Research & Commentary Results

President Donald Trump’s Thursday remarks about an imminent withdrawal of US troops has drawn a great deal of attention in the Iranian press. While some state-run outlets and those affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards welcome Trump’s announcement as a victory for Iran and its regional proxies, others remain skeptical about whether Washington will actually press ahead with such a plan.

Commemorating the 39th anniversary of the March 30, 1979 referendum, which established the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) issued a statement warning against foreign threats against “the track record of the Islamic Republic.” The statement cautioned that “the front of Arroga

A senior Iranian military official said today that Tehran would not negotiate over its missile program with Western powers, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.

Scores of Iranian Arabs staged anti-government protest rallies in western Khuzestan Province after the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) excluded the Arab community’s cultural identity in a New Year TV show that was ironically supposed to showcase Iran’s diversity. The protesters called the program aired on the state-run TV “insulting” and demanded an apology from the IRIB.

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Critics of the Iran nuclear deal have consistently argued that one of its major flaws is that it didn’t address Tehran’s ballistic missile program. Imposing limits on those weapons of terror, opponents of the deal say, is a primary U.S. objective and should have been part of our negotiating strategy with the Iranians from the beginning.

The UN Security Council should hold Iran responsible for disrupting regional and international security and providing ballistic missiles to the Houthi militants in Yemen to attack Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations, the speaker of the Arab Parliament has said.

A top Iranian official has called for the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, 

In a scathing open letter published online, a close aide to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has continued the public feud between the former president’s team and the country’s judicial and military institutions. In the letter addressed to the Judiciary, Hamid Baqaei, a former vice president who was recently arrested on embezzlement charges, questioned the fairness and transparency of the country’s judicial system. He also crossed a regime red line by raising questions about the country’s secretive Quds Force and its chief commander, Major General Qassem Soleimani.

The Criminal Court of Riyadh today sentenced two Saudi citizens on charges of engaging in acts of terrorism and conspiring with Iran and its regional proxies to destabilize Saudi Arabia, the Arab press reported.

Summary

Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, a prominent Iranian Shiite religious leader, has called on authorities to prevent “infiltrators” from entering Iran’s holy city of Qom, Radio Fardo reported today. Shirazi, who is based in Qom and had requested a “special budget” for the city a few months ago, said on Monday that the govenrment needs to pay more attention to Qom than any other city in the country.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Bilal Y. Saab, Gerald Feierstein, Gonul Tol, and Ibrahim al-Assil provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the appointment of John Bolton to national security advisor, the Houthi missile attack on Riyadh, Egypt’s regressive referendum, the Yemeni war’s third anniversary, EU-Turkey diplomacy, and the worsening crisis in Ghouta.

Mashregh News, a conservative Iranian outlet, quotes Mozahem al-Havit, a spokesman of the Arab Bedouins in Nineveh Governorate in Iraq, as saying that the United States has established its “largest” military base in Iraq and plans to install four mo

Tehran’s Ambassador to Baghdad Iraj Masjedi held a meeting with the leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, an Iraqi militia group fighting in Iraq and Syria, to discuss Iraqi and regional issues,