Beholden to Khamenei and the IRGC, Raisi will stick to the hardline script

September 16, 2021

In the June 2021 elections, the Iranian presidency was handed to Ebrahim Raisi on a silver platter.

The Nagorno-Karabakh War: Tehran’s Worst Nightmare

October 14, 2020

The fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan comes at a particularly bad time for Iran.

The Iranian government’s risky stock market bet

September 14, 2020

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) took a different path than the rest of the financial world.

Time for Tehran to Reflect

August 1, 2020

Hopefully, the senior leadership in Tehran will look at the Covid-19 crisis as yet another reminder that it is high time for nation-building at home and bridge-building with neighbouring states.

Khamenei and the end of Iran’s hopeless reformist movement

May 5, 2020

Iran’s once promising reformist movement is in a death spiral. It is not because the idea of reform has lost its appeal.

Iran and Russia: A tale of unfulfilled economic potential

March 17, 2020

The outbreak of a Russian-Saudi oil price war earlier this month might offer some comfort to Iran, a country which has in recent years become unnerved by the increasingly close ties between Moscow and Riyadh.

Trump and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards after Qassem Soleimani

January 31, 2020

Iran and the U.S. were on a collision course as soon as President Donald Trump arrived at the White House in January 2017.

Iran’s IRGC Has Long Kept Khamenei in Power

October 29, 2020

In an Oct. 2 speech to the top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asked them to be ready for “big events.”

China’s Great Game in Iran

September 5,2020

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s visit to the G-7 summit in France late last month was a surprise to many in the West. Some even viewed it as a good omen.

Stuck in the Middle With Iran

June 25, 2019

In late May, Saudi Arabia hosted three separate summit meetings in Mecca, in the hope of securing the region’s unequivocal condemnation of Iranian activities in the Middle East.

Israel's Place in the Middle East Mayhem

March 19, 2019

Amid escalating tensions between the Trump administration and Tehran, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif declared at the annual Munich Security Conference that the “risk of war” between Iran and Israel was “great.”

The emergence of Iran's "Proxy Model"

June 1, 2018

Since its 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has incited violent, radical, and often sectarian nonstate groups across the Middle East to serve as proxies in its military campaigns to influence regional and international politics.