly blamed Iran and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised a “collective response.”

Every year 400-500 women are killed brutally in Iran to protect men’s “honor.” The killers are usually close relatives — often the victim’s father, husband, or brother. According to a report published in The Lancet in October 2020, at least 8,000 such killings were reported in Iran between 2010 and 2014. “The number of honor killing victims is greater than reported as in some cases women were driven to suicide or the cause of the death was not reported as murder but as illness,” according to Dr. Rezvan Moghadam, founder of the Iranian organization Stop Honor Killings. Dr. Moghadam has documented more than 1,200 cases of honor killings in the country. According to research, which will soon be published as a book and made available to the public, these kinds of violent killings of women and girls have been increasing for the last 20 years in different cities and villages in Iran.

At the dawn of the Biden era of American foreign policy, a more mature, realistic Saudi foreign policy is emerging to match the shifting signals from Washington. In some measure, the Saudis are readopting elements that traditionally characterized their policy preferences before the meteoric rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), the kingdom’s de facto ruler.

Since 1979 U.S. policies toward Iran have alternatively ranged from some version of “maximum pressure” to appeasement and back again while maintaining the same assumptions and calculus: the clerics would ultimately fall when the elite and middle class had enough and were willing to pay the price for revolting. Today, however, the landscape is evolving. While Iran’s leaders appear to be adapting, U.S. thinking is rooted in the past.

Due to his divergent views on Iran’s international and regional policies, Hossein Amirabdollahian had various disagreements with then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif while serving as deputy foreign minister beginning in 2011, and these ultimately led to his removal from the post in June 2016. The official reason announced for the change was Amirabdollahian’s appointment as Iran’s new ambassador to Oman, although he refused to accept the position.

Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s new foreign minister, is famous for his exceptionally close relationship with the Quds Force, the foreign operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as well as its regional allies.

Since late June, Russia has expanded its diplomatic involvement in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. While Russia has offered technical assistance to the GERD’s conflicting parties, it has refrained from inserting itself into the Nile dam dispute as a mediator and instead balanced the views of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia in multilateral fora. Russia’s balancing strategy has been positively received in Sudan and Ethiopia but has created latent frictions with Egypt. Russia has persisted with this non-interference policy, as it has largely prevented a spillover of tensions over the GERD to other areas of cooperation with Egypt and believes that its position will help consolidate its partnership with Ethiopia.

The inauguration of President Ebrahim Raisi has been heralded as the advent of a “New Iran” by the ultra-conservative camp. Although the Iranian authorities are still interested in the revival of the JCPOA, Raisi represents a resistance discourse that believes Iran has to focus on thwarting the sanctions instead of trying to lift them by means of political negotiations. The focal point of this worldview is the expansion of relations with non-Western countries, and Africa plays a central role in this effort.

Incoming Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi may break the mold of his predecessor by exceeding expectations in his first 100 days, but make no mistake—less horrific is still horrific; no one should be fooled.

Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president on August 5. Ali Alfoneh and Henry Rome join guest host Alex Vatanka, director of MEI’s Iran Program, to discuss the political and economic challenges the new president will contend with, his relationship to Ayatollah Khamenei, and the future of Iran and the country’s leadership.

Iran’s water bankruptcy has been in the news lately, prompting deadly protests in Khuzestan province that also garnered the attention of global media. But this kind of problem is neither new or unique in the country. Drying rivers, vanishing lakes, shrinking wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, sinkholes, desertification, soil erosion, dust storms, air, water and waste pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildfires are among the other familiar signs of Iran’s environmental devastation.

the years leading up to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban had strained relations with Iran. Tensions between the two sides escalated to the point that the Iranian government and the Quds Force actually assisted American forces during the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Tehran’s policy toward the Afghan Taliban has created new clashes within Iranian government circles. These clashes recently escalated as influential hard-line media and associates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made public efforts to portray the Taliban in a positive light. 

Read MEI’s weekly briefing featuring expert analysis of key regional developments for the week ahead.

On June 18, Ebrahim Raisi won a landslide victory in Iran’s presidential elections. After Raisi’s triumph, Maxim Suslov, the press attaché of the Russian Embassy in Tehran, transmitted a message from President Vladimir Putin congratulating Raisi on his win and pledging to strengthen Russia-Iran bilateral relations. Iranian Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali echoed​​​​​​​ Putin’s comments about Russia-Iran relations and noted that he was the first world leader to congratulate Raisi on his election as Iran’s next president.