It is time to end the 41 years of futile hostilities between Iran and the United States of America.
Officials in Tehran have a lot to worry about. But they are particularly irked at the speed by which Asian states have dropped Iran as a trading partner. Iran had hoped that the East would save the country’s economy from the barrage of sanctions enacted by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. In early 2018, at a time when Trump and his team were about to unveil the most punishing sanctions regime ever imposed on a country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei explicitly urged Tehran to look east for trading partners.
Despite strong religious and cultural ties and a long shared border, Iran has a somewhat complicated relationship with Afghanistan. Since the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan some four decades ago, Iran’s attempts to preserve its interests in conflict-ridden Afghanistan have not received much attention from the outside world, but it remains one of the most important neighboring countries for Tehran’s foreign policy.
What happened in al-Awadh illustrates how the tribes are increasingly caught between the brutality of the Houthis and the incompetence of the Yemeni government.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, music and dance have become increasingly common in Iran’s hospitals and on its streets. Long disallowed in public after the Islamic revolution of 1979, they have become both a source of support for Iranians during difficult times and a way of resisting the regime.
The U.S.-Iraq Strategic Dialogue that will be launched this week provides an opportunity for the two sides to put their relations, as Iraqi President Dr. Barham Salih said last April, “in the right context.”
The impact of COVID-19 on Iran-linked forces in Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to expand its influence through its proxy forces, particularly in eastern Syria, as Iranian and pro-Iranian forces redeploy elsewhere in the country.
Since 2017, Iran has seen several waves of protests rooted in political, social, and, most importantly, economic grievances. In light of COVID and the post-pandemic fallout, there is every indication that unrest will continue to grow, and even accelerate. Until now, the regime’s coercive apparatus has had both the capacity and the willingness of its members to successfully suppress anti-regime unrest. But has COVID-19 changed this balance? What impact, if any, has the pandemic had on the regime’s security capacity?
Quickly attributing or blaming a country for a cyber incident without technical analysis, proof, and government officials willing to go on record only inflames an already tense situation.
Iran is currently facing an incredibly unlucky alignment of pressure sources that are interrelated and will force the regime to engage in risky or experimental behavior, most likely in 2020. The COVID-19 epidemic simply exacerbates the combined challenges of a regime squeezed by an international sanctions network and a restive population reaching a breaking point with economic hardship. A continued acceptance of the status quo is untenable; thus, the regime will likely begin to undertake various initiatives in the coming months, more likely military than diplomatic in nature, that could force the United States to ease the isolation of the country.
Far from his native Tehran in bucolic West Vancouver, Parviz Tanavoli, the 83-year-old “father of modern Iranian sculpture,” contemplates the fate of his homeland. “My heart breaks when I see what is happening in Iran now,” says the renowned artist, who divides his time between a life of relative obscurity on Canada’s Pacific coast, and Tehran, where he is referred to simply as “Master Tanavoli.”
In Khamenei’s mind, the total neutralization of the ‘moderate’ camp is the best legacy he can leave behind.
To help prevent a U.S.-Iran war in their neighborhood, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council have called for diplomacy. They have reached out to Iranian officials to de-escalate. And they have provided Tehran with humanitarian assistance to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
What is the future of legitimacy in Yemen? The question of what would happen if President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi were to die has been an unspoken concern for the past several years. It is important to address the question of legitimacy after Hadi because the constitutional rules on how to transfer his authority to a successor and how to avoid a presidential vacuum are impractical given the ongoing conflict.
Unfortunately, many distinguished Arab writers are unknown to the majority of Iranian readers and their works are not available in Persian. Arab literature has largely been neglected in the Iranian literary translation market.