Power Struggle Begins in Iran As Election Looms

On June 14, Iran will hold a presidential election. If the acrimony and fraud of the 2009 election was not enough to cast a pall over this vote, then the ongoing power struggle between Supreme Leader Aytollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surely is. Term limits prevent Ahmadinejad from running for reelection, but he […]

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Meet The American Who Wants To Be Ahmadinejad.

Hooshang Amirahmadi is not your typical candidate for the Iranian presidency. A tenured professor of public policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a decidedly snazzy dresser, Amirahmadi is literally worlds away from the man he hopes to succeed: the virulently anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the fact that he hasn’t lived in Iran for nearly […]

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Keep Eyes On Iran, But Don’t Forget North Korea

No serious observer thinks a nuclear Iran is good for world peace, not with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s abhorrent anti- Semitism and threats to obliterate Israel. Yet the single-minded focus on Iran ignores a more immediate and provocative atomic threat: North Korea. It’s an oversight that U.S. President Barack Obama must rectify. Read Here – Bloomberg

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The New Egypt-Iran Equation

The January 2011 revolution in Egypt changed the nature of Iran–Egypt relations. Unlike the old Egypt under Hosni Mubarak, which perceived Iran as its main threat, the new Egypt seeks close relations with Iran in the broader context of regional cooperation in solving regional issues, such as that of the Syrian crisis. This development may create […]

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Why Iran Won’t Budge

No one really believed that the latest round of international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program would produce a breakthrough. So it was no surprise that itdid not, despite the concessions that were made at the meeting in Kazakhstan by the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany). […]

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More than an Israeli or American air strike, or the economic effects of sanctions, the powers-that-be in Tehran face a deeper risk rising from within Iranian society.

In Teheran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the last word. But is the “No” of Iran’s spiritual leader really his last word when it comes to negotiating directly with the U.S. in the conflict over his country’s nuclear program? Maybe not. His position must be seen in the context of Iran’s domestic politics – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, […]

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Egypt-Iran Rapprochement Will have To Wait

Since his election for the country’s top post last June, Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi has been sending mixed messages as to whether he seeks to normalise relations with Iran after more than three decades of bitter animosity. In the wake of the Egyptian revolution, pro-Iran analysts expected that the new Islamist government in Cairo would […]

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