The rivalry for Iran’s future has played out over WhatsApp, Viber, and Tango. All three are used heavily to make free calls, send messages, and post photos or videos. They’re also ways to share the deliciously naughty political humor that Iranians love, without getting caught by the Committee to Determine Instances of Criminal Content. Read […]
One likely Saudi Arabian response to the deal its biggest enemy Iran has struck with world powers is to accelerate its own nuclear power plans, creating an atomic infrastructure it could, one day, seek to weaponise. But while it has recently made moves to advance its nuclear programme, experts say it is uncertain whether it could […]
Defenders of Barack Obama’s Iran deal ask a seemingly practical question of its critics: What would you do instead? But that question is only seemingly practical, not actually practical. The deal won’t go into effect only if two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to override a presidential veto of a joint resolution of disapproval. Ten […]
For Israel, the bigger problem with the deal is the omission of guidelines on Iran’s regional activities. Changes to the United Nations Security Council embargos on arms deals and ballistic missile technology, for example, are not conditional on Iranian behavior apart from direct violations of the agreement. This is to be expected, as it is […]
The next president of the United States will almost certainly be more hawkish on Iran than Barack Obama. Maybe a little more hawkish, if Hillary Clinton; potentially a lot more hawkish, if a Republican. What can that president do about the nuclear accord that the Obama administration and several world powers have struck with Iran? […]
Obama on the Nuclear Deal – July 16, 2015
Iran and six major world powers reached a nuclear deal, capping more than a decade of on-off negotiations with an agreement that could potentially transform the Middle East, and which Israel called an “historic surrender”. Read Here – Reuters
There has been a lot of speculation about how the lifting of sanctions and the re-engagement of Western companies in Iran would influence Iran’s relations with Russia. The simplistic view is that a resurgent Iran would compete with Russia as a major exporter of oil and gas, hence compelling Moscow to stand in the way of […]
That President Hassan Rouhani has staked his political fortunes on the nuclear talks is well-known in Iran. His optimism for a nuclear deal with the six world powers and the subsequent removal of international sanctions and end to Iran’s isolation is so high that he has even, somewhat controversially, linked the nuclear deal to solving Iran’s water crisis. […]
Whether its central claim is an inscrutable dream of religiously legitimated sovereignty or a malleable delusion, the appeal of ISIS is easily abstracted from motives available to outsiders. It is, in the incisive words of the New York artist Molly Crabapple, a ‘cosplay Caliphate’, a dress-up festival of blood-soaked nostalgia whose very pretensions to antiquity […]
