Iran

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ remarks about Iran’s destabilizing influence in the Middle East prompted an angry reaction from Tehran. The Iranian defense minister rejected the allegations by the top U.S.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned Wednesday that Iran’s “enemies” use intimidation and scare tactics to achieve their goals, and called on political and military lea

A senior Iranian Quds Force official arrived in Baghdad today to start his new position as the Islamic Republic’s ambassador to Iraq, the Iranian

The Russian military police has started training local militia forces in the Syrian governorate of Aleppo, according to Fars News Agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.).

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan will visit Moscow next week to meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoygu, Iranian and Russian media report.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says the country’s military budget has seen a 145 percent increase during his four year in office.

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Gonul Tol, Gerald Feierstein, Alex Vatanka, and Marvin G. Weinbaum provide analysis on recent and upcoming events including the victory of Turkish President Erdogan’s “Yes” constitutional referendum campaign to increase his powers, Secretary of Defense Mattis’ trip to the Middle East, the entry of 1,600 candidates for the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, and the alarming violence in Pakistan against accused “blasphemers”.

President Hassan Rouhani has said that the Iranian government will seek no one’s permission to build missiles and upgrade the country’s defense capabilities.

Earlier today, a senior Iranian lawmaker said the United States and its allies have failed in Syria and the broader region and credited Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s leadership for defeating Iran’s “enemies” in foreign lands to safeguard the country’s national security.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (I.R.G.C.)’s elite Quds Force runs an international network of organized criminal networks to smuggle drugs into and throughout Europe, al-Arabiya Arabic reports. Quoting unnamed sources from the Italian Judiciary, the report claims that the mastermind of the Quds Force’s illicit drugs operations is former Quds Force General Gholamreza Baghbani. Members of the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran-linked Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (P.M.F.) are reportedly part of the criminal network.

Iran, Russia and Turkey will begin a two-day trilateral meeting in Tehran on Tuesday to discuss peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups, Iran’s Foreign Ministry

Iran has dispatched a flotilla of warships to the Gulf of Aden, the Iranian media reported today.

The full article can be found at Foreign Policy.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s re-election is in doubt thanks to an unassuming cleric who only recently entered the public spotlight. On April 9, Ebrahim Raisi, a longtime behind-the-scenes operative of the Islamic Republic closely associated with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared his candidacy in Iran’s May 19 presidential election.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has reacted angrily to the latest U.S. sanctions on the Tehran Prisons Organization and a top Iranian official for human rights abuses in the country.

Foreign ministers of Iran, Syria and Russia warned the United States against further military strikes in Syria and reiterated support for the government of Bashar al-Assad in a trilateral meeting in Moscow on Friday, the Iranian media reports.