Iran Studies Project

Introduction An examination of developments that can be expected in the Iran-U.S. confrontation requires first an understanding of the policy of U.S. President Donald Trump, both in general and in how this policy is reflected in his approach to Iran. Trump's Policy Pres...

On August 6, 2018, the Iranian news agency Fars published statements by Gen. Naser Sha'bani, a top official of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), in which he noted that the regime of the Islamic Revolution had ordered the pro-Iran Ansar Allah (Houthi) militia in Ye...

In a recent sermon at a Shiraz mosque, Iranian cleric Seyyed Mohammad Anjavinejad harshly criticized the Iranian regime. Denouncing regime officials for what he described as widespread corruption among their families, Anjavinejad said: "They robbed you and me. We have no idea... ...

In response to U.S. President Trump's recent tweet to Iranian President Rouhani, IRGC Qods Force Commander General Qasem Soleimani warned "Trump the gambler" that "you may start the war, but we will be the ones to determine its end." In a speech delivered on July 26, 2018, in the...

On July 3, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted that the Obama administration had given U.S. citizenship to 2,500 Iranians, among them government officials, as part of understandings in the bilateral nuclear talks. The issue of U.S. citizenship for Iranians was reported on i...

In an opinion piece published July 23, 2018 in the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Khalid bin Salman, called on the international community to adopt a unified and comprehensive strategy to confront the destabilizing behavior...

Yulia Sveshnikova, a research associate at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, wrote an article for Rbc.ru,[1] titled "Alarm in Tehran: Why Did Iran Eagerly Await the results of the Helsinki Summit" in which she argued that a reversal of roles has taken p...

Against the backdrop of the U.S. administration's announcements that it intends to level oil and banking sanctions against the Iranian regime, regime officials once again responded with vehement statements expressing their intention to prevent any country from shipping oil via th...

Recently, the Syrian army and the forces that back it, with the support of the Russians, managed to take control of a large part of the Dar'a governorate in southern Syria. This occurred following a military campaign against Syrian opposition factions that began on June 19, 2018....

In his July 15, 2018 column in the Syrian daily Al-Watan, which is close to the Assad regime, Firas 'Aziz Al-Dib took the unusual line of criticizing Iran, a major Syria ally, for statements made by senior Iranian official Ali Akbar Velayati. Velayati, an international affairs ad...

Against the backdrop of the last few months' ongoing public protests in Iran against the leaders of the regime of the Islamic Revolution over its economic and political policies, the regime has acted to increase its control of the public and stepped up its attempts to prevent Wes...

Russian commentator Valery Shiryaev speculated on the possibility of another Middle East war, in an article published for Novaya Gazeta. On July 4, Ismail Kowsari, an official representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that Teheran will completely cut off th...

On March 20, 2018, in an unusual step, the London-based Qatari daily Al-Arabi Al-Jadid published an article in Arabic by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in which he conveyed a conciliatory message to the countries of the region. Zarif wrote that the ongoing arms ra...

It has recently been reported that U.S. President Donald Trump plans to slap oil sanctions on Iran beginning in November of this year. To this end, on June 30, 2018 he asked Saudi King Salman Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz to increase his country's oil production so as to prevent any shortage...

To mark Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which in 2018 fell on June 8, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) deputy commander Hossein Salami participated in a Qods Day march in the city of Mashhad, and gave a speech as part of the Friday sermon in which he explained the rationale...

Introduction While U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to take active measures against Iran, the Iranian regime is already showing signs of economic and political collapse, although throughout the 40 years of its existence it has presented itself as a powerful regime that ben...

On June 22, 2018, the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily, which is close to Hizbullah, published an interview with Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin; in it, Zasypkin stated that the Iranian presence in Syria is legitimate as long as the war on terrorism there has not ended, ...

Iran responded resentfully to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's statements in late May 2018 regarding the need for all foreign forces to withdraw from Syria – meaning also Iranian forces or those sponsored by Iran, such as Hizbullah and the Shi'ite militias. Iranian re...

On May 1, 2018, Morocco announced it was severing relations with Iran on the grounds that it and Hizbullah were aiding the Polisario, a movement acting to establish an independent state in the Western Sahara, in territory claimed by Morocco.[1] In a press conference, Morocca...

On June 4, 2018, Hossein Dalirian, director of the military desk at the Iranian news agency Tasnim, which is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who is also deputy director of the agency's political desk, explained statements made that day by Iranian...

After 65 years of enmity between North and South Korea and of severe North Korea-U.S. tension, both conflicts appear to be moving towards resolution. At the historic April 27, 2018 summit between North Korean President Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the two l...

Tehran is closely following the developments between the U.S. and North Korea. In a May 17, 2018 editorial on the U.S.-North Korea talks, the Iranian regime mouthpiece Kayhan wrote that North Korea has no intention of getting rid of its nuclear weapons because they guarantee ...

(Source: Voanews.com) If any country in the world could be expected to be extremely cautious about aligning with anyone calling for Israel's annihilation, it would be Germany, regardless of any extenuating circumstances – economic, political or otherwise. The Bundesrepublik ...